Neolithic Goes West: The Environmental Context of Late Neolithic Agriculture in Western and Central Anatolia

关键词：考古学，近东考古，新石器时代，新石器时代安纳托利亚，早期农业，人类影响，考古植物学，人类学，环境考古学，考古科学考古证据表明，从大约9000年前开始，西南亚第一批耕种者和牧民的生活方式在居住方式、家庭农业经济、物质文化和技术方面发生了重大转变。这些变化标志着近东新石器时代从西南亚内陆的核心地区向西扩展和分散（通过人口流动和文化适应）到新环境的开始。这一过程为该地区第一批粮食生产社会带来了新的机遇和挑战，这些社会大约2000年前出现在美索不达米亚北部和黎凡特的半干旱山麓和河谷地区。一些学者假设，日益加剧的气候干旱和人类景观的影响导致了社会动荡、群体分裂和定居放弃，这促使早期农民迁移到安纳托利亚西部更温和的地区。格陵兰冰芯的古气候资料表明，约8200cal BP时劳伦斯冰盖的崩塌导致全球气候从温暖湿润的最佳气候条件迅速转变为极度寒冷和干旱的气候条件。在安纳托利亚中部，8.2万年的事件与最终放弃像Çatalhöyuk East这样的大型有核定居点，以及在安纳托利亚西部实行充分发展的农牧经济的社区开始密集的新石器时代定居点有关。然而，缺乏植被和其他景观资源严重退化可能导致经济衰退和社会动荡的直接证据。此外，几乎没有数据可以用来重建安纳托利亚西部更密集的新石器时代定居点的生态足迹，以及农牧经济如何在这些更潮湿、树木更茂密的环境中整合，包括与已有的当地觅食者生活方式的相互作用和/或杂交。该项目旨在通过从安纳托利亚中部和西部的新石器时代遗址收集古植物学（木材木炭）数据来填补这一知识空白，这些数据涵盖了公元前7世纪中期到公元前6世纪晚期之间的关键时间跨度。本研究的主要目的是研究这一时期植被变化的性质、人与环境的相互作用以及人为影响。这将通过在8.2k事件之前、期间和之后使用量化木炭数据重建林地植被来实现，以解决可能与气候和/或人为对当地环境的影响有关的林地组成、覆盖和多样性的变化（例如，由于浏览、放牧和/或开垦造成的森林砍伐而导致的林地组成/覆盖的变化）。

Key Words: Archaeology, Near Eastern Archaeology, Neolithic, Neolithic Anatolia, Early Agriculture, Human Impacts, Archaeobotany, Anthracology, Environmental Archaeology, Archaeological Science.Starting from approximately 9000 years ago, archaeological evidence indicates that the lifeways of the first cultivators and herders in Southwest Asia underwent significant transformations in habitation practices, domestic farming economies, and material culture and technologies. These shifts marked the start of the geographical expansion and dispersal (via population movements and acculturation) of the Near Eastern Neolithic from its core areas in inland Southwest Asia westwards into new environments. This process presented new opportunities and challenges for the region's first food-producing societies that emerged in the semiarid foothills and river valleys of northern Mesopotamia and the Levant some 2000 years earlier. Some scholars have hypothesised that increasing climatic aridity and human landscape impacts led to societal upheaval, group fission, and settlement abandonment, which motivated early farmers to migrate to the more temperate regions of Western Anatolia. Palaeoclimatic data from the Greenland ice cores indicate that the collapse of the Laurentine ice sheet at ~8200cal BP led to a rapid shift from the warm and humid Climatic Optimum, to extremely cold and arid conditions globally. In Central Anatolia, the 8.2k event has been linked to the final abandonment of large, nucleated settlements such as Çatalhöyuk East, and the beginning of dense Neolithic settlement in Western Anatolia by communities practising fully developed agropastoral economies. However, direct evidence for significant deterioration of vegetation and other landscape resources that could have caused economic decline and societal unrest, is lacking. Furthermore, there is very little data with which to reconstruct the ecological footprint of denser Neolithic settlement in Western Anatolia, and how agropastoral economies were integrated in these more humid and densely wooded environments, including interactions and/or hybridization with pre-existing local forager lifeways.This project aims to fill this knowledge gap by collecting palaeobotanical (wood charcoal) data from select Neolithic sites in Central and Western Anatolia, covering the critical timespan between the mid-7th and late-6th millennia cal BC. The key aim of this research project is to investigate the nature of vegetation changes, people-environment interactions, and anthropogenic impacts, during this period. This will be achieved by reconstructing woodland vegetation before, during, and after the 8.2k event using quantified charcoal data to address changes in woodland composition, cover, and diversity that may be linked to climatic and/or anthropogenic impacts on the local environments (e.g., changes in woodland composition/cover due to deforestation caused by browsing, grazing and/or clearance for cultivation).