Award Date

5-1-2020

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Anthropology

First Committee Member

Levent Atici

Second Committee Member

Karen Harry

Third Committee Member

Alyssa Crittenden

Fourth Committee Member

John Curry

Number of Pages

255

Abstract

The proposed dissertation research investigates bone, antler, and ivory technologies in central Anatolia (present-day Turkey) during the Bronze and Iron Ages (ca. 3000-100 Before Current Era or BCE). At this time, rural agrarian societies were transforming into more complex polities and states. This transformation was marked by a rapid increase of social complexity as documented in the archaeological record in terms of monumental administrative and religious buildings, uniform ceramic ware, and writing. The current archaeological record also informs us about the rate of technological change in pottery, architecture, and metallurgy, as typology, style, and function are widely documented and studied in these domains. The archaeological record, however, informs us that other industries such as bone, antler, and ivory were produced and used ubiquitously as well. Assemblages of these industries are omnipresent in central Anatolia but reports and literature on them are scarce. Investigating these technologies from the archaeological site of Kaman Kalehӧyük provides the opportunity to examine how the production of these industries may have been impacted by the rise of complex societies and by larger sociopolitical contexts.

To begin with, this dissertation research established a baseline dataset to fill the spatial and temporal lacuna. The first questions probed relate to whether the major socio-cultural, political, and economic transformations that occurred at Kaman Kalehӧyük influenced the bone, antler, and ivory artifacts manufactured. The data reveals that the local Anatolians, who were the same cultural group through time, predominantly manufactured these osseous tools and objects independently of external political, cultural, and social transformations that regularly occurred at the site. No substantial differences were noted between the artifact typologies and the bone and antler tools crafted through time from the Early Bronze Age to the Ottoman Period. The main difference observed in the assemblage concerned the textile tools, which increased in quantity during the times when Kaman Kalehӧyük was governed by an invading governing authority.

The second question investigates an analytical bias commonly made by zooarchaeologists when sorting bone artifacts from the general faunal assemblage. The bone artifacts from Kaman were used as a case study to determine if the inclusion of bone artifact counts impacted the general faunal assemblage counts, and if that, in turn, affected subsequent interpretations. The data revealed that the inclusion of bone artifact counts altered the general faunal assemblage counts for the Iron Age, meaning Kaman had a higher proportion of caprines to cattle and pig than previously documented. This impacts subsequent interpretations as these data highlight the importance of caprine herding and wool production at the site.

Keywords

Anatolia; Bone Tools; Bronze Age; Methodology; Taphonomy; Zooarchaeology

Disciplines

Archaeological Anthropology

File Format

pdf

File Size

3.3 MB

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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