An Evaluation of the Southwestern Anatolian Chalcolithic Material Culture in the context of the Ekşi Höyük Archaeological Excavation Project
Project no. 927 · Status: Kapanmış · 2015
Summary
The archaeological field surveys carried out by Prof. Dr. Eşref Abay and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Fulya Dedeoğlu in the Upper Menderes Basin, a part of Southwestern Anatolia, have revealed that the basin had been intensely settled since the Neolithic Age. Although the excavations of Beycesultan and Aphrodisias in Southwestern Anatolia enable us to have information about the characteristics of the material culture in the Late Chalcolithic Period, the absence of any excavation belonged to the process of the Early Chalcolithic in Denizli and neighbor regions, Uşak and Afyon, until today, has caused us not to have detailed information about the early period chronology of the region. This has caused the process of Chalcolithic to be known in Western Anatolia only from the Lake District, Central Anatolia and the limited excavations recently carried out at the coastal part. Within this context, Ekşi Höyük which was especially settled in the Early Chalcolithic Age, has propounded highly important data not only for the region, but also the entire of Western Anatolia. The Chalcolithic levels which generate the subject of the project, have been defined at Ekşi Höyük with two archaeological layers called the Level 3 and 2. The early one of the Chalcolithic levels at Ekşi Höyük of which excavations have been carried out by the charge of the Denizli Museum and the scientific consultancy of Assoc. Prof. Dr. Fulya Dedeoğlu Konakçı, has been dated to 6000-5500 BC and represented with the tetragonal structures and the floors relevant to these structures. The Level 2 that we have dated to 5500-4500 BC, includes relatively more limited archaeological finds consisting of floors and the bones detected as in situ on these floors. The materials detected from these levels, have proved that the region has a culture which might be associated with both the Late District and Central Anatolia.