Özbaşaran, Mihriban

İstanbul Üniversitesi

Research Topic: Aşıklı Höyük Monograph: Aşıklı Höyük – Essays in Honour of Ufuk Esin

The Aşıklı Höyük Research Project is one of the two ongoing projects in Central Anatolia that focuses on the earliest stages of one of the significant changes in the lifeways of humans, the Neolithic. The site presents the transitional stage to sedentary life and changes in the socio-economic system of a community over almost a thousand years between 8400–7300 calBC. Earlier fieldwork and research until 2004, directed by Prof. U. Esin (Istanbul University), were carried out mainly on the later phases of the settlement, the 8th millennium BC. The results were published in various periodicals and as book chapters. The second phase of the fieldwork and research, started in 2006, has focused mainly on the earlier phases, the mid-9th millennium BC. The initial results of the latter carried out over the last ten years are ready to be published as a monograph.

The goal of Dr. Özbaşaran’s Short-term Fellowship is to edit and finalize the monograph mentioned above. It includes detailed studies of site-formation processes, radiocarbon dating, human-animal and human-plant interactions, changes in settlement pattern and architectural designs, sediment micromorphology, and phytolith assemblages. This publication will be a comprehensive resource in understanding and interpreting the lifeways of this transitional community and will contribute to long-term debates on the neolithization process on a regional scale neolithization process on a regional scale.