Dr. Yelözer is an archaeologist interested in interdisciplinary approaches to the study of prehistoric material culture. Her research combines multi-proxy studies of prehistoric symbolic items such as personal ornaments, employing a contextual and biographic approach via macroscopic and microscopic wear analysis.
In her PhD, she explored new ways to think about Neolithic bodies and identities, focusing on the funerary bead assemblages from Aşıklı Höyük, a Neolithic site in Anatolia. After completing her PhD, she worked on a project at the University of Bordeaux, focusing on the evolution of prehistoric ornaments in western Asia. She then held a postdoctoral research position in a National Geographic Society-funded project titled “Small things, big stories: embodying prehistoric identity in Turkey.”
Her project at ANAMED questions how and why societies create lasting ties with places and people through material symbols, especially during significant societal transitions like the initial stages of sedentism in Neolithic Anatolia. She seeks answers to this question through a study of the multiple functions of symbolic, decorative objects (e.g., beads, pendants, belt-buckles, plaques). By tracking the changes in their deposition patterns, she aims to explore how objects facilitated communicating memory and identity during the gradual transition to year-round sedentism in Anatolia.