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Introduction

It is a matter of accepted fact that ethnoarchaeology came rather late to Turkey but it is less clear why and even how it arrived in Turkey. A discussion of the reasons for this late arrival, as well as an historical review within the context of Turkish archaeology, will be the core parts of this chapter.

Ethnoarchaeology needs a sophisticated perspective to be able to nascence properly and it requires a background woven with philosophical thought, as well as a high level of consciousness in the aim of understanding the past.

The endeavour to know about past societies in the world has a history as old as prehistoric times. During this long time in the history of archaeology, the differing destinations of this subject have caused variations in perspectives and methodologies. But the major developments have appeared when the aim has been changed from “to know” to “to understand”. Since it has been understood that the unidentified objects found on or under the earth belong to the people who lived in the very distant past, the value of these objects has been changed for contemporary people during the centuries. Recently, the new question of “what was the value of these objects or existences for those who made them (rather than for us?)” has given birth to a brand new perspective which is called “cognitive archaeology” today, as described by Renfrew and Bahn (1996:369). Therefore researchers have tried various ways to approach the endless questions of the unknown past that are the results of the long-term accumulation of information, controversies, debates and criticism. Once researchers started wanting to do interpretations of their data, ethnoarchaeology appeared as a sub-discipline. In David and Kramer’s book “Ethnoarchaeology in Action” (2001) it says:

“Archaeological interpretation is founded and ultimately depends upon analogy..... Archaeologists draw upon their lives and upon everything they have read, heard about or seen in the search for possible analogies to the fragmentary remains they seek to interpret.” (David & Kramer, 2001:1)

These sentences summarize ethnoarchaeology as a debated, theorized and systematic way of making analogies, but to be able to perceive a “need” for ethnoarchaeological analogy, first you should have an archaeological perception that contains an “interpretation”. In this respect, the status of ethnoarchaeology is quite related to the status of archaeology, or in more general terms, the way the country looks at its own past.

The History of Archaeology and Perception of the Past in Turkey

The generation of archaeology outside of Turkey needs to be remembered at this point, because this will help us to understand the differences between Turkey and western countries in terms of the processes of archaeological thought.

Scientific archaeology is based on a long history that goes back to Renaissance scholars who were interested in their Graeco-Roman precedents to justify the political innovations that took place when feudalism ended in the fourteenth century. This regard for Graeco-Roman precedents was a challenge to the doctrine in which the civilizations of Greece and Rome had been regarded as culturally degenerated since medieval times. The interest in these periods of time expanded from literature to material remains (Trigger, 1989: 35-36). Therefore, among the aristocracy, the possession of such material remains became prestigious in the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries. The numbers of items collected by the aristocratic class led to moves to classify these objects, and created an awareness of differences in styles, raw materials and time periods at the beginning of the eighteenth century (Trigger, 1989:73).

Subsequently, the western system of thought developed two different approaches. One of these two approaches, used in the nineteenth century during the dissolution of the Holy Roman-German Empire, had a political rationale and aimed to prove the past roots of particular nations with tangible evidence, or, in other words, it was an endeavour to link an existing culture or nation to a past culture. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Biblical Archaeology emerged as another school of thought, which sought concrete evidence for the Bible, and although this approach also had a political rationale, it opened the door of the Near Eastern past and its rich cultures to the west. Meanwhile, the industrial revolution, which required the development of the geosciences in its need for more raw material, resulted in an enormous increase in the knowledge of the span of geological time. This important information changed all the perceptions of the past and carried the concept of change through time by reference to geology to a global scale. The concept of an “evolving past” appeared as the second of the two western systems of thought (Özdoğan, 2011a). Therefore global-scale research questions started earlier for western academics than anywhere else, resulting in an appropriation of the past in the name of the world culture by European and American academics. This period coincided with the imperial period and scientific and political appropriations were mixed with each other (Özdoğan, 2011a), as exemplified by the archaeological and political efforts of A.H. Layard (1817–1894) in Mesopotamia.

When we look at the history of archaeological thought in Turkey, we see a different pathway from that taken in Europe. We should try to understand the perspective and approach to ancient times and cultures in the history of the Turks. It would be helpful to look at their understanding of the material cultures or art that are formed by humans, or more generally the depictions of art in two and three dimensions. The Turks shifted from depictive art to decorative art after the introduction of Islam. Although Fatih Sultan Mehmet (1432–1481) had an Italian painter to draw his portrait in the fifteenth century, there were not many personal depictions, or at least these were avoided in the Ottoman period, because it was still accepted as a sin to depict the human figure, according to Islamic beliefs. Therefore, in the Ottoman Empire, we do not see any behaviour comparable to that of the collection of antiquities carried out among the European aristocracy which triggered the interest in ancient remains. Conversely, neither the core area of the Ottoman Empire nor the large lands under its rule could develop a tradition of collecting paintings or specifically any kind of sculpture either contemporary or ancient. There was a total disregard of art in this regard, The art of the Ottoman Empire was restricted to miniatures, floral and faunal and geometric decorations, and the use of precious stones, textiles, and ceramics; in architecture and architectural decorations there were no depictions of the human figure. The first Sultan of the Ottoman Empire who had his own depiction in sculpture was Sultan Abdulaziz in 1871, and even in the nineteenth century doing so was heavily criticized. Furthermore, any relics older than those of the Islamic period which might have been related to the “pagan period” were often ignored even though they did not directly depict the human figure.

Consequently the Ottomans’ distance from any pagan depictions in general had created an unawareness of archaeological remains until the end of the nineteenth century. The Ottoman rulers could not relate themselves to these ancient remains; in other words, they ignored their existence. In this respect, it is not surprising that the Ottomans did not embrace the countless archaeological remains that had lain visibly on the earth for centuries in Egypt, Greece, the Balkans, Mesopotamia and Anatolia. According to Özdoğan (2011b), traditional societies, in general, do not feel the need for a time scale nor do they query the past because the tendency is just to believe in, and everything about the past is explained by legendary information. Özdoğan describes the Ottomans as a traditional society (Özdoğan, 2011b:185) to explain why the Ottoman Empire was not interested in its visually very rich archaeological remains. Thus, when the Europeans discovered the value of archaeological remains and started collecting these precious pieces for their museums, even the very large ones with great expenditure of money and labour, the reaction of the Ottomans was to leave these “bizarre Europeans” to take whatever they wanted and to see these objects as goods given in charity by a very rich empire.

In the second half of the nineteenth century in the Imperial Age the general trend among Europeans was to stake a claim to civilizations almost all around the world. In the same period occurred the awakening of the Ottomans about their ancient properties, as we can understand from the laws about the protection of archaeological materials and restrictions on taking them away, starting from 1869 and continuing with many additions in 1874, 1884 and 1906 (Bahrani et al., 2011: 16; Çelik, 2011:446). The awakening of the Ottomans about their ancient values was a reaction to the ideology of the Europeans, which can be summarized as a mission of archaeological stewardship. The request of the Ottomans to take ownership of the past was partly a kind of reaction to Europeans, who related the wretchedness of the ancient ruins to the fall of this great empire (Çelik, 2011:447); this concept was not only a quite different concept from the one held at the beginning of European archaeology but also related to the use of the Ottomans’ heritage for building a new identity of the empire (Bahrani et al., 2011:32). Furthermore, the interest in archaeology shown by Ottoman intellectuals during the westernisation period was accepted as a package of the conditions necessary for modernization (Özdoğan, 2006). The westernisation period in the history of the Ottoman Period between 1839 and 1876 is also known as Tanzimat and is characterized by various attempts of modernization. The main objective of the reform was to empower the Ottoman Empire, which faced desperation in the face of European military, technological and economical developments, and to establish the idea of citizenship and equality among the Muslim and non-Muslim Ottoman populations. Obviously the interest in archaeology in this period placed it in a process of finding its own identity, or at least redefining itself. This process came to its highest point with the declaration of the First Constitution Period in 1876 and the second Constitution Period in 1908.

Osman Hamdi Bey (1842–1910), who is well known today as the first museum director of the Istanbul Archaeology Museum and a famous painter, exerted great efforts in making the laws mentioned above. He was a member of an elite Ottoman family and had studied in France. In 1881, when he became a director of a small museum in Istanbul, he also did archaeological research and discovered ruins of the Kommagene Kingdom on top of the high Nemrut Mountain in Southeastern Anatolia. His most famous discovery was the Sidon necropolis in the Southern Ottoman lands—today the Lebanon—and he brought the very well-preserved so-called sarcophagus of Alexander to Istanbul in 1887 and opened the first archaeology museum (Muse-i Humayun) in 1891. He also inspected the site of Troy while Schliemann was excavating there. These 10 years from 1881 to1891 definitely showed a very important change in the perceptions of the Ottomans regarding archaeology and the Europeans’ activities in this field. But the Europeans’ demands for rights regarding the ancient remains did not stop, and adversely for the Ottomans, increased (Eldem, 2011:281).

After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the early twentieth century saw the institutionalisation of archaeology with the specific efforts of M. K. Atatürk. He thought that archaeology was crucial for the creation of the new state, in terms of establishing a national identity, and building up confidence by letting the people ‘internalize’ their land by linking them to their past (Özdoğan, 2011b:195). This phenomenon is comparable to the institutionalisation of archaeology in Europe in the late nineteenth century towards the end of the age of Napoleon III. The French Emperor ordered large-scale excavations to be done between 1861 and 1865 at the sites where Julius Caesar had revealed the material culture of the Celtic inhabitants of France in the first century BCE (Trigger, 1989:148). Ethnicity appeared to be the central issue in archaeology, especially in Eastern Europe during the destruction of empires and the establishment of a series of nation states; archaeology played an important role in the unification of Germany in the late nineteenth century. Indeed, prehistoric research served as a way of reaction for Danish people to prevent territorial losses to more powerful neighbours (Trigger, 1989:149). But in such respects there was a very big difference between Atatürk’s ideology and the Europeans’; Atatürk’s objective was to link the population of the Republic of Turkey to Anatolia rather than linking the population to an ethnicity of Turks, which is rooted in Middle Asia. The idea of a PanTurkist approach propounds uniting the various Turkic peoples living both within and without the frontiers of the Ottoman Empire or subsequently the Republic of Turkey (Landau, 1995:1). Ataturk took a very clear stand against ethnocentrism and supported the concept of “citizenship” to provide equality and unity among the various ethnic groups who lived in Anatolia; it is remarkable that at the same time Europeans were following ethnic- or even race-centric ways. In the new republic of Turkey Ataturk’s ideology was called Anatolism (Özdoğan, 2008:36). This ideology encompassed and put forward the acceptance of all the cultures of the peoples who lived in Anatolia as the heritage of the people of the new republic (Özdoğan, 2006: 53). Therefore the perception of the past changed quite a bit from that of the Ottomans to that of the Republic of Turkey.

Archaeology was imported to the Ottomans from Europe after the completion of its initial development (Özdoğan, 2006 :31). But in the new Republic of Turkey, the intention of “understanding and internalizing” the past cultures has create the interest in ethnographic information and in the appropriation of the original and local colours of cultures in Anatolia.

The Emergence of Interest in Living Communities

Ethnographic studies in the Ottoman Period started almost as early as the awareness of archaeological remains emerged in the Second Constitutional Period in 1908. A famous thinker of the time, Ziya Gökalp, who is very well known for his nationalistic approach to Turkish ethnicity, was the first researcher working on the ethnographic and folkloric data of Turkey in the Ottoman Period. But the main interest in ethnography in the new state started in 1924 right after the establishment of the new Republic of Turkey in 1923 (Erdentug, 1970:65).

These studies were mostly about recording the folkloric and material cultures in the rural areas and took place unsystematically; for instance, A. Rıza Yalman-Yalkın conducted a very detailed and informative research project on Southern Turkey with the title Cenupta Türkmen Oymakları (Turkmen Clans in the South), but it is more like a diary of a traveller because of its unorganized data presentation. This research describes various characteristics of the Turkmen tribes in the South of Anatolia. It was published in eight volumes between 1931 and 1939 (Emir, 1977: xııı-xıv, Erdentug, 1970) with details of both folkloric and material culture as well as architecture being presented.

The establishment of Turkey’s first Ethnography Museum, in 1930 in Ankara, was followed by the establishment of such museums in many other cities, which showed the interest of the new state in this field of knowledge. A series of monographs, and a periodic journal named Türk Tarih Arkeoloğya ve Etnografya Dergisi (The Journal of Turkish History, Archaeology and Ethnography) had been published since 1932 and then after 1956 the journal was separated into several journals, and one of them became Türk Etnografya Dergisi (The Journal of Turkish Ethnography). The subjects reported on in this journal were mostly regarding the material culture of the living communities in Anatolia, ranging from old Turkish houses and their indoors, hearths, utensils, copper objects, horse-riding equipment, old vehicles, and traditional clothes, to information about traditional food preparation and many crafts (Erdentug, 1970:66). Although Ethnography and Ethnology started to be taught as selective lectures at Istanbul University, in the Faculty of Political Sciences by Satı Bey 1908 and in the Faculty of Literature by Maszarosh 1917, scientific Ethnography and Ethnology—which means relatively systematic data collection and interpretation of the data—research had been started in 1935 at Ankara University Faculty of Languages, History and Geography by Nail Pertev Boratav, with the title of “Folkloric Literature” in the Cultural Anthropology Department (Erdentug, 1970:67; Yüce, 2011:21–22). The academic level of the folkloric studies has improved and brand-new perspectives that contain the theoretical background advocated by Boratav have been put on the agenda. While all the other attempts before Boratav in that sense walked over political and cultural ground, he used a new methodology that was theory-based using European references. According to him, folklorism or ethnology is not a fossilized concept, but in contrast, it is dynamic; also it is not a romantic idea but a modern discipline, and in this perspective his school put forward the idea of the internationalism and inter-culturalism of ethnology or folklorism, rather than it being national (Yüce, 2011:23). This point of view in these years could have acted as a very strong foundation for ethnology and maybe later for ethnoarchaeology, because this was the first time an inspiring way of looking at living cultures with cross-cultural interaction and parallelism had been considered and there was a level of discipline in the compilation of the data, while the amateur nature of the work moved away from a romantic view. Unfortunately this process did not continue successfully. Because this theoretical approach included class consciousness in its agenda, the effort to constitute a department of folkloric research with this approach was hindered by the political authorities. Later on, Nermin Erdentuğ came to Ankara University Faculty of Languages, History and Geography with her perspective, adapted from Malinowski’s functionalist approach and Radcliff-Brown’s structural functionalism. Consequently, a theoretical background based on the British school found a place in Turkish universities (Yüce, 2011) and the field started to come closer to Cultural Anthropology. Nermin Erdentuğ gave lectures on “the material cultures of primitives”, “Religion and Magic”, and “Social Organization of the primitives” in the Ethnology sub-discipline in the Anthropology Department. Later on ethnology was developed as a new department both in the Ankara Ethnology Department and Istanbul University Anthropology Department, focussing on Anatolian ethnology (Erdentug, 1970:68).

The approaches in ethnology and social anthropology are the ones that mentioned before, adapted from British and/or European schools could not go further to link with archaeology in Turkey. Archaeology, ethnology and social anthropology were like separate wagons of the same train. So none of these attempts to nurture ethnological/social anthropological theories could be used for archaeological questions or in ethnoarchaeology. This was probably caused by the attitude of limiting ethnology by the level of documentation rather than by underlining the ethnic differentiation among Turkish citizens at the very beginning of the Republic of Turkey, as mentioned above. The relation between ethnology/social anthropology and archaeology did not appear in any of research projects carried out before the beginning of the twentieth century, and even at that time, ethnoarchaeology was practiced only by some individual archaeologists at a very basic level (see below). It seems to be clear that these attempts could not generate a theoretical foundation for ethnoarchaeology.

In Turkey archaeology was a technical or recording science and, being formalist, was separated from the humanities. The forms and categorization of archaeological remains became the major objective of the field. Therefore, artistic characterization came to prominence. This objective is evident even from the names of the academic sections at the universities. The title of Archaeology and Art History Departments had been used until quite recent times and this label reveals the perception of archaeology in Turkey. Apparently, education and research on ethnography at the academic level also had some problems; it never had a defined and clear position in Turkey. Ethnography was sometimes studied in Sociology Departments, sometimes in Anthropology or Folklore Departments, and sometimes it was studied only in additional lectures in these large departments. Besides the unstandardized terminology, the content was also undefined (Ülkütaşir, 1973).

In the second half of the twentieth century, the New Archaeology was introduced to Turkish archaeology by the works of Robert Braidwood (1907–2003), especially via the Çayönü Excavation Project. Professor Braidwood, from the Chicago Oriental Institute, had questions about the early farming communities in the Near East and he worked with an interdisciplinary team that consisted of various specialists, including ethnoarchaeologists. He also had very intense collaborations with Istanbul University Prehistory Department and thereby he introduced many terms and concepts based on anthropology in archaeology (Esin, 2004:23).

The Use of Ethnographic Data for Archaeology

Studies under the title of ethnoarchaeology in Anatolia go back merely 10–15 years. The idea of the use of ethnography for archaeology and recording folkloric culture, however, had appeared in the early twentieth century. These efforts date back to the early years of the Republic of Turkey–the 1930s. The pioneer scholar who claimed that archaeologists should not neglect living cultures if they wanted to understand the past cultures was Hamit Zubeyr Koşay (1897–1984). Koşay had a very broad perspective in social sciences, with high qualifications as an ethnographer and as a specialist in Turkish folkloric culture and language and Turcology; he was also a writer and studied pedagogy and was one of the first archaeologists in the new Republic of Turkey. He was the General Director of Antique Works and Museums, a board member of the Culture Training Department, and for a second time Director of the Ethnography Museum. In an age when archaeology was represented by sensational discoveries, he demonstrated the importance of broken pieces of ceramic sherds, refuse bone fragments and the chemical analysis of metal objects, besides being the first academic who linked ethnology and archaeology. He expressed his thoughts with these words:

“The excavator is obliged to have detailed thoughts about the data on the colour, the form and the reason. While the archaeological levels were investigated which became cradle and grave for the existing and disappearing communities, if the living ones were neglected the task cannot be accepted as it is completed. The people who live under the bright sun, might be the descendants or at least inheritors of the people who lie under the ruins” (Koşay, 1951:1).

Koşay was aware of the unmethodical way ethnographic and folkloric research was practiced in Turkey and he touched on this issue by pointing out the danger of considering the uniformity of the local cultures during the development of Turkey. He meant that the recent developments in Turkey could have made geographical niches less remote and that this process may cause interference among original cultures. What he described about this problem and its processes is valid for and fits perfectly into today’s globalism danger, which threatens the original/local cultural variety.

Koşay suggested the systematic surveying and collection of daily utensils, items of every kind, such as old traditional clothes, tools, and musical instruments and so on before they are taken over by antique dealers. He also warned that the mere collection of these items may cause false understandings and loss of information, and that therefore the collection should have a documentation program such as photos, sketch plans and the recording of oral stories and as many samples as possible of the usages of the items. Although this suggestion contained traces of a kind of naive panicking, he proposed a very original idea and elaborated on it by adding these words:

“To possess a national vocabulary which contains a hundred thousand words, we should direct ourselves towards our people together with the aid of the historical language resources” (Koşay, 1951:4).

What makes Koşay very important for Turkish archaeology can be summarized in three ways:

  • Having a broad perspective about the idea of heritage and including the protection of intangible culture.

  • Being aware of the threat of uniformity on the originality of cultures and designing preventive strategies to meet this threat.

  • Having a broad perspective of social sciences and being the first person who combined them (ethnology, folklore, archaeology, language) to work with the aim of “documenting, understanding, interpreting”.

In this respect Koşay started to record ethnographic data in the region where he excavated Alacahöyük, an Early Bronze Age site in North Central Anatolia. His endeavour on that subject continued at the Pulur site and all the other excavations that were carried on within the Keban Dam Rescue Project in the 1970s in Eastern Turkey (Koşay, 1977).

Although Koşay brings a newness to Turkish archaeology, his contributions to the field look similar to what the New Archaeology has said (Binford, 1962), but they were made slightly earlier and were possibly inspired by the Anatolism of Atatürk and in relation to the History Thesis developed by the Turkish Historical Society, which was founded in 1931 (Koşay 1935; 1939). According to the History Thesis there is a cultural continuity between the present and the past populations of Anatolia, more importantly a cultural continuity with a pre-Ottoman Anatolia (Takaoğlu, 2004:17).

From the perspective of “understanding and interpreting” the past cultures, and in doing so, Koşay provided a background for ethnoarchaeology in Turkey in the 1950s to the 1970s without using the term. His approach was followed by some of the colleagues, especially in the Keban Project rescue excavation projects, as explained below, but unfortunately the background built by Koşay more or less stayed at the same stage for many years.

In the same period as Koşay’s work, between the 1950s and especially the 1970s, an era of Turkish archaeology started with the introduction of many new methods and perspectives, including increasing numbers of interdisciplinary projects. Some of the ethnographical and anthropological researches in this period were not yet linked to archaeology, but it is still possible to place them in a period of transition towards ethnoarchaeological research; examples are: Bizim Köy (Our Village) (Makal, 1950), Anadolu’nun Etnografya ve Folkloruna Dair Malzeme I: Alacahöyük. Das Dorf Alaca Höyük. Materialien zur Ethnographie und Volkskunde von Anatolien (Ethnographic and Folkloric Material of Anatolia 1: Alacahoyuk) (Koşay, 1951), Turkey’de eski medeniyetlerin maddi kültürde temadisi (The continuation of the past civilization in material culture in Turkey) (Koşay, 1952), Hal Köyü’nün Etnolojik Tetkiki (The investigations of Hal Village) (Erdentug, 1956), Tradition, Season, and Change in a Turkish Village (Kolars, 1963), Life in a Turkish Village (Pierce, 1964), Anadolu’da iptidai çanak-çömlekçilik (The primitive pottery making in Anatolia) (Koşay & Ülkü, 1964), Turkish Village (Stirling, 1965), Yassıhöyük, A Village Study (Kuran, 1965), Alacahöyük, Ethnographische Skizzeneines Anatolischen Dorfes (Dostal, 1971), Household Composition in a Turkish Village (Özertuğ, 1973) and Pulur Etnografya ve Folklor Araştırmaları (Pulur. Ethnographic and folkloric research) (Koşay, 1977).

Since 1950 the 13th edition of Mahmut Makal’s book “Our Village” has been published, and it has been very popular among archaeologists. It is very important to show the need of archaeologists for such a new perspective which contains the insights of a settlement within its own context and includes the social dimension.

There are also many other studies conducted by architects in rural Anatolia that have also been utilized by archaeologists. The 1970s Keban Rescue Excavation Projects in Eastern Turkey brought about collaborative projects including ethnographers, architects and archaeologists. This caused different fields to become much closer to each other and provided brand-new research questions that had never existed before. Some of these studies can be juxtaposed, such as: Village Architecture in the Keban Dam Region (Kuban, 1970; Alpöge, 1971; Ödekan & Alpöge, 1972), The Mudbrick Houses in Altınova (Peters, 1972), A trial on an investigation of a house in Elazığ Munzuroğlu Village in ethno-historical perspective (Koyunlu, 1976), Food storage in vernacular architecture in Altınova (Peters, 1979; Stirling, 1979), and Folkloric Research in Keban Dam Region (Günay, 1980).

Although these studies provided excellent data on the vernacular architecture and general recordings on ethnography in Eastern Anatolia between the 1960s and the 1970s, they were all descriptive and did not have on the functional, formational and cultural processes. The reason for this lack might have been a shortage of time and the necessity for recording details on as many villages as possible in a limited time (Kuban, 1970:171; Alpöge, 1971:131).

Ethnoarchaeological Studies in Turkey

The period between the 1960s and the 1990s was the time when ethnoarchaeology was practiced predominantly by non-Turkish archaeologists who worked in Anatolia. This period can easily be related to the golden age of the Anglo-American New Archaeology. These non-Turkish colleagues needed the ethnographical data to compare modern and archaeological objects to be able to explain the functional and formational processes (Bordaz, 1965, 1969; Gebel, 1987; Crane, 1988). There are studies which give us a broader perspective, such as those of Peters, Hall and Aurence. Peters tried to establish proof of an evolutionary progress in the growth of the buildings via a structuralist perspective (Peters, 1972:164–167). He also did some cross-cultural comparisons, besides recording details of storage facilities and storage vessels (Peters, 1979) and he underlined some of the similarities that he observed between the modern and the archaeological ones (Peters, 1972:165). The study undertaken by Hall and his friends on architecture in Aşvan Village in the Keban Dam Rescue Project contains some insights about social organization. Hall scrutinized the relation between the social organization and its material reflection on settlement formation (Hall et al., 1973). This research tells us a lot about the subjects, such as the processes of destruction in a semi-abandoned village, the phases of a living settlement and the continuation of architectural traditions and their formational results, and so on. Most importantly, this study has a contextual approach and it is slightly different from the direct analogy approach. We should include Aurenche and his team in this category (Aurenche et al., 1997). The ethnoarchaeological research done by this team in the Euphrates Valley was done in seven villages and hamlets close to Cafer Höyük, an aceramic Neolithic site where they excavated. In this research they focused on subjects such as the relationships between land ownership, water sources, economy and settlements; and the differences or similarities among these settlements; they observed very interesting details, such as how social organization created clusters of groups within a settlement. Unfortunately it is hard to claim that these studies were influenced by Turkish ethnology or ethnoarchaeology rather than by the New Archaeology school. Koşay’s efforts seemed to remain at the point where he started and were not discussed or further developed by subsequent Turkish archaeologists and ethnologists for a long time.

During and after these cooperative research experiences, many Turkish researchers noticed the importance of recording the vernacular architecture and ethnographical information in the process of understanding archaeological remains. This period has continued progressively until today and the foundation of ethnoarchaeology in Turkey.

It is only since the 1980s that studies focused on ethnographical data, which are more directly related to archaeological questions, have been embraced by Turkish archaeologists. This is also the period in which we see “ethnoarchaeology” as an existing terminology in Turkey (Dittemore, 1983; Aurenche, 1984; Weinstein, 1973; Çevik, 1995). Although Yakar was closer to direct comparison as a methodology, he seemed to find a soft way to link ethnography and archaeology. He studied various relationships between the material residue and the subsistence economy by looking at nomads and peasant societies in a comparative perspective with clearly defined archaeological questions. He also included historical data in his research (2000, 2006).

The development of the methodology of archaeology has changed the qualifications for data collection; the interdisciplinary research has created new questions and problems and, consequently, the number of “problem-oriented” excavations has increased (Özdoğan, 2011a:85–86). All of this progress has motivated archaeologists (especially prehistorians) to look at their sites in more detail. The effort of understanding the internal dynamics of a past community at an archaeological site gave birth to a real need for ethnographical data. In this process, archaeology is inclined to have more characteristics of a social science than a technical recording science.

Consequently, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, ethnoarchaeology has become relatively more popular than it was before, although it is still embraced by a very limited number of colleagues. However, because this interest could not create a weighed and debated framework, most of the studies have still concentrated on specific comparisons of materials, production processes such as pottery-making, architectural technologies and traditional economy models (Angle & Dottarelli, 1990; Yakar, 2000; Dittemore, 2002; Blum, 2003; Eres, 2003; Bakir, 2004; Ertug, 2004; Tekkök, 2004; Gündoğdu, 2004). There have also been some observations of modern settlements where archaeologists have excavated nearby that suggest a cultural continuity between the archaeological site and the nearest village (Aurenche et al., 1997; Gürsan-Salzaman, 1997; Yakar, 1998; Hopkins, 2003; Aslan & Blum, 2004). Many Turkish and non-Turkish colleagues who work in Turkey are comparing the archaeological evidence with findings in the villages next to their archaeological site, and this process is practiced merely by visiting the villagers to ask for specific answers to questions.

Most of these works are being done in the Anatolian territories, but unfortunately they lack a theoretical basis. Two major aspects of these works are the documentation of modern rural settlements and the seeking of similar material cultures between the past and present. The only objective of all these works has been presenting the results of some direct comparisons, but the question of “how we are going to use this information” to explain archaeological questions has been left mute.

This situation is no different at the educational level; since ethnoarcheology became a course at archaeology departments in several universities in Turkey, most of the time the essays for students require only observations and recordings of various production processes of craftspeople such as potters, metal-workers, felt-producers and so on.

The trend of case-recording in traditional archaeology has actually continued in the field of ethnoarchaeology as well, and although this was an original idea for Koşay’s times, it is a bit disappointing for the twenty-first century.

In archaeological studies, human behaviour is often neglected, but physical and chemical processes, raw materials, decay processes and functions of similar materials can be observed and the general tendency is to use ethnoarchaeology as a tool in this respect. By doing so, Turkish archaeologists thought, wrongly, that establishing direct analogical correlations between the old and the new was a sufficient application of ethnoarchaeology and the New Archaeology.

Although the development of ethnoarchaeological studies in the archaeological perspective should be taken as a reason for the increase in these studies, we should also accept the late but unavoidable wind of New Archaeology in this country. But unfortunately, very similarly to the entrance of the field of archaeology in Turkey in the twentieth century, ethnoarchaeology is also an imported field which has probably been seen only as a necessity for being able to do “modern archaeology” or just as a new tool to be more like the “New Archaeology”.

Recent Perspectives and a Sample Research

Anatolia—because of its geographical, economical, ethnic and cultural diversity—offers excellent opportunities to obtain insights about the variation (spatial) and change (temporal) dimensions of human existence the two major concepts directing archaeological questions. The land connects the east to the west, and it has served for a very long period of time–thousands of years–as a bridge between the various communities.

In my ethnoarchaeological research I have focused on relational and contextual analogy by knowing the historical continuity between the prehistoric and modern samples is not appropriate in ethnographic analogy. Therefore the research I have done differs very much from Koşay’s tradition and from that of some of the colleagues mentioned above, because the ethnographic and the archaeological samples in my studies were examined within their own contexts and the relational results were used as comparative tools rather than the materials themselves. My archaeological questions have been derived from the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Central Anatolia where I have been working for a long time. The main study aim focuses on the understanding of how a settlement takes shape and how this system works in relation to various actors playing to determine that shape. The other aim is to make archaeologists more imaginative when they approach their sites. This work does not offer a formula but intends to confer an understanding of the formation processes of settlements in a cause-and-effect relationship. Therefore, while ethnographic samples are evaluated in their own contexts, it is suggested to do the same when archaeologists would like to use the information for archaeological interpretation. These separate units (ethnographical and archaeological) should be considered to be comparable conceptually in their own contexts. The main question in a region like Anatolia that has geographical and ethnic variation is: “why are settlement shapes different?” The second important question would be “why are settlement shapes different even if they are located in close-by regions, and the inhabitants have the same religion, language and ethnicity? Therefore, I looked at three differently formed villages in Central Anatolia. All of their communities are Muslim and Sunni and Turkish-speaking, and the inhabitants of the villages were previously semi-nomadic and have recently become agriculturist.

  • A flat plain village with dispersed compounds with very distinct boundaries.

  • A high plain village with a nuclear shape and adjacent houses along the streets with indistinct boundaries.

  • A terraced hill slope village with a radial outline and houses with mostly bonded roofs connecting them.

The reason for considering similarity in general characteristics such as ethnic origin, region, and religion is to be able to do the comparisons by focusing more on other agents rather than on general characteristics. Otherwise, it would be misleading to examine the reasons for differentiation to see whether religion, ethnic origin or region are the main reasons. To keep these general characteristics as static parameters allows us to see the variables more clearly. The study has considered not only the architecture or form of the settlement in relation to environmental characteristics such as natural sources, topography, climate and soil quality in an economic context, but it has also considered the community structure, the communities’ perceptions of themselves and territoriality, memory, proxemic relations, and regional and local histories. The comparisons have been done firstly among the internal components of each settlement and then among the different settlements. These settlements have been evaluated on two scales: change (temporal scale) and variation (spatial scale).

The consideration of ethnographic samples within these relationships led to a series of data based on various comparable concepts. A relational analogy can only be made after these evaluations have been done. The expectations from this study are the exploration of relational concepts and also finding the reasons for differences rather than finding basic material similarities. The conclusions and discussions are presumed to be based on concepts rather than on specific material similarities. For this purpose, I have examined the three ethnographic sites according to three size scales:

  • Large scale (general layout of settlement, the local and regional history of the community, the foundation of the site),

  • Medium scale (quarters or clusters and their pattern within the settlement, lineage and their economical and social relationships),

  • Small scale (compounds that generate quarters and clusters, household structure).

By doing this I have examined each settlement in that order—from bottom to top—in its own context by examining the social, economic, historical and geographical settings. In other words, to be able to read “the settlement logic”, I analysed each agent in its own context. Only in this way would the research results be useful to interpret the archaeological data.

This research showed that although general characteristics (religion, ethnicity and subsistence economy) were shared by these groups, one of the biggest differences among the settlement forms was caused by the individual historical background of the population of these settlements; i.e. whether it is a settlement-based community or a community-based settlement. What I mean by a settlement-based community is that people from different lineages and roots got together in time and generated a settlement together; therefore, the identity of the community depended on the existing settlement. But in a community-based settlement, the people had already generated a community before they founded the village, so their identity is not dependent on their settlement (Yalman, 2005, 2010). This information can be very useful to generate new research questions to interpret archaeological sites of which we know the general settlement layouts and to make comparisons between different-shaped settlements, by checking other details such as the identity indicators. Thus, shared or individual components might make more sense in the light of this ethnoarchaeological study.

The most important difference between this study and other studies conducted in Turkey is that a theoretical foundation was constructed at the beginning of the research. This foundation was the priority of contextual analysis of the ethnographic case in terms of variables such as human behaviour, historical processes, economic inputs and environmental factors, although the research was based on archaeological questions. In this study, both the Anglo-Saxon theories as well as the Processual and the Post-Processual debate have been taken into consideration. For instance, while the contextual relations were evaluated for variation and change through time in regard to the ethnographic case, the possibility of making generalizations for the sake of solving archaeological problems was not excluded. During the investigation of the formational processes of the material world, the observation of variations was freely permitted for redirecting the research, instead of engaging in an effort to prove any particular thesis. Therefore, the link between “cause and effect” was constantly maintained. The main objective was to help archaeologists–while they are designing their research and excavation strategies–not only to interpret their sites but also to provide them with possible options that can be observable only in a living society.

Most of the time, the ethnoarchaeological approach in Turkey has been mixed with the “documentation of the material entities” of the old traditions. But actually ethnoarchaeology should concentrate on the relationship between material results and the living world, whether the materials are traditional or modern. And the research objectives should go very much further than documenting and comparing by using basic similarities, because this point of view can be dangerously misleading for ethnoarchaeological reasoning. The foundation of my study can also be summarized in the following statements:

  • There can be more than one formation agent.

  • There can be more than one function of a formation.

  • There can be different variations of the same functional entity.

These are some of the reasons that there are numerous variations in the living world and its material results. The material world itself also continues to change over time; this fact should ensure optimism about the situation instead of despair, and again, instead of making simple comparisons, we as archaeologists should learn how to reach insights of this complexity. And ethnoarchaeology is the perfect tool with which to reach that goal.

Conclusions

As we mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, the viability of ethnoarchaeology as a field is dependent on the perspectives of archaeology and archaeological questions. The perception of an archaeological site, on a macro and micro scale with its context, produces wide-ranging questions and the need to interpret; it is only after this step is taken that relational analogies are required. What is more to the point, ethnoarchaeological observations improve the quality of the questions on the perception of the archaeological site, and using relational analogy has a mutually positive effect on archaeology and ethnoarchaeology.

I can suggest that the lack or deficiency of the theoretical foundation of Turkish archaeology and the conservative structure of the institutional basis of the field in Turkey hinder archaeology itself from finding its own way for interpreting the past within its own philosophical background. Archaeology can only develop via new theories and questions and endeavours to find answers to these questions. This is actually not the aim for a final result but a process of doing archaeology, or in other words, a process for understanding human beings and their past.

Ethnoarchaeology is a nourishing source for archaeologists to build up theories and to produce new perspectives and questions. There are various reasons that have led archaeological questions away from fruitful theories in Turkey:

  • The constricted budgets and limited time available, especially in the dam rescue excavation projects, have directed archaeologists to conduct mostly vertical excavations, which reveal only stratigraphical changes in narrow areas, especially in mound excavations. Therefore, it has been difficult to examine an archaeological site horizontally, which would provide a better understanding of the spatial pattern and perception of the site contextually.

  • Most of the postgraduate dissertations in Turkey concentrate on the classification and comparison of archaeological material and therefore do not leave much time for young colleagues to debate a theoretical approach.

  • The conservative structure of many universities does not allow younger generations to produce new theories and perspectives.

  • There is a continuing distance between archaeology and anthropology or archaeology and ethnology.

In summary, at the beginning of ethnoarcheological research, direct analogy was seen as a magic wand to flesh out the bones of the past, and this is still widely the case today. Turkish archaeology is still devoid of the theoretical aspects of archaeology. The culture-historical approach has been incorporated with some parts of the New Archaeology as a methodology in Turkey, and this incorporation is generally seen as important for archaeometric analysis generally without placing the approach in contextual perspective. Therefore, explanations of material cultures and people who produce them, made with a holistic approach, do not exist except for a few colleague or project. The only way to prevent methodological faults is to have a theoretical background that will enable us to debate and criticize various approaches. Debate and criticism help to avoid false reasoning, but neither of these tools of discussion is common in traditional Turkish archaeology. Wylie says that: “carelessly done ethnoarchaeology could produce not only incomplete information but also erroneous” (Wylie, 2002). We note that ethnoarchaeology is still in its initial stages in Turkey.