An Investigation of Neolithic Settlement Pattern and Plant Exploitation at Dikili Tash:

Abstract

Dikili Tash appears today to be one of the prehistoric settlements with the longest occupational sequences in the Aegean and the Balkans (ca. 6500– 1100 B.C.). In the last fifty years, research at the site and in the surrounding Philippi Plain has offered information for understanding the role of natural and anthropogenic processes in tell formation and landscape change. In this paper, we discuss a particular time-window of this long sequence, the years around 4300–4200 cal B.C., for which we now have a large range of high-resolution data from secure contexts. Excavation of large areas in Sector 6 allowed for the exploration of the spatial arrangement and household organization of the settlement in the above period. The buildings that were fully excavated in Sector 6 had been destroyed by fire. Thus they preserved in-situ organic evidence of human activities otherwise undetectable in the archaeological record. The architectural, artifactual, and archaeobotanical (seed/fruit and wood charcoal macroremains) evidence from these buildings is examined here together in an integrated manner in order to reveal different ways of interaction between people and the natural environment in Dikili Tash toward the end of the fifth millennium B.C. Among the issues discussed here is plant exploitation for various purposes, such as food, fuel, construction, and crafts, as well as specific archaeological contexts through which such activities can be discerned.