Interview: Dr Eylem Özdoğan about findings in Göbekli Tepe and Sayburç

The discovery of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, followed by other similar Neolithic settlements collectively known as Taş Tepeler, has completely transformed both our understanding and exploration of the past.

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During our visit to the archaeological site of Sayburç, we discussed the research and discoveries with Dr. Eylem Özdoğan, a professor in the Department of Prehistoric Archaeology at Istanbul University and the director of the excavations at Sayburç.

• What is Taş Tepeler and how it changed our look on the past?

- Taş Tepeler is a Neolithic project, the Şanlıurfa Neolithic Research Project, actually that is the name. It is focused at the early settled life in the plateau that stretches from the Eastern Taurus to the Mesopotamian plains. So this area was very fruitful during the early Holocene. People lived here and tried to settle down, and they built the first villagers in the in the area.

• Okay and what is the connection to the Neolithic Revolution?

- I mean, Neolithic means the settled and productive way of life, but we cannot see all this developments at the same time. So people first settled down and continue to hunt and gather, and then they start to produce their food, farm, and became a farming society. So, this is described as a Neolithic Revolution, so it is almost the same meaning.

• How old are Göbekli Tepe and other tepes and how important is the finding of them for history?

- The settlements in this region has started with the early Holocene. So, the earliest one dated the 9,700 BC. And then they continued almost 1,500 years to live in the region with hunting and gathering with settled life.

• How important was it for for investigating the past? What changed after the finding of Göbeklitepe and other tepes?

- I mean, all Neolithic research in the region taught us a lot about the early settlers, how they settled down and how they lived and survivef, and how they started to make the larger communities than before. So we learned a lot. But more remarkable and apparent results of new research that we learned that the people who settled down hasn't started farming immediately. They lived depending on their natural environment for longer time that we expected.

• And what we know about people that live here?

- Most of the settlements have been excavating over a large areas, so we could see their special buildings with the dwellings, so we can get more information about their daily life. For example, Sayburç, where we are, is one of those sites, and it is the Sayburç occupied 300 years in the mid ninth millennium, and we have seen more than 70 buildings in the in the area, and most of them are dwellings. And we can follow that with the sedentary life, the the dwellings became apparent, and they have food preparation areas, sometimes some small storage areas within, so we could understand their daily lives much better than before.

• What are the most important scientific theories about Taş Tepeler and what are the biggest mysteries of it?

- I mean, I cannot say that the Neolithic period has big mysteries as we expect from the social media and the other areas. We know period before the Neolithic, and how the human beings became capable of settled life and productive life. So actually, there is no big mystery about it. But we can see that the in the good conditions, in the suitable conditions, human made their life as they want and they start to direct their environment, instead being a part of it.

• Is there any connection to Mesopotamia, first civilizations in the world?

- I mean, the Southwest Asia is one of the region that we can see the emergence of settled life in different region on the same time, so contemporary. So as the Taş Tepeler area, the Tigris basin, or Levantine corridor, we know that there are more region that occupied by the early settled societies. So this region is one of them. But in in this region, what is the difference that their monumental architecture and monumental art, it shows us that the early settles are not a simple societies, they have very complex social life and artistic view.

• We are at Sayburç, what is different about this excavation here?

- Actually, most of the sites in the region somehow repeat each other. So we can see differences along with the similarities. This showed us that the region has shared the common cultural aspects. But in Sayburç, Sayburç is a single-layered occupation, and we exposed a large areas in the in the Sayburç, so we could see the dwellings with special buildings, and how the daily life integrates with the special buildings and rituals and the other common things in in here, and it it taught us a lot.

(Telegraf.rs)