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One of the most prominent and oldest Neolithic sites found in what is now Turkey has yielded yet another interesting find – a clay statuette of a female figurine has been unearthed in Izmir, dated to 7,800 years ago.

Time-controlled quantitative climate data are crucial for reconstructing past environmental contexts of human history. In west Anatolia, the Simav Graben used to be occupied by a lake. However, today it is drained and associated with Holocene sediments that record lake level changes. An initial drill-core at the lake's centre reveals an arid phase before ca. 14 ka (i.e. prior to the Late Glacial warming) followed by a wet phase (marshes and lake) throughout the Holocene. Along the lake's margin, two additional sediment sequences contain a detailed Holocene record of changes in humidity throughout the Simav Graben's watershed. Classification of the shoreline facies from these sequences records drought events marked by colluvium prograding towards the lake. Using 13 radiocarbon dates, sedimentary facies suggest rapid lake contraction phases grossly around 8.0, 3.9, 2.9, 2.4 and 2.0 ka. After the drier periods, recorded by phases of terrestrial progradation, lake level increase is marked by retrogradational lake muds and peats onlapping the colluvium, consistent with increases in total lake volume. Based on modern lake morphology, climate and runoff data, and the elevations recorded by the shoreline facies identified within the marginal Holocene sedimentary sequence, we constructed a paleohydrologic balance model and a precipitation curve. According to the model, annual precipitation may have been fallen below 460 mm during the 8.2 ka event, and 468-478 mm during the 4.2 ka and 3.2 ka events demonstrating an extreme decrease in precipitation compared to the earlier wet phases. In turn, Holocene Archaeology in West Anatolia outlines (i) a widespread abandonment and/or notable fire events at the end of the Early Bronze Age III (ca. 4.2 ka), and (ii) a high level of social instability at the beginning of the Early Iron Age (ca. 3.2 ka). The correlation between the timing of lake level falls at Simav (water volume depletion caused by drying trends) at 8.0 ka, 3.9 ka and 2.8 ka and cultural fluctuations suggest that drought events may have played a major role in these socio-political changes in western Anatolia. Furthermore, the high lake-level stages (associated with precipitation >500 mm) coincide with the Late Chalcolithic to Early Bronze Age I transition as well as the Hellenistic and Roman periods, both times of economic stability and growth in the region., Commission for Scientific Research at Eskisehir Osmangazi University, Turkey [2016-15050], The authors are grateful to Dr. Fatima Makodem (CNRS) for her help in the fieldwork, and Ays egul Dikme (ESOGU) for her contribution to the laboratory studies. Clay Campbell (University of Kansas) kindly edited the manuscript. This study was financially supported by the Commission for Scientific Research at Eskis ehir Osmangazi University, Turkey (Grant number: 2016-15050).

The Neolithic site of Ulucak (Central-Western Anatolia) presents one of the best currently available sequences for the beginning of the Neolithic way of life in the region. Ulucak’s crucial phase V features a gradual rise in the variety and importance of pottery and of other clay objects. This phase’s dating has wide implications for cultural relations within Anatolia and the Aegean. I present a joint Bayesian model for Ulucak V, resolving problems of the earlier modeling by adding an old-wood probabilistic correction. The obtained model corrects the previous estimates of 6500–6000 calBCE for Ulucak V to a likely considerably shorter period within 6400/6300–6000/5900 calBCE, and raises the possibility of a hiatus between the aceramic Ulucak VI and the pottery-bearing Ulucak V.

A total of sixty-five radiocarbon dates from Ulucak Höyük, including charcoal and short-lived species taken from Level VI–Level III, clearly prove a long history of occupation at the site, from 6850 cal. BC to 5460 cal. BC. Based on this radiocarbon seriation, this article explores the origins of sedentary life its gradual transformation, and abrupt changes at the site. A discussion of the sequence of events is also presented within a regional framework. Ulucak Höyük is one of the earliest sites with evidence of farming and animal husbandry in the Aegean. Archaeological materials and radiocarbon dates confirm the existence of initial Neolithic layers, ca. 6850 cal. BC. Radiocarbon dates suggest that occupation between Ulucak VI and V continued without a gap. However, a gradual transformation has been observed starting from Level Vb onwards, which overlapped more or less with the 8.2 ka Climate Event. After a short gap between the Late Neolithic and Early Chalcolithic, an abrupt change in almost every aspect of material culture occurred around 5600 cal. BC.

Western Anatolia, including the eastern Aegean region and the lowlands around the Marmara Sea, is crucial to understand the pivotal transformations of early farmers in the eastern Mediterranean. Most pre-Bronze Age research in western Turkey has focused on understanding the region's role in the dispersal of domesticated plants and animals, largely overlooking the persistence of wild plant and animal exploitation among farmers. As a consequence, despite growing aspirations to explain the region's role in the Neolithisation of SE Europe and increasing interest in its further cultural development in prehistory, important proxy data with significant potential to elucidate life styles, cultural affinities, and innovation in Neolithic and Chalcolithic Western Turkey remain unexplored. Shells of aquatic mollusks are one of the most tangible and archaeologically visible categories of materials that represent (primarily) farming communities' relationship with and approach to non-domestic organic resources in the 'wild'. They are ubiquitous and abundant in Neolithic and Chalcolithic sites in western Turkey. Information from twenty-eight archaeomalacological assemblages from Neolithic and Chalcolithic western Turkey is used to address current debates in the prehistory of the region.

This study presents the results of a major data integration project bringing together primary archaeozoological data for over 200,000 faunal specimens excavated from seventeen sites in Turkey spanning the Epipaleolithic through Chalcolithic periods, c. 18,000-4,000 cal BC, in order to document the initial westward spread of domestic livestock across Neolithic central and western Turkey. From these shared datasets we demonstrate that the westward expansion of Neolithic subsistence technologies combined multiple routes and pulses but did not involve a set ‘package’ comprising all four livestock species including sheep, goat, cattle and pig. Instead, Neolithic animal economies in the study regions are shown to be more diverse than deduced previously using quantitatively more limited datasets. Moreover, during the transition to agro-pastoral economies interactions between domestic stock and local wild fauna continued. Through publication of datasets with Open Context (opencontext.org), this project emphasizes the benefits of data sharing and web-based dissemination of large primary data sets for exploring major questions in archaeology (Alternative Language Abstract S1).