The Pre-Pottery Neolithic in Anatolia: monuments and villages before pottery

The frame

The Met's timeline for Anatolia and the Caucasus dates the Pre-Pottery Neolithic to about 11,000-6900 BCE. According to the same source, the Neolithic in Anatolia is divided into the Pre-Pottery and Pottery Neolithic to distinguish settlements that do not have pottery vessels from later ones that do, and it is the period during which humans live in villages and first domesticate plants and animals. In the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of Anatolia, it says, nondomestic buildings contain large stone sculptures of human figures. For Anatolia the site follows this timeline's scheme, which gives the whole region one sequence of named and dated periods. Source 1.

Boundaries and overlaps

The Met page is titled "Anatolia and the Caucasus, 8000-2000 B.C.", yet its Pre-Pottery Neolithic row begins about 11,000 BCE, some three thousand years before the range in its title; the site follows the row, not the title. The upper limit, 6900 BCE, is also the start of the Pottery Neolithic in the same source, so there is neither overlap nor gap between the two. In the key events the two phases are presented together, about 11,000-6400 BCE, and the overview says that a shift to an economy based largely on farming occurs in the Neolithic, "perhaps" to meet the demands of a growing population. In the site's navigation the period is shown together with the Pottery Neolithic, in the group "The Neolithic in Anatolia". Source 1.

On this site

Two articles are placed in this period. "Göbekli Tepe: monuments built by hunter-gatherers" reads UNESCO's account of the megalithic structures and of who built them, and separates what the source states from what it suggests. "Boncuklu Höyük: a village of mud-brick houses" reads the University of Liverpool project page on the village and its houses, and shows how little such a page says about the site itself. Each is dated by its own source; the Met page mentions neither of them. Source 1.