Early Cultures of the South Anatolian Plateau

The purpose of this article is to describe here some of the material found during our survey of the Konya Plain in 1958. In two previous articles pottery of the 2nd millennium and the Iron Age found here have already been published. That of the Early Bronze Age, the most prosperous period in this area, will be described at a later date, and the present article will only describe the pottery of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods, under the following headings:I.Neolithic cultures of the South Anatolian Plateau.II.The Early Chalcolithic in the Konya Plain.III.The Late Chalcolithic in the Konya Plain.The importance of the Konya Plain in Anatolian prehistory is obvious. It is the largest single plain on the whole of the Anatolian Plateau with alluvial soil, and as such it is the granary of Turkey. No other region on the plateau shows such numbers of ancient mounds, or so many mounds of great size. The survey of this region, geographically as well as archaeologically a distinct unit, has at last linked the western plateau with Cilicia, and the results have shown that there is now a cultural continuum from the borders of Syria to the Aegean Sea since the Neolithic period.