Adjoining spaces, building communities: agglutinative architecture at Neolithic Barcın Höyük in North-West Anatolia

Abstract

North-west Anatolia holds an intermediate position: environmentally, between the steppes of northern Mesopotamia and central Anatolia and the temperate zone of south-eastern Europe; and architecturally, between the mud-brick building traditions of Neolithic South-West Asia and the timber-based building traditions of Neolithic Europe. Excavations at the seventh-millennium bc site of Barcın Höyük in the Marmara region have produced a record of houses and settlement spaces spanning six centuries (6600–6000 cal. bc), making the site representative of what has been called the ‘pioneer’ dispersal of the Neolithic in western and north-western Anatolia, as well as a testimony to the long-term stability and development of Neolithic communities in the region.

Barcın Höyük’s architectural record enables us to carry out analyses of house building techniques and settlement layout, which diverge from what is known from earlier and contemporary settlements in central Anatolia. Wood was the main construction material, with walls constructed of rows of thin upright posts, combined with daub and mud slabs. Raised wooden floors, coated with mud plaster, are a feature attested from at least the middle of the seventh millennium bc. Looking at the spatial configuration of the settlement, we can trace a diachronic development from an agglutinative layout to a pattern of free-standing houses, combined with the vertical superimposition of domestic structures over several centuries.

Contextualizing the settlement at Barcın Höyük in a broader regional and interregional framework, we can see how the westward spread of the Neolithic way of life involved continuities and transformations in building techniques, settlement layouts, and habitation practices, and offer insights into the environmental and social correlations of these developments.