Agricultural practices at Bronze Age Kaymakçı, western Anatolia

Abstract

Archaeobotanical analysis at Kaymakçı, a second-millennium BCE site in western Turkey, gives the first evidence for Bronze Age agricultural practices in central western Anatolia, and represents one of a very few contemporary datasets for western Anatolia as a whole. Inhabitants of the site adopted a diversified agricultural system, with major crops including barley, free-threshing wheat, bitter vetch, chickpea, and grape. Spatial analysis of crop taxa suggests differential distribution of wheat and chickpea across the site, while initial results of diachronic analysis indicate a narrowing of wheat agriculture over time. The archaeobotanical assemblage of Kaymakçı is compared to those of contemporary sites throughout the Aegean and Anatolia, where it represents an intermediate position, an apparent hybrid of Aegean and Anatolian agricultural practices. This study provides a valuable new perspective on agriculture of the Late Bronze Age in a particularly understudied region of the eastern Mediterranean.