PLACE-MAKING AND SOCIAL SYSTEMS IN THE EARLY BRONZE AGE OF ANATOLIA: BADEMAĞACI HÖYÜK SETTLEMENT

Date

2024-6-17

Author

Alpay, Ayşe Iraz

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By the third millennium BCE, the place-making processes in Anatolia included the widespread emergence of a settlement pattern defined by a radial plan of agglutinated houses facing a central courtyard. The material and architectural characteristics of these particular settlements over time and their distribution in the Anatolian region have been the subject of several studies, but only a few attempted to investigate the relationship between the settlement layout and the structure of social organisation which was altered during the Early Bronze Age of Anatolia. The study aims to understand how the built environment functions in the emergence of the social structure, the nature of social organisation and the degree of social complexity in Bademağacı Höyük during the Early Bronze Age. To address the issue, an integrative approach is developed that combines Space Syntax Analysis together with artefact distribution, investigation of architecture, estimation of population and archaeoastronomical analysis. Based on the archaeological remains, the results suggest that buildings were employed to establish and maintain a general sense of community and social norms by encouraging cohesiveness and pressuring cooperative interdependence. Their locations and types indicate vertical and horizontal social stratification with lower degrees of heterogeneity and inequality and social leadership-like authority. This study also proposes that the degree of social complexity of a given society should be measured based on the number of differentiated relationships individuals maintain in a society. To address differentiated relationships, the social organisation should be investigated using archaeologically measurable variables: heterogeneity and inequality within a given society.

Subject Keywords

Early Bronze Age, Bademağacı, Space Syntax, Place-Making, Structure of Social System

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/109879

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis