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ILIPINAR HÖYÜK
The 2001 excavation season.
Last season's efforts consisted of
filling a gap in the semicircular alignment of mudbrick-built
buildings which, constituting ca. 7600 years ago the north and
southwestern edge of the Ilıpınar VI settlement, had been
destroyed in a conflagration. In this ca. twenty meters long gap
four more buildings of the same kind that had been excavated in
former seasons were found. Furthermore, a number of new
construction details could be observed that shed light on the
appearance and use of this peculiar boundary structure. The
small team, comprising senior specialists and students from
Leiden, Groningen and Ankara (Bilkent University), was assisted
by an experienced local workforce. The excavations and
laboratory work ran from beginning August until mid September
2001.
At first sight the ruins of the
newly excavated buildings (H31 to 34) showed close similarity
with the formerly unearthed ones: a ca. 1.5 m thick debris layer on top of their walled
contours had been flattened and trampled during the following
occupation phase VA, and ran as a low bank through the
settlement. Underneath, the excavators found (from top to
bottom) pieces of burnt mud with impressions of reed, chunks of
floor plaster with plank and beam impressions together with
grinding stones, andirons and crushed pottery vessels. These
remains respectively belonged to the roofing, the floor and
inventory of the upper story. The floor consisted of
a layer of thin beams and planks crosswise supported by three to
four heavier beams running in the buildings' longitudinal axis,
their ends being anchored in the mud-brick walls; on top there
is a thick layer of mud-plaster -- the true floor. From the
findings among the debris from the upper story it can be
concluded that this story originally contained a great number of
grinding slabs and quite a few andirons in addition to an
occasional oven and some pottery vessels.
The ground-floor there was usually a big, square,
flat-roofed oven, and along the lateral walls mudbrick-built
storage bins, plaster-lined baskets and quite a lot of pottery.
This space, obviously used for the storage of field crops such
as cereals and legumes, yielded sometimes stone and bone
implements. Its floor, which was also a grill construction, was
laid above a crawl space in order to protect the inhabitants and
the food stock against rising damp. From the circum-stance that
all storage containers in the boundary buildings were empty, one
concludes that the devastating fire had broken out at the end of
spring, e.g. before the reaping of the new
harvest.
(Interior of House 14, with ovens, pots and
burned walls during excavation)
(photo: B. Claasz Coockson 1995)
The investigations of last season clarified a
major problem -- that of the buildings' access. Since the
buildings investigated in 2001 had complete ground plans
(from most buildings excavated in former years the outer
wall was missing), it could be finally observed that the
entrance was through a sort of shallow porch in the outer
wall of the buildings. Opposite the entrance there was an
aperture in the wall oriented to the village center,
approximately at floor level. This data initially had led to
the supposition that all entrances should be searched for at
the village side, whereas the outer walls were supposed to
be blind. This gave the idea of a defensive alignment of
adjoining buildings. By the mere discovery of entrances
located in the outer walls of -- at
least some of – the buildings, the defensive aspect of
the settlement can no longer be retained.
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House 33 : completely burned down
(photo: B. Claasz Coockson 2001)
To put it
differently, in spite of its curious boundary system Ilıpınar
VI was a village with an open character. The intended
purpose was likely to keep livestock at night safely in the village square,
where indeed thick layers of decayed dung were found.
Finally, the roof construction can
be surmised from small, rounded brick-platforms with at one
side the impression of a heavy post which are found in pairs
plastered to the floor. In the ground floors they are often
in situ, whereas the ones from
the upper floor are mixed with the
building debris. These long pillars, standing in the
longitudinal axis of the aligned buildings, must have
supported the upper story as well as the ridgepole of the
roof. When mapping the pairs of platforms in situ in the
ground-floor of the aligned buildings, one obtains the ridge
of the (saddle) roof that very probably capped the whole.
An empty pot in an empty storage bin
(photo: B. Claasz Coockson 1995)
Next year's program will comprise
further excavation of the southeastern section (the zone
east of H38) and of the compounds behind the buildings H34 and H35.
Jacob Roodenberg
Newsletter No. 1
- 2002, Pg. 13, 14
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