ILIPINAR 2002

The final year

The last excavation season was attended by Bilkent student Cem Gökçek and the writer of this report.

The first excavations of Ilıpınar started in 1987. A continuous series of excavation and study seasons followed till September 2002, when the bulldozer from the Orhangazi Belediye came to refill the last trenches, and to restore the contours of the höyük as it was before the start of the research.
Much was achieved in these 16 years. The main objective, a large sondage from the top till the virgin soil, was already completed in 1998, revealing the sequence and development of village and houses of the Neolithic period (±6000 BC), up to a Byzantine cemetery on the top of the höyük.

On the South-West Flank, a quarter of a circular settlement arrangement (phase VI, ±5700 BC) was discovered in the mid 90’s. It consisted of thick layers of burnt mud brick material, which proved to be not only mud brick but also collapsed house floors. Most of these houses had 2 stories and probably each floor had its own heating facility or oven.

Collecting the finds in house [40]

The trench with phase VB

The floors were packed with pots and bins, the latter made of clay-covered baskets (see Newsletter No.1).


In this final season, an attempt was made to collect as much architectural information as possible from these houses.
One new discovery was made: a shallow but complete house [40] was found at the very eastern end of the row.


House [36] provided a new feature for which earlier traces were found but no complete example: its ‘outdoor activity area’, a veranda-like platform on the inner side of the circle of houses.

The veranda’s floor construction is similar to that of floors found inside the houses: a platform of parallel beams with a mud plaster on top. The side edges of the platform have the same width as the house.

On the platform stand two grinding installations. These are made of mud brick fragments that were laid down and covered with mud-plaster. They form a base at an easy height for a person to use a grinding stone that rests on it. Around the grinding stone, a mud shaped gutter was formed to collect the flour.

On the bases are impressions of the now- missing grinding stones. On the other side is a small fireplace. It is horseshoe shaped with three higher ‘points’, two at the ends and one in the middle of the rounded side. This makes the placing of pots with round bases more stable. The highest parts of these points are c. 25 cm above the floor level. The diameter of this fireplace is about 40 cm.

We have here an example of domestic food processing, an outdoor kitchen area. The mud plaster of the floor shows that the structure must have had some kind of roofing to protect it against the rain.

A skeleton is cleaned by Cem

On this platform 99 so- called ‘slingshots’, were found.
Many sections were cut into the row of houses, to test their construction. All showed the collapsed suspended floors and the enormous impact of fire on the mostly mud brick and plastered wooden elements.

Cem worked in a trench where a totally different type of dwelling was excavated. This belongs to phase VB, ±5500 BC. In earlier seasons were found irregular shallow pits containing concentrations of vessels, a grinding installation and an oven. This can be called a ‘semi-subterranean cabin’ . The arrangements in all these cabins were very similar. The aim of the 2002 campaign was to extend the trench by 10 meter to the south and see whether these phenomena continue. Traces of new cabins were found with concentrations of vessels, but disturbances made observations less obvious than in the earlier seasons.

Here ends the active phase of research. In the coming years the result of this work in the burnt houses will be published in Ilıpınar III.
 

 B. Claasz Coockson

Top: Drawing the three dimensional remains is a difficult work (1998)

Below: The large sondage, 20 x 20 meter, halfway down in 1994
 

Newsletter No. 2 - 2003, Pg. 12

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