Öküzini Cave

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Öküzini

BW

Location: Taurus Mountains , Turkey
Geographic
location: 		37 ° 5 '20.4 "  N , 30 ° 34' 33.6"  E Coordinates: 37 ° 5 '20.4 "  N , 30 ° 34' 33.6"  E
Öküzini Cave (Turkey)
Öküzini Cave
Geology: limestone
Type: Karst cave
Discovery: 1956

The Öküzini Cave is not far from the Karain Cave in the Göksu Valley , about 30 km northwest of Antalya in the Katran Mountains , part of the Taurus chain .

geography

The cave is about 300 m high in the karst area on the eastern slope of the Katran Mountains, which consists of limestone from the Cretaceous period , four meters above an extensive travertine plain that is used for agriculture. The surrounding mountains reach heights of up to 2000 m. The cave was created by the washout of an underground karst river. The cave opens to the northwest. The main chamber is approx. 15 m long and then branches off into numerous side chambers.

environment

The cave is located in an area with winter rains and hot dry summers. The average annual rainfall is 1056 mm. Today, the mountain slopes are by overgrazing quite bald, with occasional carob trees , Atlantic pistachio , at higher altitudes olive trees and oaks. In the plain there are reeds , cattails and sedges along canals . At the end of the last ice age the landscape was probably forest-steppe-like with gallery forests .

history

Bull relief from Öküzini, copy, Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara

The cave was discovered by İsmail Kılıç Kökten in the 1950s. Excavations were carried out between 1956 and 1973 by Kökten, 1981, 1989 by the University of Tübingen under the direction of Gerd Albrecht and until 1998 by Işın Yalçınkaya from the Museum Antalya and Marcel Otte , University of Liège. Kökten made numerous cuts that went up to 2.5 m deep and covered approx. 150 m². The cave was excavated in artificial 10 cm layers ( strata ) and 50 cm squares, which makes it difficult to classify the finds. The settlement layers come from the early Epipalaeolithic (layers AUI to AUIV), the late ceramic Neolithic (AUV), Chalcolithic (AUVI) and the Roman period. A total of 13 geological layers (GH0-GHXII) were recorded. Settlement begins in the late glacial maximum around 20,000 BC. BC (19,790 BC cal. ) And continued in the Bölling and Younger Dryas . A picture of an aurochs was carved into the cave wall.

The settlement layers contained graves and numerous hearths. Pollen was poorly preserved, which made reconstruction of the local vegetation difficult.

Analysis of the animal bones was carried out by Levent Atici and Aaron Stutz. In the oldest layers, bones from wild goats, sheep and fallow deer were found, which were probably hunted between late spring and early autumn. Sea shells such as Dentalium and Columbella rustica come from the Mediterranean .

The stone industries were made from flint , radiolarite, and obsidian . The latter come from Göllü Dağ (East) and Nenezi Dağ . The lithic inventory is dominated by microliths , including back tips , segments, isosceles triangles and trapezoids. A piece of clay with the imprint of a basket comes from layer GHIII.

A systematic search was made for charred plant remains that were unusually well preserved. Wild fruits and nuts, for example acorns, almonds ( Amygdalus graeca / orientalis ), pistachios , hackberry fruits , grapes, hawthorn and rose hips, fruits of Alkanna and wild legumes were found. Lentils, peas and remains of einkorn were believed to have been relocated from the Neolithic layers, as AMS data shows .

literature

  • Tristan Carter, François-Xavier Le Bourdonnec, Gérard Poupeau, Metin Kartal, Thomas Calligaro, Philippe Moretto: Marginal Perspectives: Sourcing Epi-Palaeolithic to Chalcolithic Obsidian from the Öküzini Cave (SW Turkey). In: Paléorient 37/2, 2011, pp. 123-149 ( JSTOR 43265272 ).
  • Işın Yalçınkaya: La grotte d'Öküzini. Evolution du paléolithique final du sud-ouest de l'Anatolie. In: Études et Recherches Archéologiques de l'Université de Liège Volume 96, Liège 2002, ISBN 2-930322-41-1 .
  • Marcel Otte , Ignacio López Bayo, Pierre Noiret: Sedimentary Deposition Rates and Carbon-14: the Epi-paleolithic Sequence of Öküzini Cave (Southwest Turkey). In: Journal of Archaeological Science 30, 2003, pp. 325–341 ( PDF ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Danièle Martinoli: Food plant use, temporal changes and site seasonally at Epipalaeolithic Öküzini and Karain B caves, southwest Anatolia, Turkey. In: Paléorient 30/2, 2004, p. 64 ( jstor , accessed on August 26, 2015)
  2. ^ A b c Danièle Martinoli: Food plant use, temporal changes and site seasonally at Epipalaeolithic Öküzini and Karain B caves, southwest Anatolia, Turkey. In: Paléorient 30/2, 2004, p. 63 ( jstor , accessed on August 26, 2015)
  3. ↑ a b Öküzini, Turkey , University of Liège
  4. ^ Danièle Martinoli: Food plant use, temporal changes and site seasonally at Epipalaeolithic Öküzini and Karain B caves, southwest Anatolia, Turkey. In: Paléorient 30/2, 2004, p. 73 ( jstor , accessed on August 26, 2015)
  5. ↑ Gerd Albrecht, B. Albrecht, H. Berke, D. Burger, J. Moser, W. Rähle, W. Schoch, G. Storch, Hans-Peter Uerpmann, B. Urban: Late Pleistocene and early Holocene Finds from Öküzini: A Contribution to the Settlement History of the Bay of Antalya, Turkey. In: Paléorient 18/2, 1992, pp. 123-141.
  6. ↑ a b c d e Tristan Carter, François-Xavier Le Bourdonnec, Gérard Poupeau, Metin Kartal, Thomas Calligaro, Philippe Moretto: Marginal Perspectives: Sourcing Epi-Palaeolithic to Chalcolithic Obsidian from the Öküzini Cave (SW Turkey). In: Paléorient 37/2, 2011
  7. ^ A b Danièle Martinoli: Food plant use, temporal changes and site seasonally at Epipalaeolithic Öküzini and Karain B caves, southwest Anatolia, Turkey. In: Paléorient 30/2, 2004, p. 66 ( jstor , accessed on August 26, 2015)
  8. ↑ a b doi : 10.6078 / M73X84KX Project: Zooarchaeology of Öküzini Cave, opencontext.org
  9. ↑ Gerd Albrecht, B. Albrecht, Hugo Berke, D. Burger, J. Moser, W. Rähle, W. Schoch, G. Storch, Hans-Peter Uerpmann, B. Urban: Late Pleistocene and early Holocene Finds from Öküzini: A Contribution to the Settlement History of the Bay of Antalya, Turkey. In: Paléorient 18/2, 1992, p. 131
  10. ^ Levent Atici, Aaron Stutz, Analysis of the ungulates fauna at Öküzini: a preliminary reconstruction of site use, seasonality and mortalpity pattern. In: Işın Yalçınkaya, Marcel Otte, Jozef Kozłowski, Ofer Bar-Yosef (eds.) ,: La grotte d'Öküzini. Evolution du paléolithique final du sud-ouest de l'Anatolie. Études et Recherches Archéologiques de l'Université de Liège Volume 96, Liège 2002, pp. 101-108
  11. ^ Danièle Martinoli: Food plant use, temporal changes and site seasonally at Epipalaeolithic Öküzini and Karain B caves, southwest Anatolia, Turkey. In: Paléorient 30/2, 2004, p. 76 ( jstor , accessed on August 26, 2015)
  12. ↑ this can be Celtis tournefortii , C. australis or C. glabrata , Martinoli 2004, p. 70