Vecihi Özkaya

• PhD
• Professor at Dicle University

The origins and prehistory of domestic sheep (Ovis aries) are incompletely understood; to address this, we generated data from 118 ancient genomes spanning 12,000 years sampled from across Eurasia. Genomes from Central Türkiye ~8000 BCE are genetically proximal to the domestic origins of sheep but do not fully explain the ancestry of later populati...

Along with the emergence of sedentary life, the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) settlements brought revolutionary changes in production of material cultures as well as cultic and ritual activities, which are often argued to be associated with new waves of interactions between humans and their natural world. Körtiktepe of southeastern Turkey yielded by...

Occupied between ~10,300 and 9300 years ago, the Pre-Pottery Neolithic site of Aşıklı Höyük in Central Anatolia went through early phases of sheep domestication. Analysis of 629 mitochondrial genomes from this and numerous sites in Anatolia, southwest Asia, Europe, and Africa produced a phylogenetic tree with excessive coalescences (nodes) around t...

The site of Körtiktepe in southeastern Turkey is one of few sites in the Upper Mesopotamia basin that attests continuous, permanent occupation across the boundary from end of the colder, drier Younger Dryas (YD) into the comparatively wetter and warmer Early Holocene (EH). This allows for the study of the degree of environmental change experienced...

Venomous creatures such as scorpions, snakes, spiders and centipedes were associated with the world of the dead in the Neolithic of the Fertile Crescent. Unlike other Pre-Pottery Ne-olithic centers, the 11th-10th millennium BC site of Körtiktepe in the Upper Tigris Basin yields an abundance of scorpion imagery-presenting a local variation of animis...

Living in a place for generation after generations may have led the early Neolithic social groups to be the ancestral communities with deep concern for communal interest, which eventually made their ancestral villages as the centers for their social identities. In this manner, PPN ritual and ceremony often helped to tie people to be part of a great...

Along with the emergence of sedentary life, the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) settlements brought revolutionary changes in production of material cultures as well as cultic and ritual activities, which are often argued to be associated with new waves of interactions between humans and their natural world. Körtiktepe of southeastern Turkey yielded by...

Auditory exostosis (AE) is a bony anomaly located on the tympanic portion of the temporal bone. Cold water, wind chill, and the effects of temperature are considered to be contributors to the development of AE. It is frequently encountered among surfers, lifeguards, whitewater kayakers, swimmers, and divers. Accordingly, there is a strong relations...

With the advent of sedentism, or living in permanent settlements, a new way of life began. The hunter and gatherers’ well established subsistence strategy of thousands of years slowly moved towards farming, beginning with herding and cultivation and leading to the domestication of animals and plants. The Aceramic Neolithic site of Körtik Tepe in so...

The prehistoric site of Körtik Tepe has been the subject in Neo-Lithics several times for its early Holocene stone buildings, its variety of burial types and the extraordinary amount of decorated objects. Since 2010, in several deep trenches, remains of a much older occupation phase have been documented. A series of radiocarbon dates confirmed the...

Soils and sediments composing Tell Körtik Tepe (Epipaleolithic, Turkey) and Tell Yunatsite (Chalcolithic (Eneolithic), Bulgaria) have been studied with the aim to gain a better insight into their microfabrics, determine the composition of anthropogenic artifacts, and, on this basis, to analyze similarities and distinctions between these objects and...

Location: Körtik Tepe, Province Diyarbakır, Southeastern Turkey, at the confluence of the River Tigris and the Batman Creek. Period: Younger Dryas to Early Holocene (10400-9200 BCE) Focus: Archaeological evidence for permanent occupation of the site; conditions favouring early sedentism at the intersection of two ecological regimes: the riverine en...

Исследование почв и отложений, слагающих телли Куртик Тепе (эпипалеолит, Турция) и Юнаците (энеолит, Болгария), выполнены с целью выяснить их микростроение, определить состав антропогенных компонентов и проанализировать их принципиальное сходство с современными почвами городов. Использованы методы микроморфологии, сканирующей электронной микроскопи...

By analogy with contemporary mobile hunter-gatherer communities and in accordance with archaeological evidence, egalitarian social structures have been suggested for prehistoric mobile foragers. With the establishment of sedentism, cultivation and herding, increasing social differentiation can be observed. Describing the precise nature of these soc...

Recent archaeological discoveries, refinements in genetic analyses and the archaeobotanical data require a reconsideration of the nature of the emergence of sedentary farming communities in Southeastern Turkey. In the rescue excavations prompted by the Batman and Ilısu dam projects several Early Holocene sites were discovered. For the first time, n...

Dicle'nin batı yakasında, ekolojik çeşitliliğiyle prehistorik yerleşimler için zengin ve değişken imkanlar sunan Körtik Tepe'deki kazı çalışmaları, bir yıl aradan sonra tekrar başlatılmıştır.

Becoming sedentary is considered a decisive threshold in the progress from foraging to farming (e.g. Dunbar 2013). In this article we present the stratigraphy of one early Holocene dwelling at Körtik Tepe, southeastern Turkey (37°48ʼ51.90ʼʼN, 40°59’02ʼʼE), which not only provides evidence for a strong territorial commitment to the tell but it also...

One of the greatest challenges of contemporary archaeology is to synthesize the large amount of radiocarbon and archaeological data into a useful dialogue. For the late Epipaleolithic and the Early Neolithic of the Near East, many 14 C ages have been published without precise stratigraphic documentation. Consequently, for archaeological age models...

Recent archaeological discoveries, refinements in genetic analyses and the archaeobotanical data require a reconsideration of the nature of the emergence of sedentary farming communities in Southeastern Turkey. In the rescue excavations prompted by the Batman and Ilısu dam projects several Early Holocene sites were discovered. For the first time, n...

This paper details the use of obsidian sourcing to reconstruct networks of interaction (or ‘communities of practice’) amongst populations of south-eastern Anatolia and the Near East in the context of ‘Neolithisation’ during the late 11th–early 10th millennia BC. EDXRF was used to elementally characterise 120 artefacts of Epi-Palaeolithic – Pre-Pott...

The Epipalaeolithic occupation at Körtik Tepe (radiocarbon dated to 10400-9700 cal BC) supports a repeated and possibly continuous commitment to the site from the Younger Dryas to the early Holocene and suggests a permanent living on the site if not for all, then at least for a substantial part of the community. Despite the pronounced changes...

One of the greatest challenges of contemporary archaeology is to synthesize the large amount of radiocarbon and archaeological data into a useful dialogue. For the late Epipaleolithic and the Early Neolithic of the Near East, many 14C ages have been published without precise stratigraphic documentation. Consequently, for archaeological age models w...

One of the greatest challenges of contemporary archaeology is to synthesize the large amount of radiocarbon and archaeological data into a useful dialogue. For the late Epipaleolithic and the Early Neolithic of the Near East, many 14C ages have been published without precise stratigraphic documentation. Consequently, for archaeological age models w...

ABSTRACT. One of the greatest challenges of contemporary archaeology is to synthesize the large amount of radiocarbon and archaeological data into a useful dialogue. For the late Epipaleolithic and the Early Neolithic of the Near East, many 14C ages have been published without precise stratigraphic documentation. Consequently, for archaeological ag...

Résumé: Sont présentés ici les premiers résultats relatifs à l’exploitation des animaux à Körtik Tepe, Batman, site néolithique acéramique du Sud-Est de la Turquie. Elle est caractérisée par une exploitation intensive des moutons, des boeufs, des gazelles, des cerfs et des daims (Cervus elaphus et Dama sp.) ainsi que des porcs. Les données métrique...

Résumé En introduction brève présentation historique et topographie du site d'Alinda à l'occasion d'une étude archéologique développée des tombes. Proposition pour un classement typologique de ces monuments funéraires. Abstract A brief historical and topographical presentation of the Alinda site carried out during an extended archeological study on...

Neolithic in Southeast Anatolia

Since the discovery of the Midas Monument in the nineteenth century, Phrygian civilisation has emerged as an area of great scientific interest, and research has provided important evidence for Phrygian religion by studying the rock monuments, which reflect the artistic discernment of that period by their workmanship and architectural details. Thoug...

Because of its importance, water has become essential item of adoration, besides being very important element of religious and hygiene purification from past to this time. It is possible to enumerate the shaped examples of stream or spring that appreciated in accord to this intention almost in all civilizations at the archaeological past of Anatoli...