The relationship between Early Holocene climate change and Neolithic settlement in central Anatolia, Turkey: current issues and prospects for future research

Abstract

Episodes of global climate change have traditionally been invoked as explanations for settlement re-organisation and socio-economic transformation in the prehistory of the Middle East (e.g., the Neolithic period). By focusing on the 8.2K event, this paper presents a theoretical and methodological argument against the assumption of unilinear, passive responses by prehistoric societies to global climate change, using as a case study datasets recently obtained from the Konya Plain in Central Anatolia, Turkey.