Heading Home: The Architecture of Family and Society in Early Sedentary Communities on the Anatolian Plateau

Abstract

The earliest settled communities on the Anatolian Plateau (central Turkey) consisted of cultivators living in households that cooperated across dwellings in networks of production and consumption. These conclusions are based on the Anatolian data viewed though an interpretive framework modeled on the analysis first offered by Kent Flannery in 1972, with modifications drawn from studies by other scholars in the intervening decades. The theoretical underpinnings of Flannery's original work are reviewed and revisions are offered. The ethnographic record is also examined for insights into the ambiguities present in hunter-gatherer and pastoralist familial and socioeconomic structures. The study closes with a revised explanatory framework to interpret the Anatolian early settlement data and with conclusions drawn from that data.