Marginal Perspectives: Sourcing Epi-Palaeolithic to Chalcolithic Obsidian from the Öküzini Cave (SW Turkey)

Abstract

Fifty-six pieces of obsidian from the Öküzini Cave in SW Anatolia were elementally characterised using particle induced X-ray emission [ PIXE], the artefacts coming from strata that span the early Epi-Palaeolithic to Late Chalcolithic. The obsidian comes from two sources in southern Cappadocia, East Göllü Dağ and Nenezi Dağ (380 km distant), representing the earliest evidence for these sources’ use at distance. The cave’s inhabitants perpetually existed on the margins of those socio-economic networks responsible for the circulation of these central Anatolian resources, obsidian only rarely crossing the cultural boundaries that separated the cave’s populations from their contemporaries in the Konya Plain and Cilicia.