OANNES - Uluslararası Eskiçağ Tarihi Araştırmaları Dergisi
Yazarlar: Burak FALAY
Konular:Arkeoloji
Anahtar Kelimeler:Melendiz Region,Settlement history,Historical geography,Social processes,Historical and environmental conditions
Özet: Niğde-Melendiz Region, which is a part of Volcanic Cappadocia, is one of the geographic areas where communities were densely on the move from the Prehistoric periods to the 2nd and 1st millennium BC, towards the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman periods. This mobility has made the region very buoyant in terms of architectural structures and settlement organizations. Communities built their environment by using natural resources in the region within the social processes, historical and environmental conditions, organizing numerous settlements by producing structures for many different purposes. The fact that the region is possessed of raw materials such as obsidian, andesite and basalt; diversification of ecological environments in terms of subsistence economy and the character of mountainous areas providing a safe environment against invasions and attacks, enabling the inhabitants to produce spaces by processing the rock surfaces and its location on the roads connecting Anatolia to Mediterranean and Mesopotamia, has been effective for the communities to inhabit the region for thousands of years. During the research, the archaeological findings of the region, ancient maps and written sources have been sources used in the enlightenment of this historical process. Ethnographic researches on the settlement history and architecture of the region have also benefited significantly from the studies on the paleoenvironmental and current environmental conditions. In order to visualize this long historical process and to localize the data, related maps have been produced using a geographic information system software. In summary, through all these sources, an effort is made to explain and understand the process of foundation of a settlement, continuity of residence and changes within the scope of human-environment interaction.