Aras Türkiye Eski Yakın Doğu Araştırmaları Dergisi

Yazarlar: Umut PARLITI, Eyüp CANER

Konular:Arkeoloji

Anahtar Kelimeler:Upper Euphrates-Malatya Section,Kura-Araxes,Geography,Climate,Settlement Archeology

Özet: Climate and geography play a significant role in the mobility of people, affecting their economic pursuits, eating and clothing habits, architectural construction techniques, and the selection of building materials. In this context, the geography-climate conditions in which civilizations are born and flourish become the prevailing elements that determine their socio-cultural characteristics. Within this scope, this paper explores and gives a brief evaluation of the Kura-Araxes settlements in the Upper Euphrates-Malatya Basin through key mounds. The earliest findings regarding the urbanism of the archaeological settlements in the region date back to the 4th millennium. However, since the archaeological site was under the Keban and Karakaya Dam Lakes, general assessments about the settlements were made possible only after. Besides, as the rescue excavations were carried out hastily, there was confusion in the evaluation of the results and the comparison of the data. Since the settlements are not fully opened and the inconsistency experienced in the chronological plane still exists, new evaluations need to be made on these key settlements. In this way, landscape analysis of the Kura-Araxes settlements among the key mounds of different scales was carried out and the results regarding the problem of the geographical distribution in the location selection of the settlements were assessed. In addition, even if incomplete, the significant data about the architectural texture of the settlements were evaluated on the common denominator, and the results regarding the factors of geography and climate in the positioning of the settlements were presented.

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