The People of the Höyüks versus People of the Mountains? The Neolithic, Chalcolithic and EBA Periods on the Territory of Sagalassos (Burdur Province, Turkey).

The aim of this contribution is to discuss the archaeological evidence for the Neolithic, Chalcolithic and EBA periods on the territory of the ancient city of Sagalassos. Thanks to the excavations of J. Mellaart at Hacilar and of R. Duru at Kuruçay, and the surveys by M. Özsait, the region's pre- and protohistory is far from being a blank in our knowledge.

However, only part of the picture is known. On the one hand, too much attention has been given to the höyüks which, apart from being one of the more obvious features of the cultural landscape, are more promising for archaeologists in that they generally yield rich finds in a stratigraphical context. On the other hand, during our extensive surveys on the territory, new sites were found, located at high altitude, yielding material dated to the neolithic and later, mostly non-ceramic in character. We consider these highland locations as having been in use during the occupation of the lowland höyüks.

Several factors might be responsible for this dichotomy in site location. One might think of two different cultural traditions, i.e. (native ?) hunter-gatherer groups that have been forced up the mountains by the (allochtonous ?) agriculturalists in the basins, maybe with some interaction between these two groups. Or we can consider a functional differentiation with part of the same, agricultural, population from the (permanent ?) settlements, involved in pastoral transhumance at higher altitude. During the lecture, these and other hypotheses will be considered, together with some propositions as to how they can be tested.