����Ӱ��

On 9 October 2019 at 16:15 in Tallinn hall (Uus-Sadama 5, Mare building, M-218), the
archaeologist Prof. Dr. Necmi Karul will give a lecture on
“The Origin of Sedentism in Anatolia and Göbeklitepe”

Discussions on the onset of sedentism, agriculture and animal husbandry, and thus on
production-based life, have been topics that have not been outdated for more than 150 years.
The answers to these questions, which have been the focus of numerous prehistoric research
conducted in the Near East, has always been important for the geographies where this way of
life has spread, especially in Europe. The excavations in Anatolia in recent years reveal
remarkable results regarding the early stages of the Neolithic Period, and therefore of the
production-based settled life. The impressive monumental ruins not only show the complex
social structure of the period and the level reached in architectural technology but also reveal
a rich symbolic world and thought system dominated by animal symbols. These excavations
also shed light on how societies that have acquired knowledge of how to utilize the natural
environment and learned to reproduce this environment have contributed to the emergence of
the basic dynamics of social organization, division of labour and similar subjects that govern
us in modern societies. Göbeklitepe, which is one of the first settlements, not only shows us
the place of Anatolian geography in this process but also brings us closer to the world of the
Neolithic people than ever before.

Necmi Karul is a Professor of Archaeology at Istanbul University. Since 2017 he is the director of
the archaeological survey project “Göbeklitepe Culture and its Surrounding Area”.
The lecture will be followed by a reception organized by the Turkish Embassy in Tallinn.