Spread of the Anatolian City Model

The Neolithic Age, by initiating food production, enabled settled life and agriculture, thereby laying the foundations of today's civilization. The radical changes brought by this period are nothing short of a revolution in human history. The urbanization and the birth of urban life that followed the Neolithic Period have been an equally critical turning point in terms of their consequences. Especially the development process of the Mesopotamian city model, due to its vital role in the formation of states and then empires, has been meticulously studied and discussed for approximately a century in some regions of the Near East.

The Mesopotamian city model, with its dense labor population, functionally and class-divided settlement structure, and stratified social organization, distinctly differs from the agricultural villages that preceded it. However, cities in Anatolia, such as Troy, dating to the same period, are structurally quite different from the widely spread settlements of Mesopotamia like Ur and Uruk. More than 100 settlements unearthed in archaeological excavations in Western Anatolia, the Aegean, and the Balkans, and dated to the Early Bronze Age, do not share similarities with the Mesopotamian settlement model.

One of the common features of cities in Western Anatolia and the Aegean world is their small and simple structures, generally not exceeding 100 meters in diameter, lacking dense populations, large workshops, or storage areas. Unlike the cities of Syria-Mesopotamia, these settlements show a more modest structure instead of ostentatious architectural elements. Nevertheless, Early Bronze Age settlements in Anatolia exhibited a different developmental trajectory, distinguishing themselves in some aspects from Neolithic and Chalcolithic settlements. For example, Neolithic settlements such as Çatalhöyük and Aşıklı Höyük had larger populations and spread over wider areas than Early Bronze Age centers like Troy, Thermi, Demircihöyük, or Poliochni.

However, Anatolian-Aegean cities stand out not for their size but for their surrounding fortification systems, monumental entrance gates, rich metal finds, and trade activities. With all these features, Anatolian-Aegean settlements can be regarded as representatives of an original "Anatolian city model" completely different from the Syria-Mesopotamian model. However, due to the Mesopotamian-centric perspective dominant in archaeological literature, this unique model has largely been overlooked until now and has not been subject to a detailed description. For this reason, Anatolian cities have often been classified as "small settlements."

This work by Ms. Nihan Naiboğlu is of great importance not only for revealing the different aspects of the Anatolian city model from the Mesopotamian model but also for evaluating the impacts of this unique structure extending from Western Anatolia and the Aegean to the Balkan Peninsula. We hope that this valuable research contributes to a broader understanding of the decisive influence of the Anatolian city model on Middle Bronze Age cultures and its role, especially, in the evolution of settlement structures.

Mehmet Özdoğan