Asagi Pinar I: Einfuhrung, Forschungsgeschichte, Stratigraphie und Architektur.

• Author: Zimmermann, Thomas
• Position: Book review

Asagi Pinar I: Einfuhrung, Forschungsgeschichte, Stratigraphie und Architektur. By NECMI KARUL, ZEYNEP ERES, MEHMET OZDOGAN, and HERMANN PARZINGER. Archaologie in Eurasien, vol. 15. Mainz: VERLAG PHILIPP VON ZABERN, 2003. Pp. ix + 209, plates. [euro]56.50.

One of the keys to understanding cultural change, exchange, and transition in European and Anatolian prehistory definitely lies buried in the occidental part of Anatolia, or Thrace. Clearly, the northwesternmost fringes of modern Turkey and the southeasternmost region of Bulgaria bridging the Orient with the Occident may yield enough archaeological evidence to link the chronologies and mutual influences of both the prehistoric cultures of Europe and the Aegean-Anatolian world. Strangely enough, however, Thrace has remained a kind of wallflower in archaeological research activities for decades, as Mehmet Ozdogan, one of the authors of the monograph reviewed here, has pointed out somewhat resignedly several times (cf. "Eastern Thrace before the Beginning of Troy I: An Archaeological Dilemma," in Die Kupferzeit als historische Epoche, ed. J. Lichardus [Bonn, 1991], 217-25).

One feels indebted to the courage and motivation of Mr. Ozdogan and his colleagues in initiating a considerable number of projects to shed some light on the prehistory of this formerly poorly researched region (cf. M. Ozdogan's bibliography, op. cit., 207-8). Thanks to joint projects with institute and scholars from abroad, especially the Eurasian Section of the German Archaeological Institutes under the directorship of Hermann Parzinger, it was possible to carry out a series of surveys and excavations, focusing particularly on Neolithic, Chalcolithic, and Early Bronze Age research in Turkish Thrace. The volume presented here is the primary harvest of these joint activities between the German Archaeological Institute and the Department of Prehistory of Istanbul University, representing the first of a number of monographs to be published over the coming years, devoted to "Studien im Thrakien-Marmara-Raum." The scarcity of valuable archaeological information in this region concerning the sixth, fifth, and fourth millennia B.C. is most easily understood from a short glimpse at the distribution map displaying Neolithic find spots in southeastern Europe and northwestern Anatolia.

The site of Asagi Pinar, located south of the modern provincial capital Kirklareli, seemed to be an ideal place responding to some major questions...