Town and Country in Southeastern Anatolia, 2 vols.

• Author: Schwartz, Glenn M.

Like the majority of archaeological field projects conducted in eastern Turkey and Syro-mesopotamia these days, the Kurban Hoyuk expedition was part of a salvage operation, one of a string of such projects undertaken along the Euphrates in Turkey and Syria. Indeed, when (and if) the results from all these efforts are in, we should have a remarkably comprehensive view of the history of almost the entire Euphrates Valley from its upper reaches to the great bend in northern Syria. The volumes under review here are the first two of a projected three-volume set of final reports on the University of Chicago project centered at Kurban Hoyuk, a six-hectare double-mounded site in the Karababa Basin of southeastern Turkey. It can be said forthwith that the Kurban team deserves our fervent thanks, not only for providing their final results speedily (a rare achievement indeed), but for presenting a wonderfully rich set of data and analyses, as well.

In the first volume of the series, T. Wilkinson provides a corpus of environmental and settlement-pattern data gathered from his 1980-84 survey of a 10 x 10 kilometer area around Kurban. The project provides a look at what a micro," intensive regional analysis can deliver, in comparison with a more traditional extensive survey over a large area.

Not surprisingly, low-lying or otherwise inconspicuous sites liable to be overlooked by conventional surveys are now identified. Even more encouraging and methodologically innovative is the careful work carried out in the areas between sites, where scatters of sherds were identified and dated. Wilkinson hypothesizes that these field scatters are vestiges of human and animal manure used as fertilizer, collected from village streets, kilns, dumps, etc. Also important and carefully integrated into Wilkinson's discussion of settlement patterns is his work on environmental change and degradation, the earliest deforestation, for example, is assigned to the third millennium, on the evidence of ceramically dated valley-slope erosion, combined with archaeobotanical, faunal, and palynological data. Given this conclusion, Wilkinson suggests an interesting explanation for the profusion of field-sherd scatters dated to the end of the third millennium; animal manure obtained directly from the herds was now in demand for use as fuel because of the decreasing availability of wood, so organic waste swept from village facilities became an alternate source of fertilizer.

Among the...