Early Holocene in Girmeler: Defining Pre-Pottery Neolithic in Coastal Southwestern Anatolia

ABSTRACT The site of Girmeler so far is the only excavated Early Holocene site in the Aegean coastal region of Anatolia. Early Holocene Girmeler was inhabited by semisedentary hunter groups living in wattle-and-daub huts with lime-plastered floors, exploiting a broad spectrum of wild animals and plant resources found within the immediate environs of the site. This article argues that Girmeler’s Early Holocene occupation of the late ninth and early eighth millennium BC belongs to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic sequence of southwestern Anatolia. In contrast to the Mesolithic insular Aegean sites representing the ninth and early eighth millennium, there are indications that agriculture was practiced at Girmeler. Results of one DNA study applied to a human bone from an Early Holocene grave at Girmeler showed that the occupants of the site possessed a gene also found at the Epipaleolithic populations of Pınarbaşı who lived in the fourteenth millennium BC in central Anatolia.