I dedicate this article to Dr. Peter Neve (Nifi Bey), former director of the Boğazköy Excavations, from whom I learned a lot about ancient architecture.
The building type discussed in this article is seen over a long period in the Neolithic Age at centres such as Bademağacı, Höyücek and Hacılar[1] in the Burdur Region[2] (see Map and Chronological Table). This building type is usually rectangular while the door is in the centre of the long wall. Another characteristic of this particular building type is that it has an oven opposite the door. Even though there are differences in the internal design of the buildings of the various Neolithic settlements of the Burdur region, and even between buildings of the same settlement, this basic design is usually adhered to.
Bademağacı (Fig. 1,5)
The earliest examples of this building type with an oven in the Burdur Region in the Neolithic Period have been identified from the Early Neolithic 3 (EN 3) level at Bademağacı (Duru 1998, 712).
A fairly extensive area of the EN 3 level at Bademağacı has so far been excavated and five houses in good condition have been uncovered[3]. Of these, the 3rd and 4th houses are joined to each other, while the others have free-standing walls. There are empty areas outside the houses which served as streets and a small square. A grain-store consisting of six boxes had been placed in one of these spaces, the space between the 1st and the 3rd houses. Another feature is a passage between the 2nd and 3rd houses. One end of this narrow gap has been rounded and closed off (ibid., 714).
Along with the rectangular prism-shaped bricks (40x20x8 cm), tortoise¬shell shaped (plano-convex) bricks (25x18x8, 30x18x10 cm) were used in the walls of the Bademağacı buildings, which do not have stone foundations. Sometimes instead of these two types of bricks there are layers of mud up to a certain height, at least 70-80 cm long, about 30-35 cm wide and around 8- 10 cm thick. The mud, which is tempered with straw, was spread in the form of a layer onto a wall formed with the same technique and partially hardened and the same process was repeated after the initial mass had dried. This method seems to have been used especially on the inside walls of the 1st house up to a certain height. It can be assumed from the large numbers of plano-convex bricks seen on the floor of the 1st house that the upper walls as far as the roof were formed from these. There is not much evidence for widespread use of wood as a building material at Bademağacı but some examples can be cited, such as the remains of fairly thick pieces of tree trunk, which formed the threshold in the 1st and 4th houses; holes in the floor of the 1st and 5th houses, thought to belong to saplings used as props with a diameter of 20-30 cm; two pieces of tree remains placed next to each other to form the threshold of the door in the 2nd house and, in the centre of the same house, the charred remains of three thin sapling props with diameters of about 10 cm. Wood must have been used in the doors of the houses and for the roofs but adequate evidence of this lias not been found (ibid., 714).
The buildings at Bademağacı are slightly distorted rectangular shaped. The long sides are 7-5 in and the short sides are around 3.5-4.5 in on the inside. The corners of the walls in all five buildings were rounded. The doors of these buildings, which are understood to have been private dwellings, opened in the centre at the long wall and were around 1 m wide or a little wider. The jambs of the door are straight in the 4th and 5th houses, while in the others they are indented into the wall. These indentations extend to around 40 cm and pottery pieces, hand axes, pieces of silex and obsidian tools used for everyday tasks were found in them. It is not clear what the doors were like or how they were closed. The thresholds of the doors consist of one or two thickish tree trunk pieces. They must have been plastered over with clay. As well as the main entrances there were narrower entrances on the narrow sides of the 1st house (east) and the 2nd house (south), but these were later closed (ibid., 713-716).
The common feature in the interior design of the houses of the settlements mentioned is the placing of an oven in the middle of the long wall opposite the door. At Bademağacı the shape of the oven of the 1ST house is ellipse (L. 1.05 m, W: 0.60 m, H. 0.75 m); in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th houses the back part of the ovens attached to the wall is straight, while the front part is semi-ellipse. All of them have flat roofs. In front of the mouths of the ovens there are semi-circular ashpits. The edges of the ashpit of the oven in the 1ST house are slightly extended upwards and plastered (ibid., 715). The rectangular oven of the 5thhouse is larger than the other similar ovens ( I.. 1.50 in, W. 1.40 m) and die back of it makes an indentation in the wall; there is no ashpit in front of it.
Besides the ovens, quite a large number of immovable items were uncovered. A platform 20 cm high and parallel to the east wall of the T1 house was uncovered. Apart from this there were circular fireplaces, hand grinders, benches and other non-portable objects in the houses. Among these a pair of obliquely placed hand grinders found in situ on a relatively high platform next to the oven on the eastern side are of special interest (ibid.). Rectangular prism-shaped benches made of clay with rounded sides were uncovered in the 2nd house next to the oven on the north side attached to the wall and in the 3rd house near the door. Immediately in front of the oven of the 5th house there was a fire box, next to the oven and in the northwest corner of the house there were two boxes, of which the sides facing the room were made of clay.
Höyûcek (Fig. 2, 6)
Another centre providing examples of the Burdur Region Neolithic Period building type with an oven is the Höyûcek settlement. This type of building comes from the Shrine Phase (Sh. P) dated to the Early Neolithic (EN) (Duru 1995b, 449).
The Shrine Phase buildings are situated in an east-west direction on a narrow strip of land, and there are no buildings outside of this area that could be considered dwellings. As at Bademağacı no stone was used in the foundations of the buildings of this period, and the walls were built of mud bricks from the bottom row. Although the mud bricks were mainly in the shape of a four sided prism (50x21x9 cm), plano-convex bricks were also found (60x23x15 cm, 46x16x15 cm, 30x15x12 cm) (Duru 1995a, 727).
The plan of the 1st and 2nd buildings belonging to die early period of the Shrine Phase at Höyûcek is not adequately understood, and it is not clear whether the surviving walls were extensive enough to enclose the probable living areas. The 1st building is entered by a door 1.20 m in width opening on the south wall. The exterior of the eastern side of the door is thickened to form a niche. There is an oven on die axis of the door 60 cm above the level of its threshold in the place[4] where the building’s north wall would be expected to be. The oven, which is rectangular, 95x75 cm in diameter and 65 cm high with sides are made of clay, has been well preserved apart from the roof which has collapsed. There is an ashpit widt sides slighdy extended upwards in front of the mouth of the oven, and the floors of both are paved with stone. The sides of die front section of the oven have been extended on both sides and these parts are well plastered. Next to die oven there is a box; some of its sides are made of dense clay plates 3-4 cm thick, and some made of plates which have a row of reeds at the centre and have been plastered with clayon the exterior (Duru 1995b, 451-452).
The 3rd, 4th and 5th buildings belonging to the final period of the Shrine Phase were found in very good condition. The east and south walls of building no. 3, located near the western side of the excavation area, are noticably different in character from the thick and solid mud walls. None of the walls of the building are the same thickness, differing from one corner to another. Niches have been made on the interior side of the walls that are not particularly deep. This phenomena can be seen clearly on the interior surface of the east wall, which is shared by the 4th building. In fact some parts of the wall are only 10-15 cm thick and resemble a screen more than a wall. The interior section of die west and north walls of die building can be partly followed, but as the exterior surface of die walls could not be found the plan was not fully understood. The entrance to the 3rd building is from the south. A piece of log was placed on the threshold of the door and the jambs of the door were formed with indentations. The 4th building can be entered through a minor door at the northern corner of the east wall. It is evident that there were door openings in the northern and west wall as well. A place for a small box or a drawer was made by opening up a small indentation on the interior side of the wall to the left of the narrow door opening in the north. There are indentations of the same type in the south and west walls of the 2nd house. A large rectangular-shaped oven measuring 2.90 x 1.50 m at floor level is situated next to the nothern wall of the 3rd building on the same axis as the main door. There is an ashpit with sides extended upwards at the front of the mouth of this very well preserved oven. The roof of the oven was probably flat. Three sapling props attached to the outside probably extended to the roof or supported a wooden shelf further up the wall. A few boxes with clay-plastered sides were uncovered on the inside of the east wall of this building and five marble bowls in situ at the entrance to the 4th building, while some pots different from the ordinary pottery of the period were found inside the oven. In addition, a few boxes of grain and a slightly raised fireplace was discovered in an empty area outside the south wall of the building. There is a work area west of the 3rd house and related to it, which is thought to have been used over a long period. The 3rd building and the small building no.4, which can only be entered at this point, must have been used together as part of the same complex. R. Duru is of the opinion that these two buildings are not an ordinary dwelling but buildings for the purpose of religious rituals and defines this area as the 'Shrine'. The architectural plan seen in the 4th building, for example the presence of such immovable objects as the 'miniature stairs' and the 'cell' and some of the objects of different kinds found inside the room, show that die northern part of this section was probably an 'Adyton' and the southern part a depo. The 3rd building and its work area must have been the area used by die priests for the other duties of die temple.
The 5th building was probably originally made as a single-roomed building and later made into a 2-roomed building by means of a dividing wall. Between the two areas in the middle of the dividing wall there is a gap that was later closed up. In the final period, there was no gap for a door in either of the south, west or the north walls. It appears that after the destruction of building no. 1 a door was opened in die east wall, which is not in good condition. A wide door that previously existed in the north wall was later closed by haphazardly covering it (ibid., 455).
R. Duru says that the Shrine, which has a different interior plan and produced rich finds, and its related buildings show that this was a religious centre; in view of this it seems that probably no ordinary people ever lived here (ibid., 472).
Hacılar (Fig. 3, 7-8)
Chronologically, the final stage of the building type being examined in the Burdur Region is seen in the Late Neolithic (LN) Level VI at Hacılar.
J. Mellaart explains that the houses of the Hacılar VI settlement surrounded a square like a complex, and there were no streets or passages. According to J. Mellaart, Hacılar VII-VI may have contained about 50 houses, or a minimum of 250 people (Mellaart 1970, 22).
The houses of Hacılar VI are large, rectangular buildings. They are usually 5.5 m in width and vary in length from 6.5 m to 10.5 m. The walls in the settlement are around Im in thickness and are built on stone foundations. The material used in the walls is sun dried mud bricks. In this level tortoise-shell shaped (plano-convex) and long, flat bricks are both used. The dimensions of the plano-convex bricks differ according to the building; examples of these (50x50x10 cm; 46x26x10 cm) and long, flat bricks (63x19x10 cm) can be given. The floors of the houses are smoothed clay plaster (ibid., 11).
In the same way as at the Bademağacı and Höyücek settlements, the houses of the Hacılar VI level are entered by means of a wide doorway in the middle of the long side. The almost square house Q4 at Hacılar VI is a slight exception to the general rule (6.5x6 m). House Q3, however, with its longer plan and the door not in the expected position, does not conform to the above definition. These main doorways have a wooden threshold between the rounded door-jambs at ground level. According to James Mellaart, their width varying from 1.5-1.75 m indicates that there was a double door supported by wooden door posts (ibid., 19).
J. Mellaart informs us that the sections made of lightweight building materials and attached to the main houses were used as kitchens and that the positioning of the kitchen outside the main room is a tradition seen since the Aceramic (!)[5] levels and continues in the later periods at Hacılar (ibid., 16).
The plan of a door in the opposite wall and a large, rectangular oven on the same axis as the door is found in the buildings of this settlement. Of these ovens, only the oven of the house Q3 is domed while the other oven roofs are described as flat[6]. Some of these ovens have ashpits in front of them (House Q5), while most of them have fireplaces (Houses Q2, Q4, 1’1, P2), and small wooden supports have been attached to the long sides of the ovens. James Mellaart says that purpose of the indentations in the wall behind the oven is not clear but that they may have acted as a kind of chimney to draw away the smoke (ibid.).
There is a screen or partition in the houses, separating off approx. 2/3 of the wider section of every house. These screens are built with tree branches and plastered over with mud, and an example in House 1 is around 1.5 m high. Mellaart does not think that the function of the screens was to support the roof, but is of the opinion that these partitioned areas had the same function as storage rooms and compares this plan to the internal design of die buildings at Çatal Höyük.
In many of the houses there are identations above floor level 50-80 cm in depth and 1.5-0.80 in in width, which J. Mellaart calls cupboards, and such items as storage units made of clay, fireboxes and hand grinders were uncovered. Oval or truncated oval structures made of clay were also found in some rooms. Mellaart says that these are usually associated with grinding stones, querns and mortars, small benches and platforms are generally seen in all the houses. At the Hacılar VI settlement immovable clay-plastered containers about 1 m or more high were used for storage. Examples of these are found in Houses 6, 7, 4 and 3 on the long wall or outside die door (ibid., 14-15). It is thought that light entered the buildings of Hacılar VI through windows 1.5 m above floor level and 55 cm in width (ibid., 15).
The internal design of the buildings of Hacılar VI strengthens the possibility that they were used as ordinary dwellings. However, J. Mellaart suggests that Houses Q3 and Q5 had a special function due to the large number of figurines found in them (ibid., 18-19, 21).
Observations and Conclusions
One of the important characteristics of the building type being studied is its rectangular plan, which is a little distorted in the Bademağacı buildings but clearer with straighter sides in the Höyücek and Hacılar examples[7]. The walls of the Bademağacı and Höyücek buildings do not join at a 90° angle as they appear to have been rounded at die corners. In contrast, in die plan of the houses of Hacılar VI the walls are joined at right angles. Apart from the addition of a stone foundation at Hacılar VI, the building materials and elements used in the construction of the buildings appear to be similar in all the settlements. The combined use of plano-convex and rectangular bricks is seen at Bademağacı, Höyücek and Hacılar. However, the technique of constructing a wall by spreading mud to form layers is only seen at Bademağacı.
It has been confirmed that wood was used in all three settlements for door thresholds and supports. In addition to this at Höyücek the side of a box was made by means of plastering mud over thin branches; and at Hacılar screens were constructed in a similar way. The roofs of the houses are thought to have been flat, constructed by forming a frame from tree trunks and branches, which was then covered with clay. Undoubtedly, there were problems to overcome before die roofs could be covered successfully. In the 1st , 2nd and 5th houses at Bademağacı and the 5th house at Hacılar the places where die wooden posts stood on the floors have been identified. It is clear that they were placed to support the roof. Does die fact that evidence of a similar technique was not found in other buildings necessarily mean that those roofs was made without any support?
It appears that the building type with an oven was used, with slight variations to the main plan, in all the settlements examined. At Bademağacı this building type is seen with comparatively smaller dimensions and with single-roomed free-standing buildings. These were separated from each other by small empty spaces or passages. As the excavations at Bademağacı continue, the position of die dwellings in die settlement plan should become better understood (Fig. 1,5). At Höyücek the building type with an oven is seen in a large partially free-standing building, which is part of a series of buildings with the same religious function (Fig. 2, 6). In this settlement die 3rd building, which conforms to the building type with an oven, is next to the adyton; the wall joining the two buildings is thin enough to be described as a screen or partition and there is a door of access between the two areas. This shows that the area with an oven was a special place with a particular function. We do not think that this room was used as the living quarters of the priests. As R. Duru suggests (Duru 1995b, 455), the building no. 5 at Höyücek seems more likely to have been the house where the priests lived. At Hacılar, there are some differences in plan such as a building with free¬standing walls (House P2) and buildings constructed next to each other with shared walls as in houses Pl, P3, Q2 and Q4. At this settlement there is also the example of small buildings made of lightweight building materials and constructed next to a larger main building. The small buildings north of House Q4, partly sharing the same walls and with an internal design similar to the main building, are described as being used for die purpose of kitchen or domestic activities (Mellaart 1970, 15) or can be considered as an annex to the main building (Aurenche 1985, 166). Our opinion is that these small rooms were planned as extra living quarters due to an increased demand for dwellings in the settlement, or as a second living room linked to the original building. It is possible to draw the conclusion that during the course of the Hacılar VI settlement the need for extra buildings of varying dimensions was the result of an increase in the population and the wealth of the community. It can also be said that the settlement plan changed continually throughout Hacılar VI as additions were made, and that perhaps the system of one large room with two small rooms was for the housing of large families, as it also provided room for the work to be carried out.
The building type with an oven appears to be a main architectural plan which is seen in ordinary dwellings at Bademağacı and Hacılar[8] but could also be adapted to a different function as part of the building complex of the Shrine Phase at Höyücek. At Kuruçay, the other important Neolithic centre of the region (see the Map and Chronological Table), the situation is different. At this centre, in the 12th level settlement -the earliest level with architectural remains- (Fig. 4) the 1st house is a building with a stone foundation and a distorted rectangular plan (8.50x4.50x5.30 m on the inside). It is thought that one of the walls of this building had fallen down the slope, as it was missing. The door space of this building was not indicated on the foundation so its position could not be identified. The floor of the building was formed with a covering of small pebbles; about 40 grinding stones, some of which were in good condition, were found in situ on the floor (Duru 1994, 9-10). The door must have opened in the centre of the east wall of the building. Some time later the 2nd house was added by being joined on to the east wall. The corners of the east walls of this new building with comparatively smaller dimensions were rounded and in the middle of the room there was a horseshoe-shaped hearth with an area for lighting fires surrounded by stones. A door had been opened in the west wall of the 2nd house with a threshold covered with pebblestones (ibid.). This door provided access between the two buildings and indirectly strengthens the theory that the door of the 1st house was on the east wall. In later periods new buildings were added to the south of the two buildings described here. The 3rd building belonging to this stage was in poor condition. R. Duru informs us that the settlement plan consisting of these three houses, which saw additions and repairs over a long period, is contrary to what we know of the architecture of this period (ibid., 10).
The defence system with towers that appears in level 11 at Kuruçay is thought to have surrounded houses and other civilian buildings of which most seen to have disappeared as a result of being dragged away in a flood disaster (ibid., 11-12, Pl. 15). This situation means that, apart from a few feeble parts of walls, little information can be gained about the architecture of the houses of Kuruçay level 11. The 1st house of level 12, with its distorted rectangular plan and probable door opening in the middle of the long wall on the eastern side, bears some resemblance to the contemporary architecture of the region.
At present it is difficult for us to determine the place of the building type with an oven in the settlement plan and its geographical distribution. We hope to be able to examine in more detail the position of this building type in an entire settlement as a more extensive area of the EN3 level at Bademağacı is opened up. It will not be surprising if most of the buildings uncovered in the coming years conform to the building type with an oven. As the Shrine Phase buildings at Höyücek are linked to each other in a building complex with a religious function and no odier buildings are found in the settlement, they do not give much insight on this subject. At Hacılar, however, the situation is a little different. J. Mellaart estimates that there are about 50 buildings in level VII and VI at Hacılar (see p.6) but it is not possible to know how close theoretical plans (Mellaart 1970, Fig. 8-9) are to the original ones.
Concerning the interior design of the buildings being examined it appears that the position and opening of the doors can be adapted to the needs and general plan of the buildings in the settlements. In the houses at Bademağacı (Fig. 1) and in the 3rd building at Höyücek (Fig. 2) the door jambs are made with indentations. R. Duru says that this situation gives the impression that there was a door system with bolts that extended into the walls on both sides of the door, but the complete pots and small hand axes that were found in situ in the indentations show that this cannot have been the case (Duru 1995b, 454). At Hacılar the same system could only be determined on the north side of House P2. Apart from this, straight and slightly rounded doorjambs were found (Fig. 3). In all three settlements there is no evidence of door openings other than the main door of each building. At Bademağacı, as at Höyücek, it is evident that secondary doors in the houses were later closed; R. Duru expressed the possibility -in a spoken communication- that the secondary doors were used as access to areas where domestic tasks were performed in certain months of the year and were then closed off with mud and tree branches as the colder weather and rains began. The narrow passage in the east wall of the 1st house at Bademağacı, which was later closed, seems to have formed a link between the storage unit and the house for a period (Fig. 1,5).
The most characteristic basic element of this kind of building is the position of the oven on the same axis as the main door. The ovens in the houses of Bademağacı are ellipse, semi-ellipse and rectangular in plan (Fig. 1); at Höyücek (Fig. 2) and at Hacılar (Fig. 3) there are rectangular ovens. It is clear dtat, apart from one example at Hacılar, the tops of all the ovens are flat. The outward prolusions on both sides of the oven in the 1st building at Höyücek were apparently added for aesdietic reasons and for the time being can be said to be without any parallel examples. The indentations at the back of some of the ovens of Hacılar XT are described as chimneys by J. Mellaart (Mellaart 1970, 19). It is not possible to accept this theory without finding a chimney connection in the existing ovens. No indentations that could have been chimneys have been found at Bademağacı and Höyücek. In this building type, the positioning of the oven opposite the door could be to comply with a system in which there was no chimney and the aim was to make use of die air current to exude the smoke from the mouth of the oven.
In the building type with an oven, apart from the placing of the oven and the door in the middle of the long sides on the same axis, there is no other evidence to show that the builders were fond of symmetry. We will probably never know what practical purpose the door and oven facing each other had in the Neolithic village life or whether or not dtere was a magical meaning to this design.
Besides the basic foundational elements that characterise the building type with an oven in the Burdur Region, we have given details above of the interior design of the buildings and the large number of non-portable items. Items such as single or multiple storage units with clay sides found inside the buildings or in the courtyard and platforms for sitting or reclining, benches made of clay, hearths, niches of different dimensions in the interior walls, all found inside the buildings, appear in each of the settlements with minor differences between them.
We stated at die beginning that the earliest example of the building type with an oven was uncovered in the Bademağacı EN3 settlement. It is clear from the wall construction technique, the housing plan and even the presence of the ovens, that the EN3 buildings are too well-developed to be the first examples. The development process of the construction of the building type with an oven has to be sought in the earlier levels. The excavations in recent years in the area to the south of the EN3 have so far produced only one building belonging to EN4. This rectangular-shaped building of smaller dimensions, with walls made of a different technique to that of the other buildings, has a door that opened on the narrow side of the building. Inside the building there was no oven or hearth or any nonportable items. The levels EN5 and EN6 excavated in the same narrow area have so far only been determined by burnt floors, pottery and other small finds (Duru 1999).
The pre-Shrine Phase levels at Höyücek were investigated with two deep trenches. A large amount of pottery' and some other small finds were gathered systematically from Trench A, which reached virgin soil, but no architectural remains or floors were discovered. It is understood from the burnt traces and layers of ashes that the Early Settlements Phase (ESP) extended only over a very limited area (Duru 1995b, 449-450).
In the Aceramic (!) levels IV and V at Hacılar some ovens and parts of walls that were insufficient to give a clear plan were uncovered (Mellaart 1970, 3-5; Fig. 3-4). Due to the very limited area covered by the excavations of these levels, it is not possible to gain reliable information about the buildings that the ovens belonged to and their plans or the possible development of the wall sections.
Although in some places very faint burnt traces were discovered, no part of a floor or a foundation were found in the 13lh level at Kuruçay, which is on virgin soil (Duru 1994, 9).
When we look at the architectural traditions of the neighbouring areas in the Neolithic Period, we are faced with different developments. At the settlements of Aşıklı (Esin 1996) in Central Anatolia, Çatal Höyük (Mellaart 1962; 1963; 1964; Hodder 1996) and Can Hasan III (French 1972) such basic architectural elements as the positioning of the buildings adjacent to one other and the preference of making the entrance to the building through the roof show that there is a significant difference in the understanding and application of architectural principles between the two regions. Similarities such as door openings in the dividing walls of multi-roomed buildings at Aşıklı and the use of a storage unit system resembling a honeycomb (Esin 1996), the presence of platforms for sitting and reclining, niches, ovens attached to die walls and hearths at Çatal Höyük (Mellaart 1962; 1963; 1964) and also the use of mudbricks as the main building material in all the settlements, are not enough to say that the Burdur Region and Central Anatolia have a common architectural tradition. It has previously been emphasized by James Mellaart (Mellaart 1970, 4, 7) that the red plastered floors of Hacilar’s Aceramic (!) levels resemble those at Çatal Höyük. It is very interesting that the red plastered floors of the Aceramic (!) levels (Duru 1989, 101, Pl. 19/2-3), which were uncovered again during the investigation to find the Hacdar Necropolis (see Footnote 5), were not found in any of the settlements subsequently excavated in the Burdur Region. Could this point to connections in the north of the Burdur Region in the early periods of which we do not know the details?
The architectural plan of the 2-3 roomed elongated rectangular buildings at Erbaba, one of the Neolithic settlements of the Lake District, does not conform to the type seen in the Burdur Region. The fact that no door openings were found suggests that the houses were entered from the roofs (Bordaz and Bordaz 1976; 1982; Duru 1999). Neither is there any resemblance between the rectangular plan buildings with stone foundations at Köşk Höyük in Central Anatolia that have been published so far (Silistreli 1986) and the Neolithic Period architecture of the Burdur Region.
The rectangular building plan with pisé and wood as the main building materials (Roodenberg 1993) in level X at Ihpinar, in the southern part of the Marmara, and the round huts surrounded by a defence wall with a thick foundation in the 4,h phase of the Hoca Çeşme settlement (Özdoğan 1996; 1998; 1999) in Thrace are significant. It is clear that the main building material used in the northern part of Western Anatolia was usually wood and this means that there are some important differences in the architecture of the buildings (Duru 1996; Özdoğan 1996). As no systematic excavations have been done in die southern part of Western Anatolia, diere is insufficient information available to effectively discuss architectural traditions there.
We have already pointed out that there are important similarities between the pottery forms of the Burdur Region those of and the Aegean Islands and Greece (Umurtak 1999). It would be logical to assume that diere could also be similarities in architectural techniques. Cave setdements such as Ayio Gala (Hood 1981), Nemea (Blegen 1975) and Franchthi (Jacobsen 1969; 1981), which have been shown to have important similariues in pottery typology to the Burdur Region, cannot be included here due to their lack of architectural remains. It is also impossible to evaluate setdements such as Knossos (Evans 1964), Agios Petros (Efstratiou 1985) and Nea Makri (Theocharis 1956) in this respect due to the very limited nature of their architectural remains. Sufficient information is not available about the early period of the Neolithic at Lerna. It is obviously not possible to make a connection with the building widi a stone foundation resembling a megaron, which we think dates to a much later period (Caskey 1957; 1958). In Greece the settlement providing comparatively better information, Achilleion, which has a rectangular building with a stone foundation and walls formed with pisé technique in Level lb, horseshoe-shaped hearths[9] and a domed oven with a bench attached to the side in level Ila and buildings made using wattle and daub technique in level lib (Gimbutas and others 1989), shows a different architectural preference to that of the Burdur Region.
It is understood that in this period people groups related to each other lived in the Burdur Region, which was one of the most important areas for the establishment and development of the Anatolian Neolidiic. In time, just as differences appeared in the pottery traditions of the settlements, differences in architectural traditions were also inevitable (Duru 1994, 83- 89). The main examples of this can be seen in the red plastered floors found in the Aceramic (!) levels at Hacılar which were not seen again at any other centre in the region, the appearance of stone foundations at Hacılar VI and the technique of wall construction in layers seen at Bademağacı. In spite of the different techniques mentioned, the building type with an oven continued as an unsophisticated building model peculiar to the Burdur Region without seeing many changes to its basic characteristics. The rectangular plan house Q4, which is part of the group of buildings called “the south-west shrine” by James Mellaart (Mellaart 1970, 29, Fig. 20, 25) seen in the Early Chalcolithic levels IIA and IIB at Hacılar, has a door with an indented jamb on the eastern side and an oven opposite the door that shows this tradition was still remembered as late as the middle of the 6th millenium.
The as yet only partially excavated levels earlier than EN3 at Bademağacı could give some idea of what the prototypes of this building type, which is seen over a very long period from the EN to the LN, were like. Bademağacı is only 40-50 km as the crow flies away from Beldibi (Bostancı 1959) in the Antalya Region, where the first experiments at making pottery took place prior to the Neolithic Period. It is very likely that people left the coastal strip of the Mediterranean, which was not suitable for agriculture, crossed over to the north of the Taurus Mountains and found the small plain on which Bademağacı is situated to be a suitable place to develop agriculture and in connection with this set up the first villages (Duru 1997, 798). The fact that, although pottery and other small finds were uncovered in the ESP at Höyücek and in level 13 at Kuruçay, no agricultural remains apart from some burnt traces were found suggests that in this period in the Burdur Region people lived in simple non-durable huts made of tree branches and mud. h the earlier EN levels at Bademağacı reflect the same situation, it seems that it will be difficult to follow the transition phase to a settled lifestyle, in other words to identify the first architectural experiments.
It is clear that in the future as the earliest levels at Bademağacı are reached it will not only be the prototype of the building with an oven that we will be seeking to find out about[10].
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ABBREVIATIONS
AM----------- Mitteilungen des deutschen archâologischen Instituts, athenische Abteilung
An St--------- Anatolian Studies
BSA---------- Annual of the British School of Archaeology at Athens
KST---------- Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı-Bildiriler
TAD--------- Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi
TÜBA-AR-- Türkiye Bilimler Akademisi Arkeoloji Dergisi