Simulating land use dynamics and the role of marine resources in diets during the Early Bronze Age-II (ca. 4900 – 4700 cal. BP) at Go ̈kçeada (ancient Imbros) in the northern Aegean


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Arıkan B.

JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL SCIENCE: REPORTS, cilt.49, ss.1-13, 2023 (AHCI)

Özet

Islands represent small-scale ecosystems that often represent nutritional challenges and require mixed subsis- tence strategies. This research focuses on Go ̈kçeada (ancient Imbros) in the northern Aegean, where an Early Bronze Age-II (ca. 49004700 cal. BP) site has been subjected to agent-based modeling experiments to explore whether a mixed subsistence strategy was necessary to sustain the population, and to explore the scale and intensity of long-term anthropogenic impacts. Yenibademli Ho ̈yük was excavated for a quarter century and re- searchers have conducted a wide variety of interdisciplinary research to supplement archaeological data. Based on this broad dataset (which contains zooarchaeological, palaeobotanical, and palaeoecological evidence), it is possible to test six scenarios that present different paleoclimatic conditions, along with agro-pastoral subsistence at varying levels of intensity. The results suggest that anthropogenically induced environmental change has been negligible around the site, mainly due to an insufficient level of agro-pastoral production to sustain the popu- lation. The high density of shellfish and other marine sources found at the site supports the results of agent-based modeling, which shows that the population had to supplement their diet with seafood.