In the framework of the Kınık Höyük excavation project and in direct relationship with the initial geoarchaeological results obtained during the Bor Plain survey (eg: Basso & Gürel, 2009; d’Alfonso, 2010; Balatti & Balza, 2012; Gürel & Lermi, 2010), a palaeoenvironmental project started in 2013, which is based on an international collaboration between the Geology Engineering Department of the Niğde University (Resp: Doç. Dr. Ali Gürel) and the Laboratory of Physical Geography (LGP, UMR 8591) of the CNRS and Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University (Resp: Catherine Kuzucuoğlu, Senior Researcher at the CNRS). This palaeoenvironmental project receives logistic support from the Kınık Höyük excavation project. As part of the ArchéoMed project, it receives a financial support from MISTRALS/PalaeoMex programme (CNRS-INEE) and from AO Artemis (14C dating).
In central Anatolia, previous and on-going studies on the geographic, environment and climate evolution during the Holocene evidence results that possibly contrast with the drier Konya plain and the more humid Cappadocian highlands (an area globally limited by the Tuz Gölü/Aksaray fault-zone to the west, and the central Anatolian/ Sultansazlığı-Ecemiş fault-zone to the East). Today, a better knowledge and understanding of these Konya/Cappadocia geographic contrasts in the past and present (Gérard & Thissen, 2002; Kuzucuoğlu, 2002) needs the integration of environment into the study of cultural contrasts at various periods of the Holocene (characterization, successions and specific evolutions) between these two neighboring regions where pre-domestication started and developed together with the onset of the Holocene (Baird, 2011; Özbaşaran, 2011).
The project is particularly concerned with two periods:
- the increasingly humid Early Holocene, from 11000 cal BP (9000 BC) to 8000 cal BP (6000 BC) (Kuzucuoğlu, 2014). During this period local Pre-Pottery and Pottery Neolithic cultures (PPN to PN) experienced technical innovations such as pre-domestication/domestication practices, sedentarism in large agglomerated settlements, intensive exploitation and manufacturing of obsidian etc. (eg. Düring, 2011; Özbaşaran, 2011)
- the mid-Holocene period which was punctuated by several droughts interrupting more or less humid phases. Droughts lasted ca 2 centuries at the end of each millennium from 5200 cal BP (3200 BC) to the Iron Age in the 3rd mill. cal BP (1st mill. BC) (Kuzucuoğlu, 2011, 2012; Roberts et al., 2011). From 3200 BC to 1200 BC Bronze Age cultures and City States (EBA-MBA) f and the Hittite Empire (LBA) developed and expanded through the central plateaus and the Anatolian peninsula (Genz & Mielke, 2011; Düring, 2011).
A focus will be set upon the end of the 2nd mill. BC (end of the Hittite Empire), after which it is possible that a Hittite State in southern Cappadocia survived the fall of the capital Hattuša (Mora & d’Alfonso, 2012), thus possibly playing a role in the appearance of Neo-Hittite Kingdoms after the 2nd to 3rd centuries of the so-called “Dark Ages”, a period of general historical obscurity affecting many areas of the Eastern Mediterranean and Near East.
While also connected to the geomorphological and palaeoenvironmental studies performed at Aşıklı Höyük (PPN) and at Tepecik-Çiftlik (PN) excavation sites, the palaeoenvironmental project performed in the framework of the Kınık Höyük archaeological research project focuses on the South-Cappadocian lowlands which are constitute the watershed of the Melendiz dağ volcanic massif, the Keçiboyduran volcano and the Hasan dag volcano. These lowlands – where Kınık Höyük is located – are composed of a high variety of geological formations and geomorphological landscapes. This patchwork is geographically organized NE-SW towards the Ereğli plain which is the eastern extension of the broader Konya plain. This general organization results from a very interesting geomorphological evolution during the Holocene, which has most evidently archived environment and climatic changes. Indeed, these semi-arid lowlands have been very sensitive to all climatic variations and changes, which affected primarily the water resources and the hydrological dynamics and systems. A GIS and satellite imagery study (Cetoute, 2014) shows that the lowlands are constrained southwards and northwards by the construction of Holocene alluvial fans fringing the Melendiz dağ (north, in the Kınık Höyük area) and the Taurus (south, in the Ereğli town area). In this central part between the fans, both lake and river systems succeeded, wet or dry, in responding to humidity variability.
Since 2013, in the transition area between these two sets of alluvial fans, the project has initiated a coring exploration of sediment sequences selected in closed depressions which may have been occupied in the past by lakes or marshes (Kuzucuoğlu & Gürel, 2013), with the objectives, among others, of:
- verifying the existence (?) of a lake near Kınık Höyük during the 2nd mill. BC, as stated by a Hittite textual document (information communicated by L. d’Alfonso);
- completing to the Late Glacial and Holocene palaeoenvironmental reconstruction obtained previously in the Konya plain (Kuzucuoğlu et al., 1997; 1998, 1999a, 1999b, 2002; Fontugne et al., 1999; Boyer et al., 2006) and the Ereğli plain (Bottema and Woldring, 1984), to be compared with results obtained in northern Cappadocia published by Roberts et al. (2001) (Eski Acıgöl, near Nevşehir) and to be soon published by another team directed by N. Roberts (Nar Gölü, near Nenezi dağ).
