New Insights in Balkan–Anatolian Connections in the Late Chalcolithic: Old Evidence from the Turkish Black Sea Littoral

Abstract

The Northern Anatolian region under consideration here, the Bafra plain with its main site of Ikiztepe, and the Samsun area with Dündartepe, should be seen as a contact zone between Central Anatolia, the Balkans and the Eastern Aegean. Several items of material culture from Northern Anatolia can be linked with Southeast Europe, the islands off the coast of Western Turkey and Central Anatolia. These connections were established at least by the end of the fifth millennium B.C. Strong similarities in pottery and metal finds from North and Central Anatolian sites with the Cernavoda cultures in Romania indicate that close linkage did in fact continue into the third millennium B.C., thus giving proof of a long tradition. Here, only a small segment of this huge time-span,viz., the last quarter of the fourth millennium, equated with the last stretch of the Late Chalcolithic period, is my concern.