3. Cilt - Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı

FIFTH MILLENNIUM ANTHROPOMORPHIC FIGURINESIN SOUTHEASTERN AND CENTRAL ANATOLIA:COMPARATIVE MUSEUM RESEARCHEllen BELCHER*The Halaf cultural horizon occurred during the fi fth millennium B.C. 1 andextended throughout upper Mesopotamia, including southeastern Anatolia.Halaf material culture is well-known for its imaginative and beautifully madearchitecture, polychrome-painted pottery, geometric stamp seals and fi gurines.The regional character and variation of Halaf fi gurine assemblages however, ispoorly understood, particularly in southeastern Anatolia. My research and studyof these fi gurines reveals distinct southeastern Anatolian styles and technologies,some of which demonstrate direct connections to central Anatolia.This article presents preliminary conclusions from a comparative analysisof contemporaneous anthropomorphic fi gurines belonging to the Halaf andChalcolithic cultures conducted at museums and ongoing excavations in centraland southeastern Turkey.Geography of Halaf FigurinesNot all Halaf settlements are known to have made and used fi gurines, butthey were quite common across the broad horizon of Halaf culture encompassingsoutheastern Turkey, northern Syria and northern Iraq (Map: 1). Figurines areknown from Halaf settlements which cluster in the upper Euphrates, Khabur andTigris river-valleys up to the Amanus Mountains, which are the western extentof fi fth millennium Mesopotamia. Remarkably, fi gurines from Halaf settlementsin northern Syria and Iraq illustrate regional styles only distantly-related to thoseof southeastern Anatolia although they originate from settlements geographicallynearby.* Asst. Prof. Ellen H. BELCHER, John Jay College/City University of New York, Lloyd SealyLibrary, 899 Tenth Ave., New York, NY 10019/USA (ebelcher@jjay.cuny.edu).1 Dates in this article are un-calibrated; the Halaf culture occurs in the sixth millennium,calibrated.233