3. Cilt - Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı

sampled for chemical analyses. Each sample consisted of ca. 300–400 miligramsof clay powder for use in Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA) at theMissouri University Research Reactor (Luke and Roosevelt 2007). In total 289samples were taken from 26 different survey units and points of interest (includingseveral multi-component sites), with a chronological focus on EBA (15), M–LBA(8), and IA (7) sites and an approximately equal number of samples representingeach time period. The results of this INAA study should add to our understandingof Bronze Age ceramic production (see Neff and Glascock 1997; Pullen 1995),and should reveal evidence of continuity and/or change between Bronze and IronAge production. Of specifi c interest will be the juxtaposition of these results withour understanding of long-term settlement patterns that shift from sites located inlow-lying areas or near the Gygaean Lake in the EBA, to easily defensible andoften fortifi ed hill- and ridge-top sites in the M–LBA, to sites located in both uplandand lowland situations in the IA. The results will help show also whether there areany correlates in ceramic production (e.g., decentralization or centralization) toincreasingly centralized political control in the M–LBA at Kaymakçı and in the IAat Sardis.IV. GEOMORPHOLOGICAL SURVEY AND LAKE SEDIMENT CORINGAs part of the broad goals of CLAS, we aim to determine the geomorphological,topographical, and paleoenvironmental history of the study area. In 2006 theseaims were addressed with a program of lake-sediment coring and bathymetric(underwater topography) survey in the Gygaean Lake (Marmara Gölü). Of primaryinterest to our work is the date of formation and long-term history of the lake,and the effects of these things on local populations in western Anatolia. TheGygaean Lake is the largest lake between the Lakes District, to the southeast,and the Aegean and Marmara Seas, to the west and north, respectively—all areasof known Neolithic activity (Özdoğan and Başgelen 1999). Recent geologicalresearch suggests that the Gygaean Lake may have formed between 6000 and3000 BCE (Hakyemez, Erkal, and Göktaş 1999: 550). The transformation of analluvial valley to a lake basin must have had profound effects on local populations,with new opportunities for exploitation of aquaculture, reeds, and the lake water.In the broader context, this shift in lifeways may have played a signifi cant role inprehistoric human development: the spread of sedentary and agricultural lifestylesfrom the Near East to Europe (Lichter 2005a, 2005b). If our current understandings313