Il cambiamento del sistema insediativo come testimonianza di trasformazione socioeconomica: il caso delle comunità preistoriche dell'alto Eufrate tra V ed inizio II millennio a.C.

Abstract

A variety of different factors determine a population's lifestyle in a given territory in terms of mobility versus stability. The first is its type of social organisation, and its economic relations with its environment, through the different ways of exploiting the local resources. These same relations are also created in ideological terms, through the linkage that is established between the community and the environment in which it lives and develops. The community dimensions of the sense of belonging to a given territory, and the borders within which a regional awareness and identity is acknowledged, change in time as the social system and production methods change, and not least in terms of the type and degree of interaction between the community and other communities. Our intention is to identify in archaeological terms this relationship between stability and mobility in terms of the settlement models. But to do this, a region has to be studied and there must be a clear idea of the sequencing of a process which occurs in time and which clearly evidences a change in the systems of social and economic life, whose modes of occupation in the territory is the effect of these changes. In archaeological terms, the Malatya Plain (Upper Euphrates, Turkey) is an ideal area for this type of research. The survey of the territory of Malatya, is carried out by the Department of Historical, Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences of the University of Rome “La Sapienza”. Aim is that of identifying, from an archaeological point of view, the changes in the life style and in the social and economic relations in the region, in a period going from the V to the II millennium BC, in connection with the complex events and radical changes that are documented by the excavation of the site of Arslantepe, the land mark of the region.