Adaptation, identity, and innovation in Neolithic and Chalcolithic Western Anatolia (6800–3000 cal. BC): The evidence from aquatic mollusk shells

Western Anatolia, including the eastern Aegean region and the lowlands around the Marmara Sea, is crucial to understand the pivotal transformations of early farmers in the eastern Mediterranean. Most pre-Bronze Age research in western Turkey has focused on understanding the region's role in the dispersal of domesticated plants and animals, largely overlooking the persistence of wild plant and animal exploitation among farmers. As a consequence, despite growing aspirations to explain the region's role in the Neolithisation of SE Europe and increasing interest in its further cultural development in prehistory, important proxy data with significant potential to elucidate life styles, cultural affinities, and innovation in Neolithic and Chalcolithic Western Turkey remain unexplored. Shells of aquatic mollusks are one of the most tangible and archaeologically visible categories of materials that represent (primarily) farming communities' relationship with and approach to non-domestic organic resources in the 'wild'. They are ubiquitous and abundant in Neolithic and Chalcolithic sites in western Turkey. Information from twenty-eight archaeomalacological assemblages from Neolithic and Chalcolithic western Turkey is used to address current debates in the prehistory of the region.