Palaeoenvironmental reconstruction of the alluvial landscape of Neolithic Çatalhöyük, central southern Turkey: The implications for early agriculture and responses to environmental change

With this new evidence we demonstrate that the landscape was highly variable in time and space with increasingly dry conditions developing from the early Holocene onwards. In contrast to earlier landscape reconstructions that have presented marshy conditions during the early Holocene that impacted agriculture, we argue that localized areas of the floodplain would have afforded significant opportunities for agriculture closer to the site. In this way, the results have important implications for how we understand agricultural practices in the early Neolithic.