Space making and home making in the world’s first villages: Reconsidering the circular to rectangular architectural transition in the Central Anatolian Neolithic

In the beginning of the 8th millennium BCE, the people of Aşıklı Höyük dramatically changed how they constructed their buildings. People no longer constructed circular, semi-subterranean residential buildings and instead started to build above ground rectangular buildings. The long-term Aşıklı Höyük excavations help us understand the tempo and organization of this important evolutionary transition. This study advances discussion in three ways: 1) it provides a fine grained understanding of the diachronic shift in social and economic practices, 2) through broad horizontal excavation, this research provides new insights into the built environment, including the opportunity to understand the synchronic organization of residential and non-residential spaces, and 3) this study puts forth a detailed understanding of the evolutionary shift from circular-oval to rectangular architectural practices within a single residential setting. Collectively, the long-term research project at Aşıklı Höyük, with extensive horizontal excavations and detailed radiocarbon dating project, advances our understanding of the changing social and economic context of the transition from circular to rectangular residential buildings.