İç Anadolu'da Neolitik ve Erken Kalkolitik Dönemlerde toplumsal cinsiyet (MÖ 8500 – 5000)

Gender is an important part of every person's identity. This study aims to investigate how gender roles changed from the beginning of the Neolithic to the end of the Early Chalcolithic in Central Anatolia. Although gender has been a topic of discussion at some sites, such studies have mainly remained site-based interpretations. The supra-regional perspective taken in this study investigates long term changes over several millennia in Central Anatolia enabling new interpretations and insights. The research concentrates on mortuary practices including burial treatments, skeletal analyses and grave goods as well as visual representations of humans by incorporating the data from figurines, wall paintings and relief decorated pottery. Studying mortuary practices gives us extensive information about the way people lived, their diet, habitual activities and illnesses as well as the way how they may have been regarded by the societies in which they lived in. Anthropomorphic representations, on the other hand, shed light on how certain genders were stereotyped in the makers' minds. Based on the results of the study, there seems to be equality in terms of gender in the earlier periods across the various sites selected. Female representations and burials become more predominant towards the end of the Neolithic, after 6500 BC, and this predominance increases in the subsequent Early Chalcolithic period. Keywords: Neolithic period, Chalcolithic period, Gender theory, prehistoric settlements, Boncuklu Höyük, Aşıklı, Çatalhöyük, Köşk Höyük