Traditional folk knowledge and ethnography of Trabzon province

Since antiquity Trabzon has always served as an important port city because of its strategic location on the crossroads of trade routes that connect the Black Sea and its vicinity to the Anatolian heartlands. Focusing on the historical, geographic and cultural characteristics of Trabzon, this thesis intended to situate this important coastal town in the broader Turkish culture by defining the significance of its cultural presence and heritage. The secondary aim of this thesis was to serve as an academic reference for the works that will shape the future of the city. The first chapter of the thesis deals with the interactions between the human, culture and geography. In this respect, the concepts of "culture" and "material culture" were defined in reference to various researchers in the field. Following the definitions, an evaluation concerning culture created by the conscious intervention of the mankind to the nature, and the determining effect of geography on culture was made. The second chapter begins with introduction of the historical, geographic and socio-economic characteristics of Trabzon. Owing to its imperial heritage, the city's human geography has evolved with no dramatic transformations in its physical geography until modern times. The main economic activities of the town revolved around agriculture, livestock, trade and tourism, on which this study intended to give a historical perspective. In this section, the information on "social life" mainly consisted of the elements of daily lives of the city dwellers. The third chapter provided information on the traditional products of folk knowledge. These elements of folklore consisted of the social norms, the beliefs, the rites of passage (birth-marriage-death), the festivities and celebrations, the traditional toys and games, the folk medicine and animal healing, and the traditional calendars and weather knowledge. Under these headings, these elements of the Trabzon region were analyzed by comparing and contrasting them with the cultural elements of the Anatolia and the Turkic world. The final chapter of the thesis examined the elements of material culture in the Trabzon region. The clothing, handcrafts, traditional architecture, culinary culture, and the simple but efficient hand tools were the units of analysis. These material objects constituted the most vivid examples of cultural change. Most of these products, which played important role in the daily lives of people, however, have become souvenirs decorating the touristic shops, a fact which constituted one of the focal points of the conclusion of the thesis. Keywords: Trabzon, Eastern Black Sea, Culture, Material Culture, Ethnography