Chalcolithic period in the upper tigris river valley: Chronological and theoretical problematics

Upper Tigris Region, located in Southeastern Anatolia, is an archaeologically affluent region. The archaeological history of the basin, which was an unknown region (terra incognita) until the systematic exploration of the 1990s, dates back to a long time of 700.000 years. The valley, which becomes a current issue with "the dam constructions" and "security problems" in the Anatolian Archaeology, represents the north border of Mesopotamia which is defined as "the land where civilisation was born". The Chalcolithic Age represents the date range between the two most important cycles in human history, the beginning of agriculture and sedentary and the rise of city-states. The north and south of Mesopotamia were home to different cultures during this period, which was dated to 6000-3000 BC. Although the Ubaid and Uruk Cultures emerged in Southern Mesopotamia, the Chalcolithic chronology and terminology of Northern Mesopotamia were also shaped according to these cultures. For researchers it is one of the main problems to study communities that have different origins but exist in the same time frame in this large region. Although increasing field studies and scientific meetings have revealed new studies such as SAR Chronology in recent years, these new chronologies seem to cause other problems. Although the Upper Tigris Region interacted with outermost regions over actions such as migration, war and trade during the history, it retained its local cultural characteristics throughout the Chalcolithic Age. However, these local characteristics were ignored in the findings of archaeological studies and local Chalcolithic communities were associated with cultures that emerged in areas far from the basin. After the end of Halaf, a Late Neolithic culture in the basin, the Chalcolithic communities that emerged approximately in the first quarter of the 5th millennium BC existed until the last quarter of the 4th millennium BC. The material culture unearthed in the Early Chalcolithic levels of the settlements in the basin and dated to 4800-4500 BC is identified as Ubaid Culture. Although this material culture of local Chalcolithic communities has some similar characteristics with Ubaid culture, this evidence is not sufficient to associate it with Ubaid. However, in some studies such as SAR Chronology, the local communities that were ignored by the researchers for the Early Chalcolithic period were accepted for the Late Chalcolithic period. These studies refers to the Local Late Chalcolithic communities as Post-Ubaid and this is a terminological problem resulting from the association of the early stage of the Ubiad Culture. These studies refers to the local Late Chalcolithic communities as Post-Ubaid and this is a terminological problem resulting from the association of the early stage of the Ubiad. In the Chalcolithic Age, only the Uruk communities migrated from the Southern Mesopotamia to the Upper Tigris Region and established their colonies in a single settlement. The principal aim of this dissertation is to evaluate the Chalcolithic settlements in the Upper Tigris Region by comparing them with the surrounding regions on the basis of these chronological and terminological problems. Keywords: Chalcolithic Age, Upper Tigris Region, Mesopotamia.