The Mediterranean Basin had played a critical role in the emergence and the establishment of cultural contacts among Asia, Africa and Europe. Along the Mediterranean there are at least one thousand habitable islands and island archipelagos that enable all sorts of cultural contact, including expansion, acculturation, adaptation or transfer of know-how. Anatolia has a long-strand of the coastline along the Mediterranean and being the home of primary neolithization is of a critical role for understanding the modalities of the dispersal of early sedentary farming throughout the Mediterranean Basin. Sedentary life began around 10.000 BC in the Near East and developed until approximately 7.400 BC in the region, before being dispersed to other regions; evidently both maritime and land routes along the coast played a prime role in the westward expansion of Neolithic elements. It is also evident that the expansion of the Neolithic way of life took place through a diversity of interactions. The present paper will provide a conspectus on recent data concerning coastal and maritime expansion of the components of the Neolithic package from Anatolian littoral to other parts of the Mediterranean.

Özlem Aytek

Özlem Aytek has been a lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Pamukkale (Denizli-Turkey) since 2008, and is a PhD candidate in Prehistory at the University of İstanbul. Her main work to date has been on the Neolithic Pottery of the Near East; currently, her work focuses on Neolithic of Mediterranean. She has experience in various excavations and is currently a team member of the excavation at Aşağı Pınar and Yumuktepe.

Contact:
Özlem Aytek
Pamukkale University
Department of Archaeology
20070 Denizli
Turkey
ozlemaytek@yahoo.com

• Neolithic
• Moving Stones