ABSTRACT
The captivating imagery of early Holocene communities in northern Mesopotamia has long fascinated scholars, especially since the discovery of monumental anthropomorphic pillars at Nevalı Çori in the 1980s. Subsequent discoveries at sites like Güsir, Hasankeyf Höyük, Körtiktepe, Tell ‘Abr 3, Jerf el Ahmar, Tell Qaramel, and sites around the Harran Plain have highlighted that these depictions represent an emerging ‘multimedial’ communication network that stretched from the eastern Tigris to northwestern Syria.
Since 2010, we have been developing a program to investigate the interconnected relationship between media and early Holocene communities. We draw insights from image sciences, social neurosciences, phenomenology, and prehistory. In this contribution, we examine the continuities and changes in human representations in northern Mesopotamia, from early Holocene sedentary hunter-fisher-gatherer to farming communities of the 8th millennium BCE in Central Anatolia, to illustrate our approach.
