Fig. 2.2 Polatlı climate diagram (39°35’N 32°08’E). Based on 41–yr average. Average monthly minimum always >0°C; absolute minimum <0°C January and February (source: Meteoroloji Bülteni 1974).
Fig. 2.3 Polatlı precipitation, by growing season (July–June), 1929 to 2007. Seventy-eight-year mean: 349.4 mm, S.D. 64.0 mm (source: Meteoroloji Bakanlik and Polatli Meteoroloji Istasyonu).
Modern Vegetation Overview
Michael Zohary (1973:579) describes the natural vegetation of the Anatolian plateau between 700 and 2000 m as “steppe forest,” commenting that the term forest is “not always appropriate to a formation in which the arboreal elements are sometimes so remotely scattered, that one can hardly catch two trees at one glance.” This description certainly fits the modern landscape. One should think of this vegetation type as “a steppe sprinkled with solitary trees which under certain conditions may become condensed and turn into a forest-like formation” (ibid.). At an elevation of just under 700 m, Gordion itself would be at the upper boundary of the treeless Anatolian steppe, though terrain at 700 m elevation lies as close as 2 km.
Today, the land around Yassihöyük is largely devoted to farming and grazing. Any land that can be irrigated is, but all irrigation is carried out with motordriven pumps. Since the mid-1990s, a government water project has brought irrigation to the slopes, greatly expanding the area of irrigable and irrigated land. In and near the village of Yassihöyük itself, trees grow primarily in protected gardens and along the banks of the Sakarya River. Isolated trees (Elaeagnus angustifolia, Ulmus glabra, Prunus amygdalus, Salix sp.) grow near the edges of some fields.
Between Şabanözü and Avşar, oak (Quercus pubescens) grows as close as 15 km from Gordion. To the northwest, the closest stands of junipers (Juniperus excelsa and J. oxycedrus) mixed with oak en route to Hamidiye are near Ahirozu, about 30 km by road from Gordion (elev. c. 1000 m). About 40 km from Gordion, the soil changes and oak becomes more common. Continuing on to Hamidiye (Yag Arslan), about 50 km from Gordion, oak (Q. pubescens, Q. cerris) and pine (Pinus nigra) grow. Just past Hamidiye, larger trees, mainly pine with an understory of oak and juniper (J. oxycedrus), grow in the forest (Figs. 2.4, 2.5). The extent to which the poor aspect of the vegetation is due to climate or human interference (fuel gathering, grazing, and, in antiquity, construction projects) is not entirely clear, but the analyses of archaeological woods from Gordion illuminate this question.
Since 1988, I have conducted informal vegetation surveys in the region, most intensively within 2 km of Gordion. Uncultivated habitats lying within this radius include the riverside, former floodplain, and degraded steppe on a marly siltstone substrate in which Artemisia sp. and wild thyme (Thymus sp.) dominate. A small patch of grassy steppe vegetation that was relatively undisturbed until the mid-1990s straddles the boundary between Yassihöyük’s fields and those of a neighboring village, Şabanözü (about 13 km to the northeast). Perennial grasses mixed with a variety of other plants covered the slope in 1992, but after irrigation came to the adjacent fields, annual grasses began to replace the native steppe vegetation.
Recent Land Use—Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, Fuel
Even since 1988, land-use patterns in the Sakarya valley near Yassihöyük have changed. Most obvious to the occasional visitor are the expansion of irrigation to previously dry-farmed fields and the increase in weekend day-trippers from Polatli and Ankara. At a scale of centuries and millennia, climate fluctuations, shifting river channels, periods of erosion, and many other human and natural factors have affected the landscape, so arguably there is no “ethnographic present.” Gürsan-Salzmann (2005) is conducting a comprehensive historical and ethnographic study of the region; here I present a general description based on her work, other published sources, my own observations, and conversations and discussions with some of the villagers who worked for the project (mainly Ekrem Bekler and Remzi Yilmaz) and team members Ayşe Gürsan-Salzmann and Ben Marsh.
Fig. 2.4 Immediate environs of Gordion: a. Sakarya vegetation with Kuş Tepe in background; b. overgrazed pasture with Tumulus MM in right midground and Kızlarkayası outcrop in background; c. “grassy steppe” in 1992, before irrigation wrought land-use changes; d. former “grassy steppe” in 2007, after irrigation led to intensified agricultural activity in adjacent fields (Tumulus MM visible in center background).
Crops
Agriculture is still the main occupation of the Yassihöyük villagers, at least during the growing season. The most important field crops are macaroni wheat, two-row barley, sugar beet, onion, sunflower, and melon. The last two of these are also grown in smaller gardens, along with tomato, eggplant, peppers, okra, and other vegetables for home consumption and market sale. Lentils and chickpeas are also grown. Several crops that were common in recent memory are no longer grown: rye, which is still a common weed of wheat fields, and cumin. One retired farmer (pers. comm., July 8, 1994) mentioned three kinds of barley that were once grown: beyaz arpa (white barley), siyah arpa (black barley), and peygambar arpa (pilgrim barley; common oat?). Several crops were grown for oil: keten (linseed, flax; Linum usitatissimum), konjit/susam (sesame; Sesamum indicum), and a plant he called zira (possible mishearing or variant of zeyrek [flax], Ertuğ 2000). An older farmer remembers growing burçak (bitter vetch; Vicia ervilia). Bitter vetch is harder to harvest than other fodder crops, so its culture declined after mechanization (H. Firincioglu, pers. comm., July 12, 2001). These discontinued crops were not irrigated, as the villagers did not have pumps then. Rye was and barley is grown primarily for fodder.
Fig. 2.5 Woodland vegetation in the Gordion region: a. oak (Quercus pubescens) below Avsar, ca. 900m; b. juniper (J. oxycedrus) and oak (Quercus pubescens) en route to the pine forest at Hamidiye, over 1000 m; c. pine (Pinus nigra), juniper (J. excelsa and J. oxycedrus) and oak (Q. pubescens) grow together in pine forest zone, ca. 1400 m; d. juniper (J. excelsa) en route to pine forest, ca. 1200 m; e. pine (Pinus nigra) in clearing in pine forest.
Grain yields depend on moisture availability, the crop rotation, and the application of fertilizer (see Gürsan-Salzmann 2005). One farmer (E. Bekler, July 18, 1994) said that barley yields can be relatively low because wheat is more likely to be planted after a fallow year, when the soil is more fertile. He used to sow unirrigated wheat at a rate of 20 kg/dunam (ca. 20 kg/ha), for an expected yield of about 10 teneke (130–150 kg). In a dry year, a field would yield 7–10 teneke; the best years’ yields are about 15–20 teneke. Irrigated wheat, which takes a lot of fertilizer and water, will typically yield 25–30 teneke; yields in a dry year would be 13–15 teneke, and in the best years could be as high as 35 teneke. Twenty-six kg of unirrigated barley planted after a fallow year ordinarily yield 20 teneke. The yield in a dry year would be only 5 or 6 teneke, and in a wet year would be 20. For irrigated barley, if you plant two teneke, you can expect a return of 30–35 teneke; in a dry year the yield would be 7 or 8 teneke, and 40 in the best year (Table 2.1).
Farmers’ yields mentioned to Gürsan-Salzmann averaged about 200–250 kg/dunam for unirrigated, and 450–500 kg/dunam for irrigated wheat (about the same