Social aspects of plant and animal consumption at Late Chalcolithic Arslantepe, Turkey

This article is aimed at establishing trends in the taxonomic composition of Late Chalcolithic animal and plant assemblages in three different sectors of the Arslantepe settlement in Eastern Anatolia. Differences between common and elite dwellings as well as communal areas and storage facilities may help highlight parallels outlined by sister disciplines in reconstructing diet in various periods of the site. Capricious patterns found during the distinction between elite residences and common households were in part influenced by changes in food consumption through time, a hypothesis tested by diachronic comparisons between animal and plant remains in an effort to pinpoint the expression of social inequalities in the diet. The analyses are based on groupings of provenances seen as functionally diverse areas whose individual composition of biological remains can be compared to other archaeological parameters discussed by Balossi Restelli et alii and Iacumin et alii in the same issue.