September 1989, Page 57B.

Archaeology

Modern Kilim Rug Motifs Linked to Stone Age Cult Symbols

By Kurt Holden

The appeal of the flat weave wool rugs called Kilims, both to novice and sophisticated collectors of oriental rugs, has elevated their prices spectacularly. For years they reached collectors outside the Middle East largely in the form of wrapping for shipments of more valuable oriental pile carpets.

Now, however, they are prized in their own right. New Kilims with bright colors and basic designs are popular items with tourists visiting the Middle East. Many are less expensive than oriental pile carpets, and their bright colors and bold motifs make them striking additions to home decor, both as carpets and as wall hangings. Older examples are the subject of lavishly illustrated books, command high prices at exhibitions, and are increasingly the objects of specialized study.

There are good reasons, according to British archaeologist James Mellaart, who has excavated in Turkey some of the earliest and best preserved sites of fixed human settlement in the world. His excavation in 1961 of a late stone age site at Catalhuyuk, east of Ankara, turned up evidence of the geometric patterns and designs that had decorated walls hangings of the time.

"My Turkish colleagues immediately said, 'those are Kilims,'" Mellaart told a Reuters reporter. Since then the British archaeologist, who has spent most of his life working on the prehistory of Anatolia, has collaborated with Turkish Kilim expert Belkis Balpinar in tracing the stone age origins of many of the patterns characteristic of the Kilims found in Turkey and nearby areas of Iran, Iraq and Syria.

"We have found evidence in Turkey of the oldest woven textiles yet found in the world, and there is a direct line of descent to Kilims still woven today," Mellaart reports. He, Balpinar and West German photographer Udo Hirsh are working on a book which will trace the neolithic origins of many of the common motifs in contemporary Kilims in the same areas.

Balpinar reports that because the weavers of the rugs are so conservative and faithful to the old patterns, it is difficult to date old pieces accurately. The designs don't change.

"But I can sometimes tell the place of origin down to a single village or tribe," she said, "because the pattern is handed down from mother to daughter, probably for thousands of years."

Balpinar traces 14 Kilim motifs in use today back to the symbols of ancient religious cults in Anatolia. Most striking is the mother goddess, represented not only in figurines found at many stone age sites in modern Turkey, but in contemporary settlements throughout the Mediterranean.

The fertility goddess symbol is called "elibelinde" by the contempory Turkish weavers, and it is manifested in scores of stylized combinations. In one village, Balpinar reports, weavers still sacrifice a sheep before beginning an elibelinde Kilim.

Old Turkish Kilims have become so popular that collectors have paid up to $100,000 for fragments of old carpets still preserved in mosques. The direct linking of the Kilim patterns to some of the earliest examples of human artistic expression can only increase world interest.

"I think it's very exciting," Alan Marcuson, editor of Hali, a British oriental carpet trade magazine, told Reuters. "It's a very respectable theory and I'm dying to see the book.

Kurt Holden is a writer and documentary filmmaker from California who divides his time between the US and the Middle East.