Çatalhüyük

One of the world's earliest towns, a huge Neolithic site in south central Turkey's Konya plain. At least 14 levels have been excavated so far with radiocarbon dates from 6500 BC to 5400 BC, without undisturbed deposits being reached. Cereals were cultivated, cattle and sheep were bred, and hunting took place. Pottery had apparently only just been introduced. Trade in such materials as obsidian and seashells was extensive. There were flaked stone tools and polished obsidian mirrors. The mud-brick buildings were rectangular with access only possible through the roofs. Built-in furniture included benches and platforms. The earliest evidence of religious beliefs have been found at the mound of Çatal Hüyük. Shrines were very frequent, with huge figures of goddesses in the posture of giving birth, leopards, and the heads of bulls and rams modeled in high relief on the walls. Other shrines contain elaborate frescoes of the hunting of deer and aurochs, or vultures devouring headless human corpses. Stone and terra-cotta statuettes found in these shrines represent a female figure, sometimes accompanied by leopards and, from the earlier levels of excavation, a male either bearded and seated on a bull or youthful and riding a leopard. The main deity of these people was evidently a goddess. The dead were buried beneath plastered platforms within the shrines or under the floors of the buildings. Evidence suggests both craft specialization and social stratification.

One of the largest known Neolithic sites in the Near East, located in the Konya plain of southern Anatolia, about 11 km from modern Çumra. A section of the 32-acre site was excavated by James Mellaart in the 1960s (1967; 1975), revealing 14 building phases radiocarbondated to the period 6250–5400 BC, roughly contemporary with the Levantine Pre-pottery Neolithic B or AMUQ A-B periods. The subsistence at Çatal Hüyük was based on cattle domestication and irrigation agriculture, with crops including emmer, einkorn and barley, as well as field peas, acorns, pistachios and almonds. Mellaart’s study of the carbonized organic remains from the site as well as the evidence for early metallurgy were both exceptional achievements for an excavation in the 1960s.

The site is perhaps best known for the paintings, ox skulls and relief sculptures decorating the internal walls of many of the houses, including protuberances interpreted as female breasts (sometimes incorporating boar-tusks and vulture-beaks) and figures of women apparently giving birth to wild beasts, as well as paintings of humans dressed as vultures apparently engaged in funeral rites. As at many other Near Eastern Neolithic sites, the corpses were buried beneath the floors of houses. At Çatal Hüyük, however, the burial customs also involved the deliberate excarnation of the bodies and the removal of the skulls, which were placed in baskets on the floors of some of the houses.

Ian Hodder has re-examined the GENDER distinctions and symbolic relationships of the house decoration, deducing that ‘early material symbolism is involved in the celebration and control of the wild, and that the control relates to social power through the representation of male and female and through the organization of space’ (Hodder 1990: 10–11). This study of the Çatal Hüyük house decoration forms part of the basic thesis of The domestication of Europe, in which he interprets the emergence of the European Neolithic as ‘a socialsymbolic process’ in which ‘animals, plants, clay, death, and perhaps reproduction are all “natural” phenomena which are “cultured” and brought within the control of a social and cultural system’ (Hodder 1990: 18–19). Beginning in the 1990s, Hodder undertook new excavations at the site, partly in order to address the question of whether, as Mellaart had suggested, craftwork was undertaken in a specialized area of the site rather than within the individual houses.

A site located south-east of Konya in Anatolia, and one of the largest Neolithic settlement known in Western Asia, covering cl 3 hectares. In the small part excavated, 14 building levels were found, without undisturbed deposits being reached. Radiocarbon dates cover the period c6250-5400 be. Cereals were cultivated, and cattle, perhaps domesticated locally, were bred; in fact 90 per cent of the animal bones came from cattle and these animals were clearly of ritual as well as economic importance to the community, as bull horns and skulls form the dominant motif in the many shrines on the site. Sheep and goats were hunted and may have been domesticated in later levels. The houses were built of mud-brick and were of a standard type, c25 square metres with kitchens, living and storage rooms. The houses were built against each other, with no streets or courtyards, suggesting rooftop walkways and access from the roof. Built-in furniture includes benches and platforms. The buildings designated shrines were identical in form, but decorated with remarkable painted and relief ornamentation, figuring bull motifs predominantly,but also other animal hunting scenes, and figures of the ‘mother goddess’, sometimes giving birth. Burials under the floors and platforms were common; those under the shrines were often accompanied by precious objects. As well as the unique shrines, this site is remarkable for its advanced technology in the crafts of obsidian working, weaving and woodwork and even in incipient metallurgy (copper and lead). The evidence suggests both craft specialization and social stratification. The great wealth and precocious development of this settlement may have arisen through control of the trade in obsidian from central Anatolian sources throughout the Near East.