Humans and Landscapes of Çatalhöyük: Reports From the 2000-2008 Seasons (Çatalhöyük Research Project Series, Volume 8)

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The Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey has been world famous since the 1960s when excavations revealed the large size and dense occupation of the settlement, as well as the spectacular wall paintings and reliefs uncovered inside the houses. Since 1993 an international team of archaeologists, led by Ian Hodder, has been carrying out new excavations and research, in order to shed more light on the people who inhabited the site. The present volume reports on the results of excavations in 2000–2008 that have provided a wealth of new data on the ways in which the Çatalhöyük settlement and environment were dwelled in.

A first section explores how houses, open areas, and middens in the settlement were enmeshed in the daily lives of the inhabitants, integrating a wide range of different types of data at different scales. A second section examines subsistence practices of the site’s inhabitants and builds up a picture of how the overall landscape was exploited and lived within. A third section examines the evidence from the skeletons of those buried within the houses at Çatalhöyük in order to examine health, diet, lifestyle, and activity within the settlement and across the landscape. This final section also reports on the burial practices and associations in order to build hypotheses about the social organization of those inhabiting the settlement. A complex picture emerges of a relatively decentralized society, large in size but small-scale in terms of organization, dwelling within a mosaic patchwork of environments. Through time, however, substantial changes occur in the ways in which humans and landscapes interact.

Substantive Technologies at Çatalhöyük: Reports From the 2000-2008 Seasons (Çatalhöyük Research Project Series, Volume 9)

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The Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey has been world famous since the 1960s when excavations revealed the large size and dense occupation of the settlement, as well as the spectacular wall paintings and reliefs uncovered inside the houses. Since 1993 an international team of archaeologists, led by Ian Hodder, has been carrying out new excavations and research, in order to shed more light on the people who inhabited the site. The present volume reports on the results of excavations in 2000–2008 that have provided a wealth of new data on the ways in which humans became increasingly engaged in their material environment such that ‘things’ came to play an active force in their lives.

A substantial and heavy involvement was with alluvial clays that surrounded the site. In the absence of large local stone, humans became increasingly involved in the extraction and manipulation of clay for a wide range of purposes—from bricks to ovens, pots and figurines. This heavy use of clays led to changes in the local environment that interacted with human activity, as indicated in the first section of the volume. In the second section, other examples of material technologies are considered, all of which in various ways engage humans in specific dependencies and relationships. For example, large-scale studies of obsidian trade have drawn a complex picture of changing interactions between humans over time. The volume concludes with an integrated account of the uses of materials at Çatalhöyük based on the analysis of heavy residue samples from all contexts at the site.

Çatalhöyük Excavations: The 2000-2008 Seasons (Çatalhöyük Research Project Series, Volume 7)

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The Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey has been world famous since the 1960s when excavations revealed the large size and dense occupation of the settlement, as well as the spectacular wall paintings and reliefs uncovered inside the houses. Since 1993 an international team of archaeologists, led by Ian Hodder, has been carrying out new excavations and research, in order to shed more light on the people who inhabited the site. Çatalhöyük Excavations presents the results of the excavations that took place at the site from 2000 to 2008 when the main aim was to understand the social geography of the settlement, its layout, and social organization.

Excavation, recording, and sampling methodologies are discussed as well as dating, ‘levels,’ and the grouping of buildings into social sectors. The excavations in three areas of the East Mound at Çatalhöyük are described: the South Area, the 4040 Area in the northern part of the site, and the IST Area excavated by a team from Istanbul University. The description of excavated units, features, and buildings incorporates results from the analyses of animal bone, chipped stone, groundstone, shell, ceramics, phytoliths, micromorphology. The integration of such data within their context allows detailed accounts of the lives of the inhabitants of Çatalhöyük, their relationships and activities. The integration of different types of data in the excavation account mimics the process of collaborative interpretation that took place during the excavation and post-excavation process.

Integrating Çatalhöyük: Themes From the 2000-2008 Seasons (Çatalhöyük Research Project Series, Volume 10)

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The Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey has been world famous since the 1960s when excavations revealed the large size and dense occupation of the settlement, as well as the spectacular wall paintings and reliefs uncovered inside the houses. Since 1993 an international team of archaeologists, led by Ian Hodder, has been carrying out new excavations and research, in order to shed more light on the people who inhabited the site. The present volume discusses general themes that have emerged in the analysis and interpretation of the results of excavations in 2000–2008. It synthesizes the results of research described in other volumes in the same series.

The volume commences with accounts of the recent work on community collaboration at the site, and with discussions of the methods used at the site. It then synthesizes the work on landscape use and mobility, integrating the work of subsistence analysis and the analysis of human remains. The storage and sharing of food is a related topic. The ways in which houses were constructed, lived in, and abandoned leads to a broad discussion of settlement and social organization at Çatalhöyük and of their change through time. For example, shifts in the themes that occur in paintings in houses change through time as part of a wider set of social, economic, and ritual changes in the upper levels. The social uses of materials and technologies are explored and the roles of materials in personal adornment. Finally, the discussion of variation through place and time is recognized as dependent on scales of analysis and social process.

Excavating Çatalhöyük: South, North and KOPAL Area Reports From the 1995-99 Seasons

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Ian Hodder’s campaigns of excavation at the world-famous Neolithic settlement of Çatalhöyük are one of the largest, most complex, and most exciting archaeological field projects in the world and recognized as agenda-setting not only in terms of our understanding of early farming communities in the Near East, particularly the central role religion played in their daily lives, but also in terms of the interaction between theory and practice in the trenches and on-site laboratories.

This volume presents the results of excavation in three areas of the site, known as South, North, and KOPAL, excavated between 1995 and 1999. The book describes aspects of the excavation, recording and sampling methodologies that are necessary for an understanding of the results presented plus it incorporates interpretive discussion. It brings in data from the study of animal bones, lithics, ceramics, micromorphology and the full suite of analyses conducted on the material. These accounts are interspersed with individual specialists’ commentaries and conclusions, that mimic the process of collaborative interpretation that takes place during excavation and post-excavation. The ‘objective descriptions’ of the archaeology are thus exposed as interpretations involving a balancing of a variety of different types of data and scholarly input. Another thought-provoking volume in the Çatalhöyük excavation series which will be read with profit by any archaeologist engaged in working at theory in practice in the field.

 

Marshland Communities and Cultural Landscape: From the Bronze Age to the Present Day (with Christopher Evans)

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Set in the context of this project’s innovative landscape surveys, four extraordinary sites excavated at Haddenham, north of Cambridge, chart the transformation of Neolithic woodland to Romano-British marshland, providing unrivalled insights into death and ritual in a changing prehistoric environment. Volume 2 moves on to later periods, and reveals how Iron Age and Romano-British communities adapted to the wetland environment that had now become established.

A Woodland Archaeology: Neolithic Sites at Haddenham (with Christopher Evans)

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Set in the context of this project’s innovative landscape surveys, four extraordinary sites excavated at Haddenham, north of Cambridge, chart the transformation of Neolithic woodland to Romano-British marshland, providing unrivalled insights into death and ritual in a changing prehistoric environment. The highlight of Volume 1 is the internationally renowned Foulmire Fen long barrow, with its preserved timber burial chamber and façade. The massive individual timbers allow detailed study of Neolithic wood technology and the direct examination of a structure that usually survives only as a pattern of post holes.

 

Çatalhöyük Perspectives: Themes From the 1995–99 Seasons

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This is Volume 6 in the Çatalhöyük Research Project series. It draws on material from Volumes 3 to 5 to deal with broad themes. Data from architecture and excavation contexts are linked into broader discussion of topics such as seasonality, art, and social memory. Rather than assuming that the work of the project is finished once the basic excavation and laboratory results have been presented in Volumes 3 to 5, it has been thought important to present more synthetic accounts that result from the high degree of integration and collaboration which the project has strived for at all stages. In this synthetic volume we most clearly describe the stories we have been telling ourselves during the data recovery/interpretation process. This volume thus provides a contextualization of the work carried out in Volumes 3 to 5; it records the framework of thought within which the data were collected and studied, but it is also the result of the interpretation that occurred in the interaction with data.

 

Changing Materialities at Çatalhöyük: Reports From the 1995–99 Seasons

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This is Volume 5 in the Çatalhöyük Research Project series. It deals with aspects of the material culture excavated in the 1995–99 period. In particular it discusses the changing materiality of life at the site over its 1,100 years of occupation. It includes a discussion of ceramics and other fired clay material, chipped stone, groundstone, worked bone, and basketry. As well as looking at typological and comparative issues in relation to these materials, the chapters explore themes such as the specialization and scale of production, the engagement in systems of exchange, and consumption, use, and deposition. A central question concerns change through time, and the degree and speed of this change. The occupants of the site increasingly get caught up in relations with material objects that start to act back upon them.

Inhabiting Çatalhöyük: Reports From the 1995–99 Seasons

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This is Volume 4 in the Çatalhöyük Research Project series. It deals with various aspects of the habitation of Çatalhöyük. Part A embarks on a discussion of the relationship between the site and its environment, using a wide range of evidence from faunal and charred archaeobotanical remains. Part B looks at evidence from human remains which inform us about diet and lifestyle, as well as wider issues of population dynamics and social structure, including a consideration of population size. Part C looks at the sediments at Çatalhöyük, exploring ways in which houses and open spaces in the settlement were lived in.

Towards Reflexive Method in Archaeology: the Example at Çatalhöyük

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In the early 1990s the University of Cambridge reopened excavations at the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in central Turkey, abandoned since the 1960s. This is Volume 2 in the Çatalhöyük Research Project series. Here Ian Hodder explains his vision of archaeological excavation, where careful examination of context and an awareness of human bias allows researchers exciting new insights into prehistoric cognition. The aim of the volume is to discuss some of the reflexive or post-processual methods that have been introduced at the site in the work there since 1993. These methods involve reflexivity, interactivity, multivocality, and contextuality or relationality.

 

On the Surface: Çatalhöyük 1993–95

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After the excitement of its discovery and excavations in the early 1960s, the world-important site of Çatalhöyük has remained dormant for 30 years. This is Volume 1 of the Çatalhöyük Research Project series. It describes the first phase of renewed archaeological research at the site. It reports on the work that has taken place on the surfaces of the east and west mounds and in the surrounding regions. It also discusses the material from the 1960s excavation in museums, which has been re-examined. The result is that new perspectives can be offered on the internal organization and symbolism of a site which is central to our understanding of the earliest development of complex societies.