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<< Our Photo Pages >> Çatalhöyük - Ancient Village or Settlement in Turkey

Submitted by Andy B on Saturday, 08 October 2016  Page Views: 67666

DigsSite Name: Çatalhöyük Alternative Name: Çatal Höyük, Çatal Hüyük, Catalhoyuk, Catal Hoyuk
Country: Turkey Type: Ancient Village or Settlement
Nearest Town: Konya
Latitude: 37.666500N  Longitude: 32.828200E
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
2 Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
3 Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
4 Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
5

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Çatalhöyük
Çatalhöyük submitted by dodomad : Archaeological excavations in the Central Anatolian province of Konya’s Çatalhöyük, headed by Professor Ian Hadder, have unearthed a well-preserved female figurine from the Neolithic era of 8,000-8,500 B.C. Photo Credit: Çatalhöyük excavation team (Vote or comment on this photo)
Ancient City in Turkey, Konya province. Çatalhöyük was a very large Neolithic and Chalcolithic settlement in southern Anatolia, dating from around 7500 BCE for the lowest layers. It is perhaps the largest and most sophisticated Neolithic site yet uncovered.

Çatalhöyük is located overlooking wheatfields in the Konya Plain, southeast of the present-day city of Konya, Turkey, approximately eighty-five miles from the twin-coned volcano of Hasan Dağ. The eastern settlement forms a mound which would have risen about 20 metres above the plain at the time of the latest Neolithic occupation.

There is also a smaller settlement mound to the west and a Byzantine settlement a few hundred meters to the east. The prehistoric mound settlements were abandoned before the Bronze Age. A channel of the Çarsamba river once flowed between the two mounds, and the settlement was built on alluvial clay which may have been favourable for early agriculture.

More at the Çatalhöyük Excavation Website.

Note: Excavations at Çatalhöyük have unearthed a well-preserved 'unique' female figurine from the Neolithic era, see the latest comments on our page
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Çatalhöyük
Çatalhöyük submitted by AlexHunger : Ankara Museum: Cerememonial Bull/Cow temple from the Neolithic settlement of Çatalhöyük, whıch is said to be the 'oldest city' on earth. The inhabitant had mastered agrıculture and cattle herdıng, the later to be found frequently ın the artwork. Many of the rooms had these skulls covered wıth plaster whıch probabbly had some sort of ceremomial purpose. The fıgure over the 3 skulls is... (Vote or comment on this photo)

Çatalhöyük
Çatalhöyük submitted by davidmorgan : You're a bit limited on views of this site, but all the same - a fascinating place. (Vote or comment on this photo)

Çatalhöyük
Çatalhöyük submitted by AlexHunger : Older excavations at Catal Hoyuk Mound with shelter as seen from the bottom. The best exhibits have been sent to the Ankara Museum. The name is pronounced Chatal Hoeyuek. (Vote or comment on this photo)

Çatalhöyük
Çatalhöyük submitted by AlexHunger : Older excavations at Catal Hoyuk Mound with shelter as seen from the top. The best exhibits have been sent to the Ankara Museum. The name is pronounced Chatal Hoeyuek. (Vote or comment on this photo)

Çatalhöyük
Çatalhöyük submitted by AlexHunger : Ankara Museum: Fresco removed from the Neolithic settlement of Çatalhöyük, whıch is said to be the 'oldest city' on earth. The inhabitant had mastered agriculture and cattle herding, the later to be found frequently in the artwork. The society was also said to be matriarchal.

Çatalhöyük
Çatalhöyük submitted by davidmorgan : You can make out some of the red paintwork here.

Çatalhöyük
Çatalhöyük submitted by davidmorgan : Information about the settlement.

Çatalhöyük
Çatalhöyük submitted by davidmorgan : Panoramic view of the older southern excavation area. 18 layers of habitation over 1400 years.

Çatalhöyük
Çatalhöyük submitted by davidmorgan : The now covered northern excavation area.

Çatalhöyük
Çatalhöyük submitted by AlexHunger : clay mother Goddess found Çatalhöyük dating to about 5000 BCE. Interestingly, the later Anatolian godesses, Kybele an Kubaba as well as the orientalised Artemis of Ephesus were also show witha familiar animals on their sides.

Çatalhöyük
Çatalhöyük submitted by AlexHunger : Recostructed Çatalhöyük hut. The original ones would have been attached to each other on all sides without streets in between. Access was from the roof, via a ladder or rope.

Çatalhöyük
Çatalhöyük submitted by AlexHunger : Older 1960s excavations at Catal Hoyuk Mound with shelter as seen from the side. The best exhibits have been sent to the Ankara Museum. The name is pronounced Chatal Hoeyuek.

Çatalhöyük
Çatalhöyük submitted by AlexHunger : Recent Polish excavations at Catal Hoyuk Mound. The mud bricks have been covered up to prevent further erosion from rain and wind for now. The name is pronounced Chatal Hoeyuek.

Çatalhöyük
Çatalhöyük submitted by AlexHunger : Recent excavations at Catal Hoyuk Mound. A shelter will be built above. The mud bricks have been covered up to prevent further erosion from rain and wind until that time. The name is pronounced Chatal Hoeyuek.

Çatalhöyük
Çatalhöyük submitted by AlexHunger : Unexcavated part of Çatalhöyük mound.

Çatalhöyük
Çatalhöyük submitted by AlexHunger

Çatalhöyük
Çatalhöyük submitted by AlexHunger : Ankara Museum: Cerememonial Bull/Cow Heads from the Neolithic settlement of Çatalhöyük, whıch is said to be the 'oldest city' on earth. The inhabitant had mastered agriculture and cattle herding, the later to be found frequently in the artwork. Many of the rooms had these skulls covered with plaster which probabbly had some sort of ceremonial purpose. The society was also said to be matria...

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 10.0km NNE 19° Boncuklu Höyük* Ancient Village or Settlement
 10.6km NW 319° Abditol Höyük* Ancient Village or Settlement
 18.4km ESE 105° Turkmen Karahoyuk* Ancient Village or Settlement
 34.9km NNE 21° Bozdag Roman Dam* Ancient Mine, Quarry or other Industry
 37.0km NW 307° Konya Museum Museum
 37.4km NW 308° Konya* Ancient Village or Settlement
 41.9km NE 36° Savatra* Ancient Village or Settlement
 46.8km NW 304° Gevale Castle Hillfort
 48.4km SW 232° Karahoyuk (Akoren) Ancient Village or Settlement
 63.1km SE 135° Can Hasan* Ancient Village or Settlement
 82.0km W 270° Fasillar* Carving
 103.0km W 280° Eflatun Pinar* Holy Well or Sacred Spring
 114.9km NW 320° Yalburt* Carving
 121.0km NE 46° Acemhöyük* Ancient Village or Settlement
 121.9km ESE 103° Ivriz Relief* Carving
 123.1km E 90° Eregli Kara Hoyuk Ancient Village or Settlement
 128.0km NE 53° Aksaray Museum* Museum
 132.0km WNW 290° Arakli Mound Ancient Village or Settlement
 139.6km ENE 77° Kinik Hoyuk* Ancient Village or Settlement
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 144.0km ENE 58° Musular Ancient Village or Settlement
 144.4km ENE 58° Asikli Hoyuk* Ancient Village or Settlement
 146.5km SSE 154° Kilise Tepe Ancient Village or Settlement
 148.5km SSW 204° Syedra* Ancient Village or Settlement
 148.7km SW 234° Seleukeia Lyrbe* Ancient Village or Settlement
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"Çatalhöyük" | Login/Create an Account | 38 News and Comments
  
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Pits and Places: Using anticipation to characterize deposits at Neolithic Çatalhöyük by Andy B on Saturday, 11 April 2020
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Pits and Places: Using anticipation to characterize deposits at Neolithic Çatalhöyük - Kevin Kay (University of Cambridge)

The burial of assorted artefacts in pits or fill layers presents an interpretive challenge to archaeologists. Our first instinct may be to categorize buried deposits based on their contents, as in the examples of graves, hoards, and storage pits. In many cases, however, the contents of pits vary widely, proving ambiguous and hard to classify. I propose that understanding buried deposits as fundamentally temporal events involved in making space offers one fruitful way forward. By considering the local trajectories that led up to burial events, and the futures that buried deposits helped to bring about in a space, we can distinguish productively between kinds of deposit without floundering on the sheer variety of their contents. Taking deposits within houses at Catalhoyuk as an example, I use sequential association rules analysis – a simple statistical method for identifying links in series of events – to distinguish among deposits differently involved in making social space. In this instance, an archaeology explicitly tailored to the diachronic character of space, highlighting links of anticipation and synergies across time, offers a clearer view of the archaeological record than more conventional, static approaches to classifying and investigating deposits.

https://youtu.be/wRTqJlXLs5c

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Pits and Places: Using anticipation to characterize deposits at Neolithic Çatalhöyük by Andy B on Saturday, 29 February 2020
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Video Talk: Pits and Places: Using anticipation to characterize deposits at Neolithic Çatalhöyük, Kevin Kay (University of Cambridge)

The burial of assorted artefacts in pits or fill layers presents an interpretive challenge to archaeologists. Our first instinct may be to categorize buried deposits based on their contents, as in the examples of graves, hoards, and storage pits. In many cases, however, the contents of pits vary widely, proving ambiguous and hard to classify. I propose that understanding buried deposits as fundamentally temporal events involved in making space offers one fruitful way forward. By considering the local trajectories that led up to burial events, and the futures that buried deposits helped to bring about in a space, we can distinguish productively between kinds of deposit without floundering on the sheer variety of their contents.

Taking deposits within houses at Catalhoyuk as an example, I use sequential association rules analysis – a simple statistical method for identifying links in series of events – to distinguish among deposits differently involved in making social space. In this instance, an archaeology explicitly tailored to the diachronic character of space, highlighting links of anticipation and synergies across time, offers a clearer view of the archaeological record than more conventional, static approaches to classifying and investigating deposits.

https://youtu.be/wRTqJlXLs5c



Part of the TAG session Futures of the Past: Everyday Landscapes and the Archaeology of Anticipation videoed by Doug Rocks-Macqueen
More here
https://dougsarchaeology.wordpress.com/2020/02/28/futures-of-the-past-everyday-landscapes-and-the-archaeology-of-anticipation/
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Re: Çatalhöyük excavations unveil very dawn of human civilization by Andy B on Thursday, 15 March 2018
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Why was one of the world’s first cities built in the middle of a swamp?
Tuesday 11.00-11.30am 12 November 2002

2. Çatal Hüyük - The First City?

On the wide, flat South Anatolian Plain, near the Turkish city of Konya, there is a broad mound, about 80 metres high. Excavations in the 1960s revealed its importance as one of the first cities the world had known. Nine thousand years ago, Çatal Hüyük was home to up to ten thousand people. The whole mound is made up of the remains of mud brick houses, one on top of another. Many are adorned with painted plaster and the horned skulls of cattle. The settlement occupied a key stage in history, when people were first settling down, domesticating cattle and driving the agricultural revolution.

EXTRA LISTENING - EXTENDED INTERVIEWS

Listen to Shahina Farid 1. Shahina Farid - On top of the mound
Listen to Shahina Farid 2. Shahina Farid - Neolithic house 1
Listen to Shahina Farid 3. Shahina Farid - Neolithic house 2
Listen to David Small 4. David Small - Bricks and the reconstructed house
Listen to Ian Hodder 5. Ian Hodder - Discussion
Listen to Neil Roberts 6. Neil Roberts - Environment

None of the audio works now though - must still be in the BBC archive somewhere...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/unearthingmysteries_20021112.shtml
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Mystery of Çatalhöyük’s early structures to be solved soon by davidmorgan on Tuesday, 11 April 2017
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An excavation team that has been working at Çatalhöyük in Central Anatolia for decades has come the closest yet to solving some of the mysteries surrounding the Neolithic site’s earliest structures, according to the head of the dig.

“Last year, we carried out works with a core team including 12 excavators and 15 laboratory experts, aiming to reach the lowest layer and the earliest structures. But because the excavation season is short, we decided to continue excavations this year, too,” said Professor Ian Hodder, the head of the Çatalhöyük excavations.

“We made interesting finds in 2016. We unearthed two female figurines in the eastern mound. Our examinations showed that they belonged to prestigious and respected women in the society,” he said, noting that previous excavations on the eastern mound in 1999 revealed only garbage dumps and sheep pens rather than houses.

“Works continued to reach the lowest layer in the southern field. I believe that we will be able to unearth the earliest structures in Çatalhöyük during the works we will continue this year,” Hodder said.

Located in what is now Konya, Çatalhöyük provides traces of humanity’s transition from settled villages to urban agglomeration over 9,000 years ago.

Among the finds in 2016 were a mace head, an obsidian arrow of the highest quality ever, bone and ceramic objects in the northern field, as well as many other objects in the southern part.

In the region known as Building 1, two flint stone daggers and a scallop shell were unearthed.

Detailed works in the northern field have also unearthed places of activity, fireplaces and working places. Scholars also learned important information about the use of external spaces.

According to a written statement by Yapı Kredi, which has sponsored the works since 1997, efforts began on social media in 2016 to provide information about Çatalhöyük to a wider mass of people.

At the same time, a mobile application is also being developed for visitors to Çatalhöyük.

In honor of recent excavations at Çatalhöyük, Koç University’s Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (ANAMED) will open an exhibition on June 21 this year.

Unknown facts about Çatalhöyük and details about the past 25 years of excavations will be shown at the exhibition with contemporary and interactive display techniques.

Source: Hürriyet
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Unique female sculpture found in Turkey's Çatalhöyük by davidmorgan on Tuesday, 13 September 2016
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Archaeological excavations in the Central Anatolian province of Konya’s Çatalhöyük, headed by Professor Ian Hodder, have unearthed a well-preserved female figurine from the Neolithic era of 8,000-8,500 B.C.

The figurine has all parts of its body intact and has been defined as “unique.”

The 17-centimeter and 1-kilogram figurine was not found in a garbage field as usual but under a platform along with volcano-made glass.

With the shape of head, hair style, hands under chest and small feet, the figurine is a typical Çatalhöyük artifact, but is distinguished for its fine details.

Çatalhöyük is one of the earliest large human settlements in the world and provides important evidence of the transition from settled villages to urban agglomeration.

Source: Hürriyet
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Ian Hodder: "Origins of Settled Life; Göbekli and Çatalhöyük" by davidmorgan on Friday, 12 August 2016
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This is a good lecture about society at Çatalhöyük:

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    Re: Ian Hodder: by Anonymous on Sunday, 09 October 2016
    Many thanks for the post.......an absorbing lecture shedding light on these remarkable locations
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New findings at Çatalhöyük by davidmorgan on Friday, 22 January 2016
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Archaeological excavations at the ancient settlement of Çatalhöyük continued in 2015, with a rare human face-like plaster head among the most exciting finds, according to excavation head Prof. Ian Hodder.

Providing information about the last year’s excavations in the Çatalhöyük 2015 archive report, which can be reached online, Hodder said they had unearthed very remarkable finds and among them the most important was a plastered-head with obsidian eyes.

“[In] Building 132 [B.132] a head was found that had been modeled in plaster, painted and had obsidian eyes inserted. While a Neolithic statue with obsidian eyes has been found in Şanlıurfa, parallels for the Building 132 head are rare. The head was multiply replastered, and in some of the replasterings the obsidian eyes were replaced with black paint. The head was originally attached to the wall of B.132, above and looking into or watching over the entrance into the side storage room. It is tempting to interpret the head and its obsidian eyes as monitoring the movement of stores into and out of the side room. It is not possible to easily determine whether the head represents a human or [an] animal. When viewed face on, many observers see resemblances to a feline or bear, but when viewed from the side, the head has the type of nose and chin seen on anthropomorphic figurines,” said Hodder.

In the report, Hodder said, a stone figurine was also found in the area.

“The figurine ranks with the best that have ever been found at the site. As in many examples, the head was removed at some time before deposition, but the body is well formed. While the new figurine emphasizes legs and buttocks, it also has a very marked pubic triangle, although the central vertical line is less carefully executed than the rest of the figurine. The fact that such figurines tend to occur more commonly in the upper levels of the site fits in with other evidence of social changes that emphasize domestic production rather than rituals associated with wild animals,” the professor said.

Stating that Çatalhöyük was also photographed with unmanned aerial vehicles, Hodder said, “During the 2015 field season the UC Merced team performed a 3D digital mapping of the landscape of Çatalhöyük and its environs with the goal of providing further understanding of the site’s relationship with other Neolithic settlements in the Konya Plain. Multiple drone flights were conducted to perform low altitude aerial photographic surveys of the landscape and waterways in proximity to Çatalhöyük and Boncuklu Höyük.

Source: Hürriyet
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Private pantries and celebrated surplus: storing and sharing food at Çatalhöyük by Andy B on Thursday, 13 August 2015
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In the Neolithic megasite at Çatalhöyük families lived side by side in conjoined dwellings, like a pueblo. It can be assumed that people were always in and out of each others’ houses – in this case via the roof. Social mechanisms were needed to make all this run smoothly, and in a tour-de-force of botanical, faunal and spatial analysis the authors show how it worked. Families stored their own produce of grain, fruit, nuts and condiments in special bins deep inside the house, but displayed the heads and horns of aurochs near the entrance. While the latter had a religious overtone they also remembered feasts, episodes of sharing that mitigated the provocations of a full larder.

https://www.academia.edu/3391688/Private_pantries_and_celebrated_surplus_storing_and_sharing_food_at_Neolithic_%C3%87atalh%C3%B6y%C3%BCk_Central_Anatolia
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Dance of the cranes: Crane symbolism at Çatalhöyük and beyond by Andy B on Sunday, 24 May 2015
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In this article, the authors reveal the symbolic role of cranes at Neolithic Çatalhöyük, Turkey. Worked bones of the Common Crane (Grus grus) are interpreted as coming from a spread wing used in dances, a ritual practice perhaps connected with the celebration of marriage.

RUSSELL, N. & MCGOWAN, K. J. (2003) Dance of the cranes: Crane symbolism at Çatalhöyük and beyond. Antiquity, 77, 445-455.

https://www.academia.edu/151751/Dance_of_the_cranes_Crane_symbolism_at_%C3%87atalh%C3%B6y%C3%BCk_and_beyond
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    Re: Dance of the cranes: Crane symbolism at Çatalhöyük and beyond by Anonymous on Friday, 14 October 2016
    Birds form a particular totem for many cultures where in viewing the constellation Cygnus, is metamorphosed to suit their particular fancy and beliefs. To one view an eagle, and yet others, a dove, owl, crane, ibis, or vulture. All equal in purpose and portent for they are transporters, guides, and protectors. However, beyond all though, they are emblems of creation. With a single "honk" they herald creation from the orphic egg of life. It is they who epitomise desire and nourishment, for witout, all humanity would cease to exist. The twin birds are but one in a perpetual dance of creation. They are energies and currents of the endogenous principles and it is the birth of the vernal sun, they rejoice.
    [ Reply to This ]

Çatalhöyük excavations reveal gender equality in ancient settled life by davidmorgan on Friday, 03 October 2014
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Through analysis of wall paintings, sculptures, and burials, excavators at Çatalhöyük aim to understand more about the ancient site’s social structure and daily life.

Çatalhöyük, a Neolithic settlement included in the 2012 UNESCO World Heritage list, has attracted thousands of academics from 22 countries to its archaeological works, set to be finished in 2018. The latest headline discoveries at the site indicate that Çatalhöyük was a place of relative gender equality, according to Stanford University Professor Ian Hodder, who is directing the excavations.

“Thanks to modern scientific techniques, we have seen that women and men were eating very similar foods, lived similar lives and worked in similar works. The same social stature was given to both men and women. We have learned that men and women were equally approached,” Hodder said.

“People lived with the principle of equality in Çatalhöyük, especially considering the hierarchy that appeared in other settlements in the Middle East. This makes Çatalhöyük different. There was no leader, government or administrative building; men and women were equal,” he added.

Hodder said Çatalhöyük’s 9,000-year history and large area made it particularly important in its field, noting that it showcased the earliest example of settled life outside of the Middle East.

“It was always thought that the settled [life] was only in the Middle East, Iraq, Mesopotamia and Syria. But these excavations have revealed that farming and settled life existed in the Central Anatolia, too,” he said.

The excavation leader also said archaeologists had been able to glean fresh information about nutrition, social and business relations in Çatalhöyük with new scientific techniques.

The team has also made important discoveries about social structure through burials at the site. “We have also seen that people who were buried under houses were not biologically relatives or members of the same family. They lived as a family but their natural parents are not the same. Those who were born in Çatalhöyük did not live with their biological parents but with others,” Hodder said.

Researchers have also been studying the connections between wall paintings, sculptures and tombs, which allow researchers to develop a better understanding of daily life in the settlement.

“We think that artworks were made to get in touch with the dead or to protect them,” Hodder said, stressing that Çatalhöyük’s artwork, like the many wall paintings discovered in houses, was very rich in terms of symbolism. “Another reason why Çatalhöyük is very important is that all wall paintings and objects were protected very well. When you visit Çatalhöyük and go to these houses, you can see both people and belongings of these people. It gives you the impression that your ancestors are still living with you,” he added.

Hodder said one of the major remaining goals for his team is to address the question of how the settlement Çatalhöyük first began. “We don’t have any idea about the first houses, which were found in the deepest layer. We want to learn why people came together and formed Çatalhöyük,” he said.

Hodder also noted that Çatalhöyük has become more popular among tourists since its inclusion in the UNESCO list. Excavating the site is an arduous process due to need to protect its adobe buildings, and it is often difficult for archaeological sites to find long-term sponsors, he explained. “Archaeology is about processing very slowly and requires great patience,” Hodder said. “Yapı Kredi is taking a risk here, but this risk turned into success when Çatalhöyük entered the UNESCO World Heritage List.”

Source: Hürriyet
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An interview with Ian Hodder by Andy B on Thursday, 29 May 2014
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An interview by Doug Bailey with Ian Hodder talking about the excavations at Çatalhöyük and why he left Cambridge University for Stanford

https://www.academia.edu/2356585/Ian_Hodder
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Re: Çatalhöyük by neolithique02 on Tuesday, 08 April 2014
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Çatalhöyük Research Project Announces Latest Conferences and Discoveries

The Çatalhöyük Research Project, an effort that consists of an international team of archaeologists and other experts from a consortium of universities and research institutions, has announced upcoming conferences to showcase and discuss the latest thinking about the excavation results at the iconic Neolithic and Chalcolithic proto-city settlement in southern Anatolia, in present-day Turkey.
On location near the excavation site, the meetings will take place among two separate but adjoining conference sessions from August 2 through August 4, 2014. The first is part of a Templeton-funded project that is exploring the role of religion and ritual in the origin of settled life. Conference organizers are interested in addressing three foci related to this theme: The first concerning the repetitive building of houses or cult buildings in the same place; the second, the possible cosmological layout of settlements; and the third, the timing of the emergence of a concern with history-making in a place, and its cosmological layout. "At what point in regional sequences do such features emerge and with what does their appearance correlate?", write the organizers. "Can such correlations be used to suggest the causal processes that produced such features; causal processes such as agricultural intensification, population increase, social competition and so on?" The second conference is part of a Polish National Science Center grant aimed at investigating the upper Late Neolithic strata of the East mound at Çatalhöyük and recognizing the demise of the previously vibrant mega-city. This conference aims to address three intertwined issues: The first concerns the character of changes in other parts of the Near East in the second half of the 7th millennium BCE in relation to the developments at Çatalhöyük in a broader regional context; the second issue comprises social and ideological changes taking place at the end of the Neolithic and the beginning of the Chalcolithic; and the third concerns the changes in lifeways, subsistence basis, environment exploitation, and the modes of procurement, consumption and distribution of different resources. "Did the Late Neolithic farmers," added the organizers, "start to exploit a different set of resources originating from previously unexplored areas? Did the end of the 7th millennium BCE involve changes in farming strategies and shifts in the consumption patterns?"
Çatalhöyük has been considered by scholars as a key example of the development of the world's earliest societies. Initially excavated by James Mellaart in the early 1960s, the site has been widely recognised as one of the first urban centers in the world (at 7400 BCE) and exhibits some of the first wall paintings and mural art. The spectacular art provides a direct window into life 9,000 years ago, and the site has become an internationally important key for our understanding of the origins of agriculture and civilization. The aims of the current international project at Çatalhöyük involve full-scale modern archaeological excavation and conservation, and promotion of the site for visitor access. More recently, archaeological excavation and conservation was begun by an international team beginning in 1993 under the direction of Dr. Ian Hodder of the Çatalhöyük Research Project, Stanford University, under the auspices of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, with a permit from the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism, and in close collaboration with the University of California at Berkeley, University of London, Istanbul and Selcuk Universities in Turkey, and Poznan University in Poland. The work is currently focusing on extensive excavation of new areas of the site and the recovery, conservation and presentation of its paintings and sculpture. The work is planned to continue over 25 years.
The most recent excavations of 2013 led to a number of remarkable discoveries, including a piece of cloth th

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Last grain stores at Çatalhöyük found by Andy B on Tuesday, 04 February 2014
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A cache of perfectly preserved Neolithic grain, the largest so far known in the Middle East, has been uncovered by Polish archaeologists working at Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey.

”In a small room with an area of ​​approximately 7 square metres we discovered four containers formed from packed clay containing a large quantity of multi-row grains” – explained Prof. Arkadiusz Marciniak from the Institute of Prehistory in Poznan.

In total, between the two grain hoppers that were excavated the archaeologists recovered almost 5kg of grain. Such an amount in a well preserved state is of great importance to the investigation of early agriculture.

Archaeobotanical research has shown that it was an extinct species of wheat – popular in Neolithic times in the Middle East and Europe. The room in which the discovery was made lay in the north-eastern part of the house group – which consisted of residential buildings constructed around 8,200 years ago.

Source: PAP – Science and Scholarship in Poland with thanks to Past Horizons for the translation
http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/01/2014/last-grain-stores-at-catalhoyuk-found
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9,000-year-old fabric found in Çatalhöyük by davidmorgan on Tuesday, 04 February 2014
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Excavations works that have been continuing in the earliest settlement of Çatalhöyük in the central Anatolian province of Konya have revealed a 9,000-year-old piece of linen fabric. The world’s first hemp-weaved fabric has been found in the ground of a burned house.

The report about the new findings includes the process between June 15 and Aug. 15. More than 120 people from 22 countries worked for the excavations in this process. The most striking thing on the report is this fabric, which was wrapped around a baby skeleton.

The head of the excavations, Stanford University member Professor Ian Hodder, said that the most important finding in 2013 had been discovered thanks to protection conditions of the tumulus. Speaking about the piece of cloth, he said:

“The fire warmed up the ground and platforms of the building and created a kiln drying effect. Therefore the pieces and this piece of cloth underground have been so far protected. Examinations in the laboratory show that this piece of cloth is linen weaved with hemp.

This is a first in the world and one of the best preserved examples.”

Speaking about the relation of the piece of fabric with trade, Hodder said, “This piece of linen, which is weaved very thin, most probably came from the eastern Mediterranean from the central Anatolia. It is already known that obsidians and sea shells had been exchanged in long-distance trade in the Middle East during the Neolithic era. But this fabric may have revealed another side of the trade.”

Hodder noted that they also had discovered a new wall painting, and continued: “In the 2013 excavation season we also started excavations in the Neolithic era buildings in the southern skirt of the eastern tumulus. These buildings really have different features from the early era buildings. They have thick walls and big bricks on the walls. They were not set fire to when people left them. A wall painting on the eastern wall of a building here is a unique one that we have never seen. Generally, paintings in Çatalhöyük are in red and black colors on white ground. But in this example, there are white geometrical shapes on dark ground. We believe that this painting continues through the northern walls of three buildings. It was an exciting experience for us to unearth this wall.”

The report on Çatalhöyük excavations has been published on a website http://www.catalhoyuk.com. The website is designed for those interested in the ongoing excavations in the ancient settlement. Its aim is to provide information about the activities of the project and the different aspects of the research being conducted in the area.

Source: Hürriyet
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Experimental houses to depict ancient life by davidmorgan on Friday, 26 October 2012
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Wall paintings in Çatalhöyük will be recreated for visitors in four experimental houses at the site. Vultures, bulls and leopards, representing characteristics to inhabitants, were frequently depicted. 9,000-year-old civilization will come alive in four experimental houses at Çatalhöyük, an ancient settlement in Konya’s Çumra district included on the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage list.

The assistant director of the Çatalhöyük excavations, Serap Özdöl, told Anatolia news agency that four experimental houses would be built at Çatalhöyük, one of the earliest human settlements in the world.
The houses will bring to the forefront animal paintings that were important for the people living in Anatolia in this period including figures of leopards, bulls and vultures. In these wall paintings, which are accepted as some of the earliest artworks, leopard skins are seen on people, Özdöl said, adding that in the same pictures, figures of vultures and strong bulls frequently appear. “Clearly these signified certain qualities and even god-like powers to the people who lived in these houses.”

Read more and photos at - http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/experimental-houses-to-depict-ancient-life.aspx?pageID=238&nID=33154&NewsCatID=375
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Çatalhöyük inscribed on UNESCO World Heritage List by davidmorgan on Tuesday, 10 July 2012
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Çatalhöyük was successfully inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List on July 1, 2012 at the meeting of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee in St. Petersburg. The members of the Committee congratulated Turkey on its nomination of this rare prehistoric site.
Official website and UNESCO World Heritage.
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Rare ancient temple found in Catalhoyuk by neolithique02 on Wednesday, 04 April 2012
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A team working at Konya’s Catalhoyuk district’s archaeological site has revealed temples from the ancient Neolithic (new stone) and Chalcolithic (copper) eras.

There are two mounds in the district, Trakya University excavation team president, Burcin Erdogu said. While the eastern part of the mound is from Neolithic era, the western part is from the Chalcolithic era.

“We have found the largest Chalcolithic settlement on the Konya valley.”

The east of and west of Catalhoyuk have significant differences, said Erdogu. “The biggest difference is in the architecture,” she said, explaining that the buildings in the Chalcolithic area were smaller than the others.

“In the eastern Catalhoyuk section, there are drawings on the walls. These have symbolic importance. There are geometric drawings on the walls. The symbolism is also reflected in the pottery,” said Erdogu.

Noting that it is the first time the team has encountered such buildings, Erdogu said: “We assumed that the people who lived during that era used this building to hold ceremonies and perform religious rituals.”

Human figures have also been discovered drawn on the walls, as well as pottery that was probably used during the ceremonies. “These potteries were found on the Western side of Catalhoyuk,” she said.

The discoveries will make Konya’s Catalhoyuk a valuable location in the archaeology world.

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/rare-ancient-temple-found-in-turkeys-catalhoyuk.aspx?pageID=238&nID=17184&NewsCatID=375
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    Re: Rare ancient temple found in Catalhoyuk by davidmorgan on Wednesday, 04 April 2012
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    There are two mounds in the district - that's a bit vague. Do they mean the mound at Abditol and maybe Boncuklu Höyük, or somewhere else?
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      Re: Rare ancient temple found in Catalhoyuk by Andy B on Thursday, 05 April 2012
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      Not clear is it - 10km and 36km is a bit big for a 'district'? And was the photo on that page "The Trakya excavation team has unearthed a temple from the ancient era." taken at the well known Catalhoyuk site or the new excavation site?
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      Re: Rare ancient temple found in Catalhoyuk by davidmorgan on Thursday, 05 April 2012
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      I think it might be the west mound at Çatalhöyük - here.
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Into the Stone Age With a Scalpel: A Dig With Clues on Early Urban Life by coldrum on Sunday, 23 October 2011
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Into the Stone Age With a Scalpel: A Dig With Clues on Early Urban Life

A pair of space-age shelters rising from the beet and barley fields of the flat Konya Plain are the first clue to the Catalhoyuk Research Project, where archaeologists are excavating a 9,000-year-old Neolithic village.
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Dig Site in Turkey Reveals an Ancient People’s Handiwork

The experts, armed with scalpels, gingerly scraped away micro-layers of white plaster from a wall deep in the dig last month to reveal what the project director, the British archaeologist Ian Hodder, called a “very exciting” and “particularly intriguing” painting with deep reds and reddish oranges thought to be made with red ochre and cinnabar.

“We were taking off many, many layers of plaster and we have a program where a joint team of Turkish and British conservators try to take them off one by one, so it’s extremely slow-going,” Dr. Hodder said this week by telephone.

“I got called over to where they were working because they saw some paint. The pattern initially didn’t look like very much: We often find just specks of paint or a wall of all-red paint. But this time it gradually emerged that this was a complete painting, and the best preserved painting that I’ve ever seen at Catalhoyuk, with wonderfully fresh, bright colors and very neat lines.”

Word of the discovery spread quickly through the international team on site as more of the painting was exposed.

“It is by far the most intricate and elaborate painting we have found during our excavations here since the mid-90s,” Dr. Hodder said. “We’ve been waiting quite a long time for something so elaborate.”

But Stone Age paintings don’t come with labels explaining what they are.

“An interesting aspect of some of the paintings at Catal,” Dr. Hodder said, “is that they are very enigmatic and full of ambiguity and difficult to read.

“But the two main contenders for what this new discovery might show are that it’s simply a geometric design whose meaning is not clear,” he said. “An alternative is that it’s not just a geometric design, but that it is a representation of bricks, some sort of structure,” maybe an early blueprint of some sort.

Houses were “a very important symbol socially and a focus of life at Catal,” he said. “Maybe they were trying to draw the relationship between them and the house but it’s not easy to make sense of it. We have to do more work on it.”

Catalhoyuk — where people occupied mud-brick houses from about 7400 B.C. to about 6000 B.C. — is 60 kilometers, or 37 miles, southeast of Konya in central Turkey. The area is dotted with gently rising mounds that obscure the ancient roots of urbanization and draw archaeologists from around the world.

An international team of people from 22 countries worked on the site this year, led by experts based at Stanford University in California and University College London in Britain, and backed by sponsors like Boeing, Shell and the Turkish bank Yapi Kredi.

The area was first excavated in the 1960s by another Briton, James Mellaart, now 85, who established that it had been home to an advanced culture of people transitioning from a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a more settled farming life.

Their houses were uniformly rectangular, and entered by holes in the roof rather than front doors. Each had a hearth and an oven, plus platforms that seemed to have been used for sleeping. When a new house was needed, it was built atop the old one. The houses also served as cemeteries: The dead were buried beneath the floor.

Another find this summer was a row of 11 handprints inside a house and above a burial platform. Still another was the discovery of a young calf’s head that had been painted red and installed in a house, above a platform that covered n

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Latest Find at World's Largest Neolithic Settlement a Harbinger of Surprises Yet by coldrum on Sunday, 23 October 2011
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Latest Find at World's Largest Neolithic Settlement a Harbinger of Surprises Yet to Come?

Archaeologists have recently uncovered a fascinating new find at the world's largest and most famous Neolithic settlement, a site that, even after more than two decades of intensive study, still has much more to reveal to scientists and the world about a community that thrived in Anatolia (current-day Turkey) about 9,500 years ago. As reported recently in the New York Times and at the Global Heritage Fund's Heritage on the Wire, archaeologists came across a surprisingly well-preserved wall painting while excavating at Çatalhöyük, a site dated to 7500 - 5700 B.C..

Although the find, a series of well-defined red lines organized into a complex, highly structured pattern, has astounded scientists with its freshness and intricate detail, it may possibly represent only the tip of the iceberg for finds yet to come. Only 4% of the estimated extent of Çatalhöyük has been excavated thus far. And even before this latest find, the site had already featured murals, wall paintings, figurines, and much more, now removed from the site and on display at the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara, Turkey.

Çatalhöyük is located in the Konya Plain, southeast of the city of Konya (ancient Iconium) in Turkey. The site was first excavated by James Mellaart in 1958, who later led another set of excavations between 1961 and 1965. It soon became apparent that he had uncovered the remains of a center of advanced culture during the Neolithic period in Anatolia. In September, 1993, excavations began under Ian Hodder, then at the University of Cambridge, who has continued to lead efforts since then as the world's foremost authority on the site and the people who lived there.

What the Archaeology Has Revealed

Archaeological investigations and studies have painted a picture of Neolithic life at this site that goes without precedent. The excavations have shown that Çatalhöyük, thus far, was composed primarily of domestic mud-brick structures, with some featuring ornate murals. The settlement is estimated to have contained an average population of between 5,000 to 8,000 people inhabiting a honeycomb maze of structures or houses with no streets or paths in between. They apparently accessed their dwellings through ceiling entrances, reached by ladders and stairs.

Interestingly, archaeologists have found little trash or refuse within the buildings, finding trash areas outside the ruins that included, along with food remains, large amounts of wood ash. They uncovered as many as eighteen settlement layers.


Evidence suggested that the people buried their dead in close proximity to their living spaces, with human remains often found wrapped in reed mats or in baskets in pits beneath their floors, hearths, under platforms in their main rooms, and under beds. Suggestive of ritualistic behavior, a few graves had been disturbed in antiquity, with heads removed and found in other places in the settlement area, some skulls plastered and painted with ochre similar to what had been found at other Neolithic sites such as Jericho and other sites in Syria.

Mural paintings and figurines were found throughout the excavated areas, as well as clay figurines of women, such as the "Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük". Rooms with higher concentrations of figurines, graves and murals suggest that they may have been shrines, meaning that the people may have practiced a religion. Curiously, heads of animals, particularly that of cattle, were found mounted on walls. Bull horns were commonly found within the house structures. One structure featured what some have interpreted to be a wall painting of the village or settlement with what may be mountain peaks in the background, possibly the oldest landscape painting ever found.

There was no evidence at Çatalhöyük to suggest any social class structure, given that no houses with features that c

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No Family Plots, Just Communal Burials In Ancient Settlement by bat400 on Sunday, 25 September 2011
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Human remains discovered beneath the floors of mud-brick houses at one of the world's first permanent settlements, were not biologically related to one another, a finding that paints a new picture of life 9,000 years ago on a marshy plain in central Turkey.

Even children as young as 8 were not buried alongside their parents or other relatives at the site called Çatalhöyük, the researchers found. "It speaks a lot to the type of social structure that they might have had," researcher Marin Pilloud, a physical anthropologist (US Joint Accounting Command, Hawaii) told LiveScience.

Çatalhöyük covered 26 acres (10.5 hectares), and its people — estimated to be as many as 10,000 — would have made a living by growing crops and herding domesticated animals.

When archaeologists first dug the site in the 1950s and '60s, they found inside the homes, the people drew art on the walls and created spear points and pottery. They also buried their dead (up to 30 of them per house) beneath the floors.

To figure out how the buried humans were related, scientists tried — unsuccessfully — to extract DNA from the skeletons. So Pilloud and Clark Spencer Larsen of Ohio State University analyzed the next best thing: the size and shape of their teeth. Since people who are related should have similarities in tooth morphology, the researchers compared the ancient dental remains of 266 individuals from the site. Their results are detailed in a paper recently published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

They found that the people buried beneath the floor of each house were, in general, not related to each other. With the possible exception of one building, this occurred throughout the entire site for as long as the settlement existed.

"It doesn't look as if there was a strong genetic component to determining who would be buried together," Pilloud said. The discovery suggests people living at Çatalhöyük were not tied to each other through strong bonds of kinship, she added.

"I'm not trying to argue that biological relationships would not have been meaningful to the people at Çatalhöyük," Pilloud said. But rather, biological kinship "wasn't the sole defining principle much like we presume it was in the hunter-gatherer era."

The results support one idea scientists have put forth: that Çatalhöyük society was determined by membership in houses in which a group of people passed down rights and resources, Hodder said. "Membership of the house was not based on biological kin but on a wide range of processes by which people could join the house," he explained. Each house may have had access to its own tools, hunting grounds, water sources and agricultural lands.

"What distinguishes each entity is their co-ownership of a series of resources," Prof. Ian Hodder (Stanford University), who directs current excavations and research efforts at Çatalhöyük, said.

The change from biological to more practically based bonds may have been the result of the Çatalhöyük people's move to adopt an urban lifestyle, based on agriculture.

"Before you were hunters and gatherers, in loose groups that were very highly mobile. Now you're all tied together, and you're all living in close quarters," Pilloud said. "They might have called on other groups of individuals, outside of their biological family, to do things like take the herd to the pasture or to help with the harvest, things that might have required more people."

Hodder said this discovery suggests Çatalhöyük was a more complex society than has been thought. "This is suggesting that they've got [a] sufficiently complex level that they needed something more complex than kinship.
Thanks to coldrum for the link to this story. For more, see http://www.livescience.com.
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    Re: No Family Plots, Just Communal Burials In Ancient Settlement by davidmorgan on Sunday, 25 September 2011
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    Fascinating. I'm having a hard time picturing this society. I wonder if it's the same at the older site of Boncuklu just up the road.

    Are we talking about a harmonious community of equals or is it a bunch of property-owning guilds? I'm guessing there must have been some specialised artisans who made all the figurines.

    All the annual reports from Çatalhöyük can be found on their website - here.
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Hodder Cleans House at Famed Çatalhöyük Dig by davidmorgan on Thursday, 09 September 2010
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From coldrum:

Researchers finishing the dig season at Turkey’s Çatalhöyük—a 9500-year-old site famed for its art and symbolism at the dawn of agriculture—got a big shock last week. Stanford University archaeologist Ian Hodder, who has directed excavations since 1993, told the heads of the dig’s specialty labs that they would be asked to step down beginning in 2012, when publication of current work will be completed. It’s “the night of the long knives,” says one long-time team member, who asked not to be identified.

Such a mass dismissal is highly unusual at long-running archaeological excavations. But in a 29 August e-mail to the team explaining his decision, Hodder stressed that he was not dissatisfied with anyone’s work. Rather, the e-mail said, the project “needs new energy—that is, new questions, new theoretical perspectives, ... new methods.”

Hodder, who began digging at Çatalhöyük to test his new ideas about how archaeology should be done, told ScienceInsider that “it was time for a shake-up” as the dig enters the last decade of his 25-year plan for excavations. “It has been a really remarkable team,” Hodder says. But, “I have felt over recent years that the project was getting comfortable with itself and so not challenging each other or me or the assumptions that we were all taking for granted.”

Many team members, some of whom have been working with the project since the mid-1990s, are stunned and confused. So far, however, they have declined to comment publicly as they must work with Hodder for at least another year. The decision affects the leaders of most of the big labs at the privately funded dig, such as ceramics, stone tools, archaeobotany, animal remains, and human remains. Field excavators, who actually dig up the artifacts for the specialists to study, are not affected.

Hodder says he plans to recruit new lab leaders for the next phase of excavations, planned for 2012–18, although he has not yet spelled out what new questions he intends to pursue.

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/09/hodder-cleans-house-at-famed-ata.html
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Secrets of Turkey's Çatalhöyük to be revealed this summer by davidmorgan on Wednesday, 07 July 2010
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Submitted by coldrum:

The latest findings uncovered during the ongoing excavations at Çatalhöyük, one of the oldest settlement areas in human history, will be revealed to the world at the end of the summer. A member of the international archaeological team says the results will be published and discussed in a scientific environment
Secrets of Turkey's Çatalhöyük to be revealed this summer

Archaeological findings unearthed at Çatalhöyük, one of the oldest known settlement areas in human history, will be shared with the public at the end of the summer, according to a member of the international excavation team.

“This information will enable us to learn more details about human beings’ unknown journey in the world. These results do not only concern archaeologists but also scientists in many fields, from medicine to engineering,” archaeologist Gülay Sert said, announcing that scientific publications will be prepared as a result of the excavations and shared with the world this summer.

“The publications are already making all archaeologists who are interested in the Neolithic age excited,” Sert said, adding that the findings will be discussed in a scientific environment by the excavation team members. “The main goal of the work at Çatalhöyük is to gain information about diseases and plants and their effects on people during that period.”

Located in the Çumra district of the Central Anatolian city of Konya, Çatalhöyük is one of the most important archaeological centers in the world. It is thought to be where sheep and goats were initially domesticated and previously nomadic human beings first led a settled life. The wall paintings in the ancient city are regarded as some of humanity’s earliest artworks.

This year’s ongoing excavation work was started by a Trakya University team in western Çatalhöyük, which is the second settlement area of the Chalcolithic age. A large part of the team will start excavations in eastern Çatalhöyük, the settlement area of the Neolithic age, after July 15.

Educational focus

Archaeologists on the excavation team, including team leader Professor Ian Hodder from Stanford University in the United States, have come to Çatalhöyük from all over Turkey and from around the world. As most of the archaeological findings regarding life 9,000 years ago have already been uncovered during the excavations to date, the next phase of work will proceed at a slow tempo and mostly focus on education.

The Çatalhöyük research area is not only limited to the ruins where excavation work continues. In recent years, laboratories have been built on the campus established near the ancient city under the sponsorship of Boeing and Yapı Kredi Bank.

Professor Hodder, who has created a new “Hodder School” in world archaeological literature, helps the young archaeologists on his team get experience in this ancient city.

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=secrets-of-catalhoyuk-to-be-revealed-this-summer-2010-06-24
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Stone man joins carved animals in neolithic farmyard by coldrum on Thursday, 01 October 2009
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The figurine was dug up at the ancient site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey, which is thought to have been home for some of the world's first farmers.

Stone figurine of a reclining man found at Çatalhöyük in Turkey. Photograph: Jason Quinlan/Çatalhöyük Research Project

A reclining man with a bushy beard and big nose is the latest to join a haul of stone figurines unearthed at the ancient site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey. The sculpture, which measures around six inches high, was uncovered at the neolithic site last week.

Çatalhöyük was the final resting place of some of the world's first farmers. Other figurines representing farmyard animals and people in sitting and standing positions have already been excavated at the site, which dates back to the dawn of farming some 9,000 years ago.

Archaeologists working on the site have discovered primitive houses with rooms decorated with vulture skulls, wild boar tusks and teeth from weasels and foxes. Some of the buildings are believed to have humans buried beneath them.

The discovery of female figurines at Çatalhöyük has led anthropologists to speculate that the community worshipped "mother goddesses".

Death and violence feature prominently in the sculptures, with some missing heads and others with exposed ribs, hip bones and pelvises.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2009/sep/10/stone-figurine-man-catalhoyuk
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Re: Ancient Figurines may have been Toys, not Goddess Statues by AngieLake on Wednesday, 09 September 2009
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Ancient figurines were toys not mother goddess statues, say experts as 9,000-year-old artefacts are discovered

By David Derbyshire

Last updated at 7:29 PM on 09th September 2009
[Daily Mail website]

They were carved out of stone and squeezed out of clay 9,000 years ago, at the very dawn of civilisation.
Now archaeologists say these astonishing Stone Age statues could have been the world's first educational toys.

Nearly 2,000 figures have been unearthed at Catalhoyuk in Turkey - the world's oldest known town - over the last few decades. The most recent were found just last week.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1212320/Ancient-figurines-toys-mother-goddess-statues-say-experts-9-000-year-old-artefacts-discovered.html#ixzz0QeZ8mWRO
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Çatalhöyük roof now completed by Andy B on Thursday, 13 November 2008
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Çatalhöyük roof now completed

The elements are no longer able to weather away at Çatalhöyük, one of the oldest known sites of human settlement, now that the construction of a large wooden protective roof has been completed.

Çatalhöyük, Turkey's most famous Neolithic site, is one the oldest known areas of human settlement, animal domestication and wheat cultivation. The Culture and Tourism Ministry's Cultural Assets and Museums general manager, Orhan Düzgün, told the Anatolia news agency that the roof's construction, which began in June of this year, had been finished.

The roof is made of specially laminated wood and is 40 meters high and 43 by 26 meters in area and will protect the historical site and the archaeological work going on there from damage resulting from exposure to the elements, Düzgün stated. The roof was constructed with an eye for aesthetics as well, he said, in a design maximally beneficial to both tourists and the archaeologists working the site. "With the folding side panels of the covering, a good ventilation system is ensured. The roof will be effective at directing away water that can harm the site and will also protect the site against strong winds in the wintertime. The polycarbonate panels on the roof will allow for the distribution of sunlight during the daytime without damaging the artifacts on site," he explained.

Çatalhöyük is a major tourist attraction as well as an archeological site, and Düzgün emphasized that the design of the new roof and cover allows for educational panels to be posted on its sides, making it easier for visitors to get detailed information as they view the site.

Recent excavation on the Neolithic site, under the expertise and leadership of British professor of archeology Ian Hodder, began in 1993 and has continued intermittently since. Discoveries made so far at the 9,000-year-old site include wall paintings, seals, and cooking and eating utensils decorated with various painted and carved figures.

The first excavation at the site occurred during the 1960s and was conducted by a team led by British archaeologist James Mellaart. Except for its southern area, the site did not have any protection against the harsh weather conditions characteristic of the Central Anatolia region. Professor Hodder will continue to head the excavation teams at the site until 2017.

http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=156828&bolum=101
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Re: Çatalhöyük by davidmorgan on Tuesday, 07 October 2008
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"Exciting new discoveries at Çatalhöyük" - Press Release 2008.

Wow!
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Re: Çatalhöyük by Anonymous on Tuesday, 22 January 2008
One of my favorites
Made that historic architecture class a lot more interesting
Still some mystery how building plan gave isolation between areas but protected from outside forces
Funny thing thought was located in Jordan, guess thats' why theres' so many sites to keep us thinking
Feel like I'm in a hewlitt-packard commercial some times
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Interview with Ian Hodder about Çatalhöyük: A journey to 9,000 years ago by Andy B on Thursday, 17 January 2008
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Çatalhöyük Research Project Director Ian Hodder says goddess icons do not, contrary to assumptions, point to a matriarchal society in Çatalhöyük. Findings in Çatalhöyük show that men and women had equal social status. According to Hodder, who also has been following the Göbeklitepe excavations in Şanlıurfa, meticulous archaeological excavation in southeastern Anatolia can change all scientific archaeological assumptions

Clues as to when mankind really began living in urban patterns lie in the Neolithic layers of Çatalhöyük.
Çatalhöyük is within the borders of Cumra district in the central Anatolian city of Konya and is only 10 kilometers away from the district. The discovery of Çatalhöyük by English researcher James Mellart in the beginning of the 1950s had vast repercussions for the scientific world. Mellart was trying to prove that the oldest agricultural towns were located not only in the eastern Mediterranean but also in central Anatolia when he ran into a big surprise. As a result of research conducted, Çatalhöyük was discovered to feature a permanent settlement pattern thousands of years ago. The surprise also raised many questions: Why were all the buildings attached? Why were the people able to enter their houses only through the roof?

More in the Turkish Daily News
http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=93856
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Re: Çatalhöyük by Anonymous on Sunday, 29 July 2007
For more information about Catalhoyuk, be sure to read The Goddess and the Bull by Michael Balter.

http://www.michaelbalter.com
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Spiral wall motifs reveal Çatalhöyük migration by coldrum on Saturday, 28 July 2007
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In the course of an excavation project currently under way at Çatalhöyük, researchers have recently discovered a burial chamber and wall paintings that echo spiral motifs first seen on ancient seals and kitchen utensils.
The excavation is sponsored by Boeing and Yapı Kredi and is led by Professor Ian Hodder, who has been conducting the excavations since 1993 in order to better understand how and why people first domesticated plants and animals and established cities.

More than 100 experts from various disciplines and archaeologists from the US, England and Poland have been working jointly in laboratories next to the excavation site.

Archaeologist Banu Aydınoğlugil, an assistant on the Çatalhöyük excavation, noted that the most significant difference of Çatalhöyük from other Neolithic sites is the presence of preserved reliefs and pictures on the walls.

Strong archaeological interest in Çatalhöyük

Aydınoğlugil stated that Çatalhöyük is very popular among archaeologists around the world and that many archaeologists are eager to conduct excavations here. Saying that Çatalhöyük displays urban planning and an egalitarian societal structure, Aydınoğlugil described the site: “The houses in Çatalhöyük were made of sun-dried brick and there were doors and roofs on these houses. The houses were adjacent and no house was superior to another, which can be indicated as a sign of their egalitarian structure of society. They did not have a leader and they lived in peace.”

In Çatalhöyük, only 5 percent of which has been excavated up to now, a group of archaeologists from Poland’s Poznan University recently discovered the first burial chamber at the site.

Dr. Arek Marciniak, an archaeologist from a Polish excavation team, said that they came across skeletons buried in the floor of the room and they were quite happy to see a specially designed burial chamber for the first time. Marciniak also said: “On the walls of this room we saw some motifs, which we first thought to have been carved out by a bone. We saw spiral motifs that we had seen on seals and kitchen utensils before. We predict that these motifs on the walls are the source of the motifs that are used on kitchen utensils.”

Marciniak highlighted that they had seen these motifs on seals and kitchen utensils that were found in mounds in Central Anatolia. “What is more important is that the objects bearing these motifs will be analyzed and thus we can maybe find the migration routes of people living in Çatalhöyük. This might be a step forward to shedding light on the adventure of humanity in the world,” said Marciniak.
http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=117686
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Re: Çatalhöyük excavations unveil very dawn of human civilization by TimPrevett on Monday, 12 March 2007
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These excavations shown on a slide show on YouTube; other short films are there, too.
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Çatalhöyük excavations unveil very dawn of human civilization by Andy B on Monday, 17 July 2006
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A total of 130 houses have been unearthed to date during excavations at the 9,000-year-old site of Çatalhöyük in Konya's Çumra district, excavation assistant team leader Shahina Farid has said.

The first excavations at the site -- considered one of the oldest settlements in the history of mankind, dating back to the Neolithic Age -- were conducted by British archaeologist James Mellart, who uncovered 80 houses during excavations between 1961-1964, according to the Anatolia news agency.

Work at the site resumed in 1993 after a long hiatus.

Fifty new houses have been uncovered since that date," said Farid. "We are trying to shed light on an obscure period of mankind through these excavations. The excavation findings reveal that there was a river and small lakes in the region 9,000 years ago. We also found buildings were located one above the other. The oldest houses were destroyed after a period of habitation and new structures were built over them. These structures consist of two rooms and a larder. We assume that Çatalhöyük housed a population of around 7,000-10,000 at that time.

He said the community built their houses of oak and poplar and that wooden columns were brought in by river from a distance of 40 kilometers, adding that research also suggested that these columns were re-utilized in the building of new houses.

We also found more than 60 human skeletons in mud brick houses built side by side. The inhabitants of that period buried the dead underneath the house with a sense of being close to their ancestors. In other words, Çatalhöyük inhabitants were born, died and buried in these houses.

Source: Turkish Daily News
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