ÇATALHÖYÜK 1999 ARCHIVE REPORT

Bone Tools / Kemik Aletleri

Nerissa Russell

Abstract

The bone tools were mainly of types found in previous seasons but new types discovered included a bowl/cup, a harpoon and a punch. Building 18 produced evidence for the manufacturing of bone beads.

Özeti

Temel olarak, kemik aletler diğer yıllardan farklılık göstermiyor, fakat yeni buluntu olarak bir kap, bir zıpkın ve delgeç çeşitlenmeye eklenmiştir. Bina 18’de boncuk yapımının yapıldığı keşfedilmiştir.

Introduction

The long season of 1999 brought many more bone tools to light: an additional 169, bringing the total recorded from the new excavation to 413. I recorded all tools that were recognized in the field or encountered while studying the animal bones during the time I was at the site. Louise Martin and Sheelagh Frame provisionally recorded those that were found after I left and sent to the Konya Museum. Reflecting the volumes excavated, most of the 1999 bone tools (159) were found in the South area, with 7 from the Bach area and one from the Kopal excavations. In addition, two tools from the North area excavated after I left in 1998 are reported here. Taxonomic and other standard animal bone information was recorded for the tools, as well as morphological and microwear information about their manufacture and use.

The general distribution of bone tool types has not changed much, but a few new types have been added. Points account for nearly half the bone tools, while more than a quarter are ornaments, especially bone rings (see Table 31). Other types are only sparsely represented. The new bone tool types found in 1999, each represented by a single tool, are bowl/cup, harpoon, and punch.

Tool Types

Points

Although a variety of materials are used to make bone points, the great majority are made on sheep/goat (usually sheep) metapodials (see Tables 32 and 33). They are the most common tool type throughout the site, forming just under half of the bone tool assemblage. The addition of the 72 points recorded during the 1999 season does not substantially change the picture from previous seasons.

Rounded Points

No additional rounded points were recorded in 1999.

Needles

I still have not seen a complete example of this tool type, although one was found after I left in 1998 and sent to the Konya Museum. However, in 1999 I recorded an additional 14 fragments that I believe belong to this type. These are not sewing needles, being long, broad, and having a flat rounded tip. They may be weaving or netting tools, or may even be pendants. However, they seem too long for pendants, and the curving shaft, a result of being made on long segments of rib, would not sit well on the chest. The ‘needles’ must have pulled rather large fibers, as the holes are usually quite large (ranging from 1.6-9.0 mm., with a mean of 4.4 mm.), and have been made so at the price of thin side walls that break easily. There are several instances of repair of these broken perforations.

Chisels/Gouges

No additional chisel/gouges were recorded in 1999.

Choppers

No additional choppers were recorded in 1999.

Pottery Polishers

Two further flat tools from the South area bear striations that resemble those produced by burnishing fine-tempered pottery. It is also possible that they were used to make clay balls or figurines.

Plaster Tools

Four more tools that may have been used to shape plaster features were recorded in 1999. Two of these were actually excavated in 1998 after I left, from House 5 in the North area: 3819.X3 and X4. These two are somewhat different in form, and may comprise a toolkit. X3 lacks the usual bevel, and has been used mainly on the flat surfaces to smooth and shape, but not to slice. X4 does have beveled edges, and is more thoroughly modified than most of these tools. The caudal side of the neck of the scapula on which it is made has been chopped and flaked to make a hand-hold. Wear supports the holding of the tool in this manner, by a left-handed person.

The South area produced two versions of plaster tools. 4121.F12 is a minimally modified, but slightly beveled, segment of scapula blade with the use wear I am tentatively identifying as plaster working. 4183.F19 is a much stranger tool. A large, robust cattle scapula has been flaked along the juncture of the spine and the blade to make a long, heavy, crude rod. It is surely some kind of burnisher, with varying degrees of often high polish all over the tool. There is no bevel and the only flat surface is less used than the rest. From the form, one could imagine it stuck in the wall and then pulling something like hide over it. But the wear doesn't support this: the polish goes all the way to both ends, although less than in the middle, and all the way around the bone. The polish doesn't flow into the low areas enough to support the notion of working a very soft material. It is the wrong shape for hide scraping: no edge. The polish has some very fine striations that look like those on the other plaster tools. It is puzzling that this has been made on a scapula. It would seem that this shape could more easily have been obtained by using an unsplit long bone shaft, and it would have been difficult to work a scapula into this shape. Is there an association between scapulae and wall construction? The scapulae are appropriate for the beveled tools, so this would be part of the association. But there are also the whole, unmodified scapulae built into the walls, suggesting a symbolic association. The use of a scapula for this tool suggests that to make a plastering tool from any other body part was unthinkable. A possible further indication of the symbolic value of these tools is the observation that seven of the eight scapulae on which these are made whose side is determinable are lefts.

Spoons

No additional spoons were recorded in 1999.

Spatulas

The bevelled base of a delicate, carefully worked tool from unit 4225 in the South area may be part of a spatula.

Bowl/Cup

A fragment of turtle shell with scraping and abrasion on the inner side is probably the remains of a bowl or cup.

Handles

An antler sickle handle, without the sickle blades, was found stuck loosely into the wall of a bin in the South area. This seems to indicate that it was curated without the blades in it. It is made on an antler tine that bears a deep groove along its length. There are signs of use, so the blades must have fallen out or been removed before it was apparently carefully stored in the bin wall. Mellaart found an example of such a handle complete with obsidian blades.

Ornaments

I have placed three more artifacts in this vague category of things that appear to be decorative but are not recognizably pendants, beads, or rings. 3979.F1 is a tiny enigmatic artifact on a burnt piece of probable long bone with old breaks at either end. It doesn't look as though it could continue much further. The entire surface is abraded and heavily modified. It is curved, and seems to taper toward one end like horn. There are two offset notches on each side of the wider end (i.e., four total); it is broken through one of these.

4844.F338 is a piece of long bone that has been carved into a four-lobed shape that could be seen as a stylized flower, hand or body. Four partial, apparently decorative perforations are placed irregularly on it. These seem to have been made in a two-step process, beginning with a cylinder drill and then using a regular obsidian drill. It is very small and delicate, and very highly polished and carefully worked. It is missing one end, and could be the base of a spatula, or part of a pendant or other ornament.

4871.F700 is a tiny fragment of bone with incised lines across the surface. The surface of the fragment is nearly covered by five longitudinal lines, crossed by two diagonal lines, one of them partial. They are relatively evenly spaced, from .7 to 1.1 mm apart.

Pendants

I have recorded six new pendants this year. 3999.X1 is an unusual pendant on a fairly flat piece of split mandible, ground to an irregular shape, smoothed somewhat on both surfaces, and perforated near the narrow end, but well down from the edge. It seems quite crude, and there is no sign of wear, so it may be unfinished. It is quite large and oddly shaped, but it is worked all around the edges, so the shape is very likely intentional.

4121.F7 is another fairly crude, rectangular antler pendant. I have wondered whether these might be bull-roarers, or some kind of weights. They do not seem carefully finished enough to be ornaments. This one has what appears to be a groove remaining from an unsuccessful attempt at the groove-and-splinter technique running diagonally across it. Also from 4121 is a split boar’s tusk pendant.

4401.X8 is a cattle incisor (an unusual choice of taxon) that has been drilled through the root after thinning it a bit by scraping. 4838.F355 is a fragment of a small pendant, perhaps a stylized, flattened and elongated version of the pendants that imitate red deer ‘wolf teeth’ (vestigial canines). 4845.F23 is an unsplit rib perforated at one end of the fragment, the other end missing. It is thick and long to be a pendant, but it is hard to imagine what else it could be.

Beads

This was a big season for bone beads, largely as the result of bead-making activity in one house in the South area, discussed below. Thirteen beads, as well as six preforms, were recorded this year, all from the South area. In fact several of those recorded as beads are probably also unfinished. A string of beads in a burial that was lifted in a block were not available for analysis, and are not included here. The beads found in 1999 divide into two major types. The first, represented by ten specimens, are tubular beads made on segments of long bones. The second are carved beads, like small pendants, of two different but probably related shapes. One shape, of which one specimen was recorded this year, is an imitation of red deer ‘wolf teeth’ or vestigial upper canines. Both real and imitation beads of this sort are wide-spread in the Neolithic of Europe and Anatolia and beyond. The other shape is like a flattened tear-drop, and may be a stylized version of the more globular red deer canine imitations. I recorded two of these, but the burial mentioned above contained a whole string of them.

A small bead (4732.F1) of the red deer ‘wolf tooth’ imitation variety is roughly globular on the bottom and thinned at top, where it was perforated. It had broken through the perforation and was then ‘repaired’ by grinding down the broken edges into a bevel. It wasn’t redrilled, though, and it is hard to see how it could be, as it gets too thick immediately below the perforation, and really is too small to move the perforation down in any case. So it could not have been suspended again, but it must have been valued enough to rework the rough edges and keep in a pouch as an amulet or some such.

Rings

Twenty-one more bone rings and ring fragments were recorded this year, one from Bach and the rest from the South area. With one exception, they closely resemble those from previous years and continue to exhibit the same methods of manufacture. One ring from the South area, 4836.F59, did not entirely follow the standard technique; this is discussed below.

Two of the rings, both from the South area, are of a relatively rare type at Çatalhöyük, more elaborate and more difficult to make. The manufacturing process is quite different. Instead of cutting them from a natural tube, they are carved longitudinally from a piece of thick long bone cortex that can probably only come from large cattle. The hole in the center of the ring and the entire form must be carved out with obsidian tools and smoothed with sandstone. The reason for this much trickier undertaking is that these rings are not simple bands, but are embellished with a knob on a pillar that stands up well above the ring. These rings would have been extremely awkward to wear and would have prevented almost any practical use of the hand. Clearly they are making a statement about being worn on special occasions, and they certainly would have had a very dramatic effect. The details of the form and decorative notching of the pillar and the knob are different on each of the four examples so far discovered. 4209.X22 has a knob in the shape of a flat, rounded diamond. It is set off from the pillar on which it sits by an encircling groove, giving a strangulated effect. Below this, the pillar has three notches on one side and four on the other, with the last one at the juncture of the pillar with the ring. There is a further notch on each side of the pillar on the outer surface of the ring. It has broken through one of these predepositionally. It is well-polished all over, and highly polished on the outer surface of the ring portion and the sides of the pillar and knob. 4121.F25 is a fragment of an absolutely over-the-top version of this type. The pillar is extraordinarily tall, so that the knob stands more than 3 cm. above the finger. The pillar itself is just a simple rod. The knob consists of two small balls set off by grooves below them. Held upside down, it is quite phallic; upside up, they could be breasts, much like the Dolni Vestonice carvings. It actually looks remarkably like a little femur (with the knob as the proximal articulation), but probably this would only occur to faunal analysts. In any case, it must have been very impressive when worn. It is highly polished, and shows signs of considerable wear. Although the interior of the ring portion is worn, supporting use as a ring, one side of the whole thing is more worn than the other, which could indicate use as a pendant. Perhaps it was worn both ways? An earlier example of this type, 1520.X1, also seemed to have been worn as a pendant, although the other examples have wear consistent with use as rings.

Knucklebones

No additional knucklebones were recorded in 1999.

Fish Hooks

In addition to the series of three fish hooks found in the North area in past seasons, three were recovered this year from the South area. Like those from the North, these are all made on split boar’s tusk. All of the fish hooks found are clearly meant to be fish hooks rather than belt hooks. The size and shape is suited to fishing, and most of them have barbs. However, the wear on the hooks seems more consistent with use as pendants rather than as fish hooks: on the back side rather than inside the curve of the hook. We also do not seem to have fish remains at the site large enough to have been caught by hook, although this will be clearer after the fish bones are studied. It seems likely, therefore, that these artifacts are intended to evoke fish hooks, but not to be used to catch fish. This implies that either fish hooks were used to catch fish at an earlier time (very early in the Çatalhöyük sequence or prior to the settling of the site), or functioning fish hooks were made from perishable materials while the ones we find were for show.

Harpoon

This is a new bone tool type, represented by one specimen from the South area (4351.F26). It is carved on the posterior side of a large cattle metatarsal, using the natural indentation on one side and carving the other to match it. The tip end is carefully worked and symmetrical, the base asymmetrical, with wear that supports that this was for hafting onto a wooden shaft. It has a beautifully carved barb with a somewhat blunt tip. The manufacturing wear in the barb region is very fresh, arguing against John Swogger's suggestion of use as a hook in a snare, or use as something like a grappling hook. In either case, it is unclear why they would go to the trouble of carving it from bone instead of wood. In addition to the hafting wear on the base, wear is concentrated in the tip area. It is hard to see what the original shape of the tip was, as there are a number of large flakes that have occurred in use, with use continuing after most of them. It was clearly used in a high-impact manner, like a javelin. What is puzzling is that the tip is now quite blunt, and was so for some time while it was still in use. This makes hunting or fishing with it hard to imagine. Is it possible that in its later life, at least, it was just used for target practice? It is certainly very carefully worked; a lot of skill and care went into this one.

Pressure Flakers

A possible pressure flaker on an antler tine was recovered from the Bach area (6169.X1). The tip has been cut to form a dull, rounded bevel; the base is probably just an oblique break rounded from use, possibly hafted to something. The microwear is not clear, but there are some transverse nicks into the bevel, and possible impact scars on the outer side of the curve of the tine.

Soft Hammers

No additional soft hammers were recorded in 1999.

Hammers

No additional hammers were recorded in 1999.

Punch

This may be a new type of bone tool for Çatalhöyük. An artifact that may have been used as a punch in working obsidian was recovered from the South area (4838.F461). It is a rounded stick made on a splinter of large mammal long bone. A chunk is missing, but it seems to have been more or less the same at both ends. The ends are rounded and blunt, with fairly flat tips that seem battered. There is no clear microwear, at least partly due to manganese deposits. Some scars on the underside could be from pressure flaking. The shape and the battered ends suggest use as punch, but there is no direct support for this.

Preforms/Waste

Fifteen specimens of preforms or manufacturing waste were recorded in 1999, one from the Bach area and the rest from the South. The fragment from the Bach area is probably a piece of waste from working antler with the groove-and-splinter technique. From the South area, there are preforms for several kinds of tools: one for rings, six for beads, two for needles, two for pendants, one probably for a point using the groove-and-split technique, and one for some unknown split rib tool. The groove-and-split remnant is striking for its rarity. At most Neolithic sites, this is a very common method of creating the rough-out for bone points, but this is the only such preform (apparently discarded after a bad split) from Çatalhöyük. One or two finished points show possible traces of this technique, but the vast majority does not. This preform demonstrates that the inhabitants of the site were familiar with the technique, but mostly chose not to use it. It is possible that this is related to the overwhelmingly use of obsidian; perhaps the edges of the obsidian tools are too fragile to groove effectively. Or it may be a matter of tradition.

The most interesting set of preforms is the beads from House 18 in the South area. Four separate deposits in this house each have one or more unfinished bone beads, representing two manufacturing techniques (often in the same unit) and three bead types. Some are made by cutting and breaking tubular segments off of long bone shafts, and others by grinding chips of large mammal long bone into shape and piercing them. A flat and a more globular shape of these perforated beads are both represented. One of them came from the basal deposit on the floor of a bin. The other three are from oven rake-out deposits in another room in the same house; another rake-out contains waste from making a flat bone ‘needle’. These deposits appear to include not only the ash and charcoal swept from the oven, but also the sweepings from the rest of the floor. These units represent the rake-out from three separate ovens in different areas of the room, and from three different phases. Thus the bead-making was not an isolated event, but an ongoing activity throughout the lifespan of the house. It must have been of a much greater intensity than is suggested by the five preforms and two other probably unfinished beads recovered in these units. Most or all of these appear to have been swept up accidentally, as only two are broken, so there must have been many more beads that were successfully manufactured in this house. This might conceivably indicate that a single person was present throughout the occupation of the house, or else that a family tradition of bead-making was passed through the generations.

The remaining bead preform (4121.F23) is also striking for the information it conveys about its maker. It is made on a boar's tusk by someone without much understanding of the raw material. The maker must have been quite upset to ruin this no doubt precious tusk. The maker first tried to use the tusk as though it were a long bone shaft, not realizing how easily these teeth split. It was ground with sandstone to round it somewhat, especially at the distal end, and to bring the distal end to a rounded tip. Then it was drilled through this distal end to the central cavity to form a continuous hole down the center. Then the maker marked out at least five grooves for the cut-and-break technique used to produce tubular beads, on one side only. The tooth probably split accidentally in the course of cutting these grooves. Probably only the proximal part split off at first, because there is what is probably an attempt at repair/reworking, to try to make it into a single pendant: the edge of a break through three of the grooves has been ground with sandstone. Either the unfortunate manufacturer gave up on this idea (it would have looked silly with the grooves, which would be very hard to disguise), or the rest of it split at this point.

Indeterminate

Eleven artifacts recorded from the South area this year cannot clearly be placed into a type. 4121.F28 is part of what seems to be a hook-shaped object. It is probably too thick and heavy for a fish hook, but seems too small for a belt hook. It shows no wear on the edges, especially on the inner side of the curve, but much wear on both flat surfaces, suggesting possible use as pendant. The edges are carefully ground, but the surfaces are irregular, not carefully finished. It seems to be missing the top of the shank, and is broken through the middle of the putative hook. Were it not so polished, it could be an unfinished fish hook, but it was clearly used. 4943.F1 could be a fragment of the eye for a belt hook, although it looks less chunky than those from Mellaart's excavations. The shape is unclear, but it looks like the curved part of a hook, certainly not circular. It is carved from the thick cortex of a large mammal long bone. The inner edge of the curve has facets from sandstone abrasion, that are mostly very fresh, but there is heavy polish in one small area that would fit with rather precisely placed wear from a hook. It doesn't seem to be in the right place to be suspension wear, and it doesn't extend around onto the curved surface. But even as a belt hook eye, one would expect more motion against the hook, producing a larger area of wear. It is very regular and carefully shaped.

4205.F39 is a truly mysterious piece of worked split mandible. The outer surface is heavily scraped, producing chatter marks. One edge has a series of notches apparently produced by enlarging perforations along the edge, with the raised areas between squared off and smoothed. The effect is of a shallow, irregular, very blunt-toothed comb. The notches are clearly drilled and worked from the inner side, but there is no further modification on this side, leaving the internal spongy bone untouched. There is no sign of wear anywhere except on the tips of the raised ‘teeth’ between the notches. There is no indication that anything was pulled through the notches. There is another odd piece of worked bone from the same unit: 4205.F72. A spinous process of a thoracic vertebra has been heavily scraped on both sides for no apparent purpose. Possibly this is related in some sense to the scraping on 4205.F39. One imagines a person idly whittling on bones while chatting on the roof. Or perhaps children playing at making bone tools?

4838.F549 may be the handle of a spatula-type tool. It is highly polished and has been shaped into a long, narrow, flat shaft that seems to be flaring out a bit at one or both ends.

There are two fragments of worked antler of unknown purpose. Four specimens are small fragments of worked bone that are too incomplete to identify the tool type.

Manufacture

There are now enough preforms to get a pretty good sense of how beads and rings were made at Çatalhöyük. Rings and tubular beads seem to be made by detaching a long tube with the cut-and-break technique at each end, then doing preliminary grinding and smoothing on the outer side, then segmenting it with further cut-and-break, then grinding to smooth the edges. The process usually stops here for beads; rings are generally then scraped on the inner side following the circumference of the bone to thin and smooth them, and probably polished further on the outer side. Pendant-type beads seem to start with a suitable piece of broken bone that is probably just a by-product of marrow or bone grease extraction, then drilled from both sides to form the perforation. The final shape is then created by carving and abrasion. Some may first be carved or abraded to thin the area of the perforation before piercing.

The manufacturing sequence for rings, in particular, is highly standardized, although there is a certain amount of variation in how carefully they are finished. There is, naturally, an exception to prove the rule: 4836.F59, a ring that appears to have been made by someone who didn’t know how. The edges are ground with sandstone in the usual fashion, but the inside is smoothed with sandstone and in a direction perpendicular to the usual one. The outside is ground with sandstone but very crudely, forming facets. The cortex is thinned mostly from the outside rather than the inside. The contrast of this ring with those made the ‘right’ way must have been as obvious to its maker’s contemporaries as it is to me, and points up the strictness with which the accepted procedure is normally adhered to.

Discussion

More bone tool types are gradually added as the assemblage increases, but the general character of the assemblage now seems to be well established. Indeed, the rather rigid manufacturing techniques are now clear enough that the occasional deviation sticks out like a sore thumb. The highlight of the 1999 bone tool assemblage is the series of bead-making remains in House 18. The continuity of manufacture seen in this house, and the lack of similar evidence in other houses indicates that some of the standardized procedures for bone tool manufacture may be related to low-level specialization in the production of certain tool types. There may be a relatively small number of people making at least some of the tools, and this knowledge may be passed on through apprenticeship in a somewhat limited fashion.

Table 31: Tool Types by Area

Table 32: Tool Types by Taxon

Table 33: Tool Types by body Part