ÇATALHÖYÜK 2000 ARCHIVE REPORT

Clay Balls and Objects

Kil Toplar ve Objeler

Sonya Atalay

Tracing the Hermeneutic Circle in the Analysis of Clay Balls and Objects

Abstract

This report explores part of the history of the analysis of clay balls and objects at Çatalhöyük. It first looks at the original research design and recording system planned for the analysis of the materials and then follows the ways in which these approaches have changed, particularly in the 2000 study season, as the need for adjustment was triggered by variability in the data. This discussion illustrates the need for fluidity in research design and artefact analysis by describing the ‘on the ground’ (actually in the lab) experiences which took place during the analysis of clay balls/objects in the 2000 study season and previous years. A brief synopsis of the clay ball/object analysis which took place during the most recent season follows, including plans for future community involvement projects and 2001 research goals.

Özeti

Bu rapor, Çatalhöyük’ten ele geçen kil toplar ve kil objelerin analiz tarihinin bir kısmını ele almaktadır. Öncelikle, malzemenin analizi için planlanmıs orijinal araştırma çerçevesine ve kayıt sistemine bakmakta, daha sonra bu yaklaşımların – özellikle 2000 senesinde veri çeşitliliğinin artmasıyla – nasıl değiştiğini anlatmaktadır. Bu tartışma, 2000 senesi ve daha önceki senelerde “buluntu yerinde” (ama aslında laboratuvarda) yapılan kil top/obje analizleri deneyimlerini anlatarak araştırma yöntemlerinde ve buluntu analizlerinde akıcılığın gerekliliğini vurgulamaktadır. Bunu, son kazı döneminde yapılan kil top/obje analizlerinin özeti anlatıldıktan sonra gelecek projeler ve 2001 araştırma hedefleri izlemektedir.

Status of Analysis prior to CH 2000 Study Season

The 2000 season’s work on clay balls and clay objects was primarily focused on recording and analysis of materials from 355 units that were chosen for analysis and discussion in an upcoming publication. Although the clay balls and objects from some of these units had already been recorded in previous seasons, the majority of the material had only been recorded in a preliminary way during the season of its excavation in order to obtain a very general idea of the materials within each unit. In such cases the preliminary ‘once over’ of the material was used during priority tours (cf. Hodder 2000) to give the excavators and other specialists a general idea of what this unit looked like in terms of clay balls and objects. In most cases the preliminary analysis done in the field for priority tours included counts, weights and density of materials and did not usually include a closer look at the specific attributes of the balls and objects.

Recent History on Clay Ball/Object Recording and Analysis

Beyond simple counts, weights, and unit density, in any archaeological research one must determine which of the innumerable attributes of the material are important for analysis – demanding the archaeologist to make choices regarding which attributes should be recorded, to what detail, and using which methods. I have been studying the clay balls/objects since the 1997 field season and, at the beginning of the 1999 season, had determined my research questions and a research strategy for addressing them. Additionally, I had designed and implemented a recording sheet, which I planned to use for recording the various attributes of clay balls. During the 1999 field season my research questions, strategy and method of recording had to be adjusted in order to adapt to the clay objects that had been recovered in both the Kopal and South areas.

The resulting changes in my research design were two fold, theoretical and practical (see Suponcic 1999 for more details on these objects and their effect on my research design). From a theoretical point of view, the new shapes and fabrics required that I think further about the role that clay and clay balls/objects may have held in daily Neolithic life at Çatalhöyük. This also raised questions about the use of clay balls versus clay objects and the relationship of these two types of material to each other, the importance of on-site versus ‘off-site’ space, changes in clay technology through time, and a series of production related issues. While these theoretical issues were being contemplated and discussed, more practical issues of how to incorporate this ‘new’ material into my existing recording system surfaced and became my main focus throughout the close of the 1999 field season. Initially it seemed that there was a spatial difference in find locations of clay balls versus clay objects since Kopal and the deep sounding in the South, both thought to be ‘off-site’ areas, had large amounts of clay objects with few to no clay balls, while the ‘on-site’ areas seemed to have only balls and infrequent objects. This seemed to be a strong argument for the geometric objects being related to some type of off-site activity while the balls were associated with an indoor and/or on-site activity. However, the strong argument against this was the clear similarity in the clay matrix of both these materials. The similarity in clay ball and clay object fabrics combined with the contextual evidence of both balls and objects found together cut into the fill near a northern oven in space170 of building 17 strongly suggested to me that both balls and objects were closely related in the role(s) that they played in daily life. Based on this evidence, the decision was made to record the objects using the same method and recording sheet as was employed for clay balls and mini balls, with a minor change that allowed for me to record the attributes of all material from each of the three categories in separate columns on the same recording sheet (balls, mini-balls, and objects). However, as was mentioned above, analysis of both balls and objects during the 1999 and previous seasons was predominantly in order to give an overview of the material (counts, weights, densities) to be presented during priority tours, and had not yet included a notable amount of in-depth analysis or attribute recording.

Prior to the 2000 study season, my responsibilities at Çatalhöyük included excavation on the BACH team (1997, 1998, 1999) as well as part-time Finds person (1997, 1998) in addition to being the ‘Clay Ball’ specialist (1997 – present), responsible for the organization and analysis of the clay ball materials found site wide. Although excavating and handling finds offered interesting learning opportunities, these responsibilities dramatically limited the amount of time I was able to spend analyzing and recording the clay ball/object materials during the 1997-1999 field seasons. As a result, prior to the 2000 study season only a very small percentage of clay balls and objects had been analyzed or formally recorded. This limited amount of analysis meant that the methodology I had organized on paper (in the design of my recording forms and the methods discussed in my research proposal) had not been tested to any large extent and remained based on the preliminary research I had completed in the field seasons of 1997-1999. During the 2000 study season, while examining a large amount of material, it became clear that the recording system I had designed was falling short of my expectations, especially when analyzing large units or large amounts of clay balls/objects.

Changes made in 2000: Lumping versus Splitting and the question of time

The main problem I found in my recording system during the first half of the 2000 study season was that the system I had designed could not accommodate large units or units with a considerable amount of variability. During the analysis I would look at all pieces from each unit and record a count for each attribute (e.g. x number of pieces fully oxidized and y number of pieces with some sort of elaboration etc.). The main thrust of this approach was at the level of the unit and, while I did look at each attribute for every piece, all of this data was lumped together for each category/attribute. So there was no way to track how these attributes varied with each other through time or across space. For example, using this system and the examples above, there was no way to determine how many fragments were both fully oxidized and also had some form of elaboration on the surface. It was clear immediately that this lumping approach was leaving out a large amount of data that could be particularly useful in a contextual intra-site analysis.

Another problem with the analysis was that it could not handle units with large amounts of material or with any considerable variety, something that I didn’t expect to find when first writing my research design. In the first few large units I looked at during the 2000 season there were rounded pieces which might have been balls or might have been geometric objects. There were also pieces which had a clearly rectangular shape, those with an indeterminate shape and those that were whole or fragmented mini balls. There was a lack of space for recording each of these categories yet it was clear that recording each of these ‘types’, even with a lumping together of each type’s attributes, was necessary. To complicate this situation further, I wanted to keep the materials from dry sieve separate from the material coming through from flotation (which may include numerous samples for one unit) so that I could attempt to get more well defined spatial patterning.

These struggles seem like the usual issues facing anyone who is beginning research on a new topic. It was made more difficult in this case by the fact that most research related to ceramic and clay materials has been done on pottery with little published on methods of analyzing and recording physical attributes of non-pottery materials. And since it is unclear how these balls and objects intersected with people’s daily practice, the issue of which attributes are important for study and to what detail each should be recorded becomes of even greater significance.

Of course in a perfect world of unlimited time and monetary resources, all possible attributes would be analyzed and each piece from every unit would be recorded individually. I realized early in the 2000 study season that this was quite impossible given the time limitations that were given to us, both due to permit problems resulting in a shortened field season and to the deadlines of the publication itself. For the first 30% of the material to be studied (60 units) I continued to use the same recording forms and started to develop a kind of coding system. This updated system still lumped all the data for each attribute together, however it permitted me to record a greater degree of flexibility in a space that would fit on the forms, while allowing units with a large amount of variability to be more easily handled. I also started a computer data base that allowed me to make detailed notes about the unit in general and the patterns that I could see in the pieces (e.g. all pieces that were fully oxidized also tended to have a finer fabric with a fewer percent of inclusions and with a larger percent of surface elaboration). However, such compromises felt unsatisfactory and didn’t address all of the concerns I had about recording and analysis.

I should note that I knew the best way to approach this material was to record every piece individually, but time limitations would not allow this, since there was only 1 month to complete the analysis and recording of all materials from nearly 200 units (and many of these units had 200+ fragments). The problems posed were not related to the individual analysis of each piece (since from the beginning I had already been looking at each piece), but rather to the of pieces individually and to the labelling of every fragment that would be necessary with such an approach. Eventually, in mid-season, I decided that the analysis and recording system had to be changed in order to get at the level of specificity that I desired in my research. One full day and most of that night were spent reworking my analysis and changing the recording forms in order to incorporate both my need to record information for each piece individually as well as the unexpected variability of and within clay ball and object attributes.

Hermeneutics – Great in Theory – what about in practice?

I have chosen to use the space of this archive report to discuss this small yet practical example of how I see hermeneutic research as being conducted on the small scale level of one person’s approach to data analysis. This is possible for two reasons – one is that the study season did not produce a large of amount of new material that needed to be recorded here, the second is that the results of the actual analysis will be presented at a later date and thus need not be set forth here. As I mentioned in the beginning of this document, I chose this forum to describe these experiences of my research since I feel that they reflect a vital part of the creation of knowledge within the field of archaeology and yet are often masked in publication. I feel that making such aspects of my research explicit in order to give a realistic picture of the daily workings of our discipline is an important aspect of the reflexive methodology called for by Hodder (1999) which we are attempting to put into practice at Çatalhöyük.

The fear I initially felt about analyzing and recording each piece from every unit was certainly not unfounded. This method took much longer to both label and record each piece, however I was able to finish analysis of all 187 units in the one month that I was in the field. The laboratory diary that I keep (see diary entries on web page) clearly illustrates that I felt extreme relief to have finally switched to the new way of recording and analyzing the material. However, it also indicates how difficult it was to get past the feeling that I had made a huge mistake in my original research design and that changing the approach meant admitting the mistake. It was certainly impossible for me to realize the variability that I would find in the clay balls and objects until I began to analyze them. As with most research, I could make assumptions about what I would find in may data based on my preliminary observations, but it was not possible to foresee and prepare for all the possible situations I might encounter during data analysis before the analysis begins. This research project had to start somewhere in order for it to progress and move forward and I find these ‘starts’ and progressions to be an interesting and even integral part of the archaeological process. Therefore, in addition to my original archive report, the short synopsis of the analysis on clay balls and objects that was completed during the 2000 study season (paragraph below), I’ve also included this account related to making a space for putting hermeneutics into practice.

Study Season 2000

During the 2000 field season a formal approach to the analysis of the clay balls and objects was undertaken. Of the 355 units chosen jointly by the Çatalhöyük excavation and specialist teams, half (178 units) had clay balls or clay objects. The first task of the study season was to separate the clay balls/objects of these 178 units from the other material, which would not be studied during this season, and to prepare those materials for detailed analysis. After the decision to record each piece individually I needed to label each fragment from all of the 178 units.

The actual data from this analysis as well as my interpretations of it will be presented in an upcoming volume and thus need not be discussed here. However I would like to mention the attributes which were chosen to be analyzed and recorded for each piece: weight, size, shape, fragmentation, weathering, surface texture, surface evenness, surface color, presence/absence and shape/size of fire clouds and residue, presence/absence and type of elaboration and % of surface that it covers, heat treatment, size and type of inclusions, % of pits, fabric type, and description of interior.

14 of the 178 units with clay balls/objects have had at least one sample thin sectioned for petrographic analysis. Petrography will take place in fall of 2000 and spring of 2001 with plans to integrate this into the final analysis of the upcoming publication. In addition to petrographic work, upcoming plans for clay ball/object research include further analysis and interpretation of the data recorded during the 2000 study season and incorporation of this work into a bi-lingual (Turkish/English) interactive multimedia CD-ROM for use by the general public and K-12 communities of Turkey and the US. Future plans also include an activity book for children with stories, activities, and visual renderings of daily life at Çatalhöyük. Continued experimental production, firing and cooking with clay balls/objects are all planned for the 2001 study season in addition to completing analysis and recording of the remaining unstudied material excavated during the 1996 – 2000 field seasons.

References

Hodder, I. (1999) The Archaeological Process: An Introduction. Blackwell: Malden.

Hodder, I. and Team Members (eds.) (2000) Towards Reflexive Method in Archaeology: The Example at Çatalhöyük. McDonald Institute Monographs: Cambridge.

Suponcic, S. (1999) Clays, Clay Balls & other Clay ‘Objects’/ Kil Toplar Ve Diğer Kil Objeler.In Çatalhöyük Archive Report 1999

© Çatalhöyük Research Project and individual authors, 2000