Çatalhöyük 2004 Archive Report

ÇATALHÖYÜK 2004 ARCHIVE REPORT

INTRODUCTION

Ian Hodder

A season of great finds and new faces at Çatalhöyük

Word quickly got round that we had found a ‘goddess' figurine. I was amazed that people emailed me from as far away as the United States, Britain, South America, Australia just a couple of days after we unearthed the small limestone figure. Badly eroded (Fig. 1), it nevertheless had all the classic proportions of the naked representations of women that Mellaart had found in the upper levels of the site in his excavations in the 1960s. The current project had not found an example of this famous figurine type since it began working 1993. So when the object was found, in redeposited midden material in a grave, we all felt the thrill of excitement.

This was by no means the only remarkable find we made in 2004. It was by the far the most productive year we have had in terms of special finds – both objects and architecture. The season only lasted from late June to early August and so the spectacular finds were not the result of a long season. They were more the result of a decision that we have made to excavate on a larger scale. In the first phase of excavation and post-excavation from 1995 to 2002, we had concentrated on painstaking analysis of the sequences by which individual houses were built, lived in, destroyed and rebuilt. We had amassed a large amount of detail but did not have a good sense of larger-scale organization of the site as a whole. Certainly James Mellaart had excavated on a grand scale. But in the second phase of excavation which began in 2003 we had wanted to see whether modern scientific excavation could lead to fuller understanding of the site's overall organization.

So in 2004 we experimented with a variety of new sampling techniques so that the excavators could dig more quickly while still collecting the detailed scientific data that are needed. By the end of the season we had reached a new consensus on how to proceed and these new methods and sampling procedures will be ready in place for the 2005 excavations (see Farid below). But one simple result of ‘moving more earth', digging on a larger scale, was of course that we found more. A large team (we reached 100 people at one point – rather too many for our dig house and facilities!) had been amassed, consisting both of excavators and laboratory staff. We were thus able to open up many new areas and excavate on a number of fronts (Fig. 2) . In particular, we excavated a large swathe of the 4040 (see Fig. 9). We placed a temporary shelter over the excavation areas here. The South Area already has a shelter that does a wonderful job protecting the deposits, stopping erosion, and allowing visitor access year round. In 2004 we excavated a number of buildings here as part of our plan to uncover an extensive area at the bottom of the mound.

The team from Poznan led by Arek Marciniak and Lech Czerniak continued excavating in the TP Area and at the end of the season the BACH tent that had stood for many years over Building 3 (provided generously by the Friends of Çatalhöyük) was moved to cover the TP trench. They will thus be able to continue excavating the very latest Neolithic levels on the site in greater comfort!

Figure 2: Areas of excavation

The team that has joined us from Istanbul led by Mihriban Özbaşaran visited the site and chose an area to excavate in 2005 just to the south of the South Area shelter. Their aim, as opposed to the Poznan team, is to
excavate the earliest levels of the site so that comparisons can be drawn with their excavations at Aşıklı Höyük and Musular.

With all this excavation going on, it is not surprising that a wide range of new finds were made. Not only did we find that stone figurine of a naked woman as noted above, but we also found other finely made figurines, including one with an elongated head and neck (see Fig. 32). Beneath the floor of a platform in Space 100 (see Fig. 28) we found a cache of broken clay animal figurines. We also found our first obsidian mirror (see Fig. 97) – though in a redeposited context. We found large numbers of bull horns, some definitely covered in a white plaster (see Fig. 16). In one case the horns were found set in a large shaped rectangle of clay – this was probably a setting of horns on a pedestal or pillar. This pedestal with horns was found in a side room of Building 45 in the 4040 Area (see Figs. 36 & 42). It had probably been dismantled from one of the pedestal scars we found in the main room of that building before the building burned down. This was an especially large building with substantial walls and oven. The pottery and lithics suggested a date around Level V or IV.

Immediately to the north of Building 45 in the 4040 Area we excavated a long linear area (see Space 226 see Fig. 9), that we had first thought could be a street or alleyway. But the ‘alleyway' seemed to be full of, or was covered by, midden. Detailed analysis of the thin layers of ash and charcoal and other refuse in this midden showed no evidence of trampling. So, for the moment, we must interpret the area not as a path for movement but as an area or refuse deposition – perhaps bounding a sector of houses to the south.

North of this boundary, we excavated an important group of buildings that had a number of distinct characteristics. One of these (Space 227) contained the figurine discussed above (Fig. 32) as part of abandonment material on the floors. Just to the east of this we found a building (Building 47) that had a central hearth and a very distinctive and large western platform (see Fig. 28). At one point the floor of much of this building was covered in large rectangular bricks. We have not seen buildings of this type, with a central hearth, before in our excavations, although Mellaart had found buildings with central features in the upper levels, and on the West Mound Jonathan Last and Catriona Gibson have discovered a Chalcolithic building with a central hearth (Anatolian Archaeology 2003). The ceramics and lithics for this building again suggested Levels IV and later. Either this is a special building with a distinctive function, and/or it is an example of how buildings change towards the end of the occupation of the East Mound.

To the north of Building 47 was another possible alleyway (Space 232/240), and then a group of buildings (Buildings 46, 48 and 49, Spaces 229, 230/242, 241 and 244), which all seemed, on the evidence of lithics and ceramics, to be considerably earlier in date than all the buildings so far described. They had material suggesting dates in Levels VI. In finding this we learned an important lesson. When we scrape or excavate a horizontal area of the mound we assume that all the buildings are contemporary, but the 4040 evidence suggests that we cannot readily make that assumption.

Of these earlier, northern buildings, perhaps the most intriguing was Space 229. This had a plan that has not been seen before, either by Mellaart or by the current team. It has two compartments on the west side, with three upright posts on the north, central and southern wall (see Figs. 23-25). The floor of the whole building is relatively lacking in platforms, and was remade a very large numbers of times. Much of the walls were at various times painted black but there is a well preserved dado of red on the lower panel of the eastern wall (see Fig 24). There is an oven that was added later into the southern wall. To the southeast of this building, and perhaps linked to it, was a building with rounded corners, Space 230 – again an unusual feature. It remains to analyse and excavate more in order to understand the nature of these buildings, but they indicate some form of differentiation that is unusual at Çatalhöyük.

In the South Area, four buildings were excavated. Building 10/44 proved to have a bewildering sequence of floors, platforms and ovens. Building 42 had some rich burials including one with our first plastered skull (Fig. 3), held in the arms of a complete skeleton. This skull has been lifted, conserved and put on display in the Konya Archaeological Museum. Space 112 contained some rich burials too, including the first occurrence of a complete articulated sheep burial with a human. The fourth building under excavation (Building 43) was immediately adjacent to Mellaart's ‘Shrine 10'.


	Figure 3: Skeleton (11306) holding plastered skull (11330) from Building 42

Other activities

We were fortunate that for the first time the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism's annual symposium for Excavations and Survey was held at Selçuk University, Konya. We took the opportunity to co-host a tour and reception on site at Çatalhöyük with the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara. Over 300 people from the symposium visited for a site tour and dinner on the 28th May.

On the 28th June we hosted an unforgettable event for the people of the village of Kücükköy. Seventy percent of the population, from where most of our local team are employed, turned up in trucks and tractors (Fig. 4). We conducted site tours and guided them around the Visitors Centre. We presented a slide show of our work and told them of our future plans. We also took the opportunity to ask them questions of what Çatalhöyük meant to them and how they saw, and would like to see, their involvement in the project. We then invited them for dinner which was a lively event in the dig house courtyard for the men whilst the women and small children gravitated to the dining room.

Figure 4: Arrival of villagers at the site. Site tour. Presentation. Dinner in the courtyard and dining room.

On the 30th July towards the end of the excavation season, we hosted an open day to local politicians and the regional press to update on the seasons work. The discovery of the figurine mentioned above (Fig. 1) caused the most excitement as it featured in many ensuing news articles, but there were many new additions to the project for them to see.

Figure 5: Press day in the South Area

As part of a new programme of site presentation and interpretation headed by Nick Merriman from UCL, we had made a series of information panels for the South Area which were on display for press-day (Fig. 5). In the Visitors Centre, the same team had produced a site introductory video, both in English and Turkish, making use of the many digital mediums that we employ - photographic images, videos, cartoon strips, texts and music.

Throughout the season we had two weavers set up their looms at which they worked in the site Visitors Centre (Fig. 6). We hope that this is the start of a new venture in collaboration with the Çumra Belediye. Using the skills of a women's weaving school in Çumra we hope to facilitate them at the site from where they can draw upon authentic designs from the site to use in kilim production as well as pass on their skills to women from our local village of Kücükköy.

Also throughout the season a major educational programme took place at the site following on from the EU-funded TEMPER project. Sponsored by Shell and Coca Cola, this scheme brought 20 children to the site every day (see this report) Each day the children came from a different school, and overall about 500 came in the period of a month to learn about the process of archaeology and about Çatalhöyük (Fig. 7).

Finally, we are pleased to announce this years successful candidates for the Thames Water Scholarship grant to assist young Turkish archaeologists. Adnan Baysal was awarded a years fees for his PhD at the University of Liverpool. Basak Boz was awarded a grant towards her studies at Haceteppe University, Ankara. Eylem Özdogan and Nurcan Kayacan from Istanbul University are being funded to attend English courses in the UK to help them towards their PhD's, and Nurcan Yalman was supported for her fieldwork in ethnoarcheology which is towards her PhD programme at Istanbul University.