ÇATALHÖYÜK 2004 ARCHIVE REPORT

OUTREACH PROJECTS

The Çatahöyük Biography

Michael Balter

Abstract

The 2004 season marked the completion of the excavation's "authorized biography," The Goddess and the Bull (subtitle = Çatahöyük: An Archaeological Journey to the Dawn of Civilization. ) My visit to the site in late July, to gather material for the book's Epilogue, luckily coincided with some of the most exciting finds in the history of the current dig: The discovery of a "Mother Goddess" style figurine and a plastered, painted skull reminiscent of those from sites in the Levant. The book's publication in January 2005, by Simon and Schuster's Free Press imprint, will be the culmination of five years of research and interviewing both on site and in between seasons. At the outset, I want to thank Ian Hodder, Shahina Farid, and dozens of other members of the team past and present for their kind cooperation and patience over several years. Everyone who helped out, no matter how small or large their contribution, is named in the book's Acknowledgements.

Özet

2004 yılı, kazının ‘onaylanmış biografisi' olan “ Anatanrıça ve Boğa (arabaşlık= Çatalhöyük: Uygarlığın Çıkışına bir Arkeolojik Yolculuk ”un tamamlanmasına damgasını vurmuştur. Ocak 2005'te, Simon and Schuster's Free Press   tarafından yayınlanacak olan kitap, beş yıl süresinde hem kazı alanında hem de kazı sezonu arasındaki zamanlarda yapılan araştırmanın bir ürünüdür.

Çatalhöyük'ün hikayesi 17 bölümden oluşmakta ve bir giriş ve son söz kısmı içermektedir. İlk üç bölüm James Mellart ve meslekdaşlarının 1958 yılında yerleşim yerini keşfetmeleri ile ilgili hikayeyi kapsar. Daha sonra hikaye Ian Hodder'ın biografisi, geliştirdiği “ post- bilişsel” arkeolojik akımın ortaya çıkışı ve Çatalhöyük'ü kazmaya karar verme aşamasındaki şartlar ve durumun anlatılması ile ilgilidir. Daha sonraki bölümler, “Malanın Ucunda” “Uzun Sezon” ve “Yabaniyi Uysallaştırmak” adı altında toplanmış ve devamında kazı kronolojisi ve uzman ekibinin buluntuları ile ilgili detaylar verilmiştir. Bu sayfaların içerisinde kazı ekibinin bazı üyelerinin hikayeleri daha özel bir biografik incelemeye tabi tutulmuştur. Kitap iki tane de, toprağa yerleşme ve erken toplumların kökeni üzerinde duran teorik ağırlıklı bölümü içerir.

 

The story of Çatahöyük is told in 17 chapters, plus an Introduction and the Epilogue. The first three chapters cover the 1958 discovery of the site by James Mellaart and his colleagues, and Mellaart's four seasons of excavation during the 1960s. The so-called Dorak Affair, which actually refers to a series of events that led to the dig's being shut down by Turkish authorities in 1965, is also covered in some detail. I am very grateful to the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, its staff, and its governing council, for opening its archives on these events to me for what--as far as anyone is aware--was the very first time they were made publicly available. The story then picks up with Ian Hodder's biography, the development of his archaeological thought and the birth of the "post-processual" movement in archaeology, and the circumstances under which he decided to dig at Çatahöyük. The ensuing chapters, with titles such as "At the Trowel's Edge," "The Long Season," and "Taming the Wild," follow the dig's chronology as well as detail the findings of the specialist teams. Interwoven into these pages are the stories of a number of team members who were chosen for special biographical treatment. The center of the book is taken up by two somewhat more theoretical chapters about the origins of sedentism and early communities.

As the first full-length volume about Çatahöyük aimed at the general public since James Mellaart's 1967 book, Çatal Hüyük: A Neolithic Town in Anatolia , this book has the potential to reach a very wide audience. For that reason, I decided at the outset to employ literary devices that would allow me to get across a maximum of archaeological knowledge, including details of the theoretical debates that led Ian Hodder to reopen the site in the first place, with a minimum of pain to the general reader. I felt that the best way to do this was to tell the story of the excavation through the lives of the archaeologists themselves, exploring their backgrounds, what led them to become archaeologists, and the various ways that they participated in the dig and experienced its challenges. For many members of the team, this occasionally created anxiety about the extent to which their private lives would be exposed publicly; in most cases these issues were easily resolved through discussions and negotiations about what would and would not be included. It is a great credit to the members of the team that they allowed me to go to the maximum limits in this regard: Once having accepted the basic premise of the book, they courageously permitted their lives to be opened up for scrutiny.

Although at the beginning I had no intentions other than producing an "objective" piece of journalism about the dig, the book ended up being, in my opinion, a good example of the principle of "multivocality" which has guided Ian Hodder's direction of the excavations. That is, the book is part of the Çatahöyük Research Project, and yet independent of it at the same time. While a number of members of the team carefully reviewed the text and made corrections and very helpful suggestions, at all times it was understood that I would have the final say about what went into the book. It is rare that a journalist has the opportunity to produce a work under these conditions, which insured the credibility of the book while at the same time maximizing the input by its very subjects. If the book ends up having even a modest success in the literary marketplace, it will be largely due to this collaborative effort. And in writing it, I learned a great deal myself about what "objective" journalism really means, and to what extent it is achievable or even desirable. I think I expressed this best in the book's Introduction:

"One day, while consulting the dig's Web site…I was surprised to see that without my knowledge I had been designated as the excavation's official 'biographer.' At first I was a little concerned. I even thought about asking them to take my name off. Wouldn't being a member of the team jeopardize my reputation as an objective journalist? Indeed, I had often secretly wondered whether I kept going back to Çatahöyük so that I could write this book, or whether I wrote this book so that I could keep going back to Çatahöyük. But in the end, it really doesn't matter; either way, the story comes out the same."

          Figure 128: Front cover of The Goddess and the Bull