THE 1995 SEASON
The main aims were to finish the various studies of the surface of the mounds ready for publication of the first 3-year phase of work (now in press). We also wanted to begin excavation, but slowly while we developed techniques and procedures, and in order to give the conservationists a chance to face their first real Çatalhöyük walls and to experiment with conservation techniques.
Surveying.
On the west mound, the topographic survey was completed using a Leica system 200 GPS brought out and operated by Dr David Twigg from Loughborough University. 3D recording on site was achieved using a T1000 theodolite and Data Disto kindly loaned by Leica UK.
Geophysical prospection.
Magnetometer surveying, which is being conducted by Dr Colin Shell from the University of Cambridge, was extended on the north part of the mound. Readings were also taken as a trial using a full Magnetic Susceptibility meter kindly loaned by Bartington Instruments of Witney, Oxon.
Surface scraping.
Three 10 x 10 m areas were scraped (using the same technique as in earlier years) on the southern edge of the previous scrapings, to extend the scraped area to 40 by 60 metres. This area was chosen as previous scrapings to the north had shown converging lines and a street. However, the newly scraped areas proved to have been pitted and disturbed by Hellenistic and Byzantine pits, buildings and graves so that the Neolithic pattern had become obscured. An oven could clearly be seen within a substantial building which included traces of red paint in some of the plaster.
Excavation: the northern area.
House 1 in the area scraped in 1993 and 1994 at 1170/1020 on the north part of the east mound was chosen for preliminary excavation. We expected the house to be complex because of a plaster feature revealed by scraping in the middle of the north wall. A shelter was constructed and excavation began in the west room, which had been plastered on all walls. In the northeast corner of the room an area of burning was found, and in the southwest a well-made ven or hearth with adjacent rake-out. This hearth in its latest phase indicated use after the initial collapse and infill of the house and earlier oven. Also secondary was a west-east wall added into room 70 and dividing it into two. At its eastern end, this wall had a cattle horn set into it, reminiscent of the bucrania benches found in the 1960s, but much smaller in scale. A deer horn attached to plaster lay in the northern subroom and may have fallen from the wall. All these activities indicate a late use of room 70. The floor of room 70 sloped down from north to south and was resurfaced several times. At the southern end it was covered by burnt collapse material. A slight platform or removed platform occurred in the southeast part of the room and concentrations of seeds occurred on the floor. In the northwest corner a bone 'cup' contained red paint. Against the northeast wall was found a carbonised wooden 'wall' with traces of plaster on each face.
![[house1 plan]](/images/newsletter02/house25.gif)
House 1 as excavated in 1995
An opening in the wall in the southeast corner of room 70 leads into room 71 which was partly excavated this year. In the northwest corner a sloping platform was found on which there was a concentration of fish vertebrae. Cut into the edge of the platform was a later pit which, however, respected the west wall of this room. Secondary activity is thus again indicated, as it is by a curving wall in the southwest part of the room. The western wall of room 71 near the platform was plastered with multiple layers, at least three of which were painted in salmon red - the colouring was continuous and no designs could be identified. The painting was consolidated and will be uncovered fully next year.
In the south part of room 71 the plaster was very thick and extended out around a plaster relief. Only the base of this relief survived. On the floor beneath and around the relief was found the remains of a plaster 'box' in the middle of which was found a jaw of a large aurochs. There was considerable evidence of burned collapse material in this area. A well defined floor was found at a depth of 40 cms - considerably higher than in room 70.
Numerous samples were taken for chemical, lipid etc analysis and micro-sorting. But even before the results of these analyses are known, it is clear that House 1 is extremely complicated. There are at least two separate phases of use. The first phase is associated with the main floors (themselves renewed many times) and at least one plaster feature. The second occurs after the initial filling of room 70 and is associated with a reused hearth and new symbolic elaboration. The high density of features of a complex and symbolic nature recalls the so-called 'shrines' found in the 1960s excavations in area b. It shows that there is no evidence of a ritual 'elite' concentrated in one part of the site. On the other hand, in other respects differs from any found by Mellaart. In particular, the plaster 'box' beneath a relief, the thin- but high-walled oven in room 70, and the subroom within 71 are all different from the buildings excavated by Mellaart. Since other such features (such as the Building 1 type of oven) were found elsewhere in the scraping of the northern eminence, it may be the case that different architectural practices occurred in different parts of Çatalhöyük East.
The 'Mellaart area'.
In area b the 1960s trenches were cleaned in an area 20 x 20 m. The aim here is to remove the walls left by Mellaart so that excavation of the early levels at Çatalhöyük can begin. In particular, the fill in 'shrines' 1 and 8 was cleaned out in an attempt to find Mellaart's 'deep sounding'. All walls rediscovered in this way were drawn and photographs taken ready for removal of the walls next year. This process has led to an evaluation of Mellaart's evidence and the complexities of the stratigraphical sequence are now more fully understood, partly through micromorphology. The plaster on the walls in these areas had largely eroded off, but some small areas of geometric design were identified. These plaster areas have been conserved and lifted. Unpainted areas have been covered over. Level VII, Courtyard 15 had been left unexcavated by Mellaart and so excavation began in this area, uncovering multiple midden layers with high densities of bone.
The trench encompasses the following buildings in Levels VI - X, although most are from Levels VII and VIII: 'Shrines' 1, 8, 9, 10 and parts of 'Shrines' 12, 14, 25 and 27, 'Houses' 2, 16, 28 and parts of 'Houses' 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 12 and 19.
All excavated earth in both excavation areas was dry sieved through a 5mm mesh, with samples taken from each unit for water flotation. Residues from the flotation were dried and further sorted down to 500 microns. A total of 161 samples were taken to which modern scientific techniques could be applied in order to obtain new data on Neolithic subsistence, activities, and the natural and built environment. The overall aim was to establish a two tier sampling strategy designed firstly to sample floors and occupation deposits in detail at 50cm intervals, and secondly to provide a representative but selective range of samples from deposits infilling buildings. Wendy Matthews has developed an exhaustive list of types of samples and methods of collection. These include the following: archive, botanical, chemical block, chemical bulk, grindstone residue, micromorphology, organic residue, phytolith, pollen, pottery residue, salt. Others, such as samples for insects need to be added. All this sampling takes a considerable amount of time both during excavation and in the post-excavation process. But there are a number of specific questions we hope to address in this way which will be important for our understanding of the site. In particular, we hope to find out what activities were taking place on the floors in the 'shrines' and 'non-shrines'.
The data base
This year Tim Ritchey, a PhD research student from Cambridge, was able to devote the whole season to developing our data base, for which we have very ambitious plans. The aim is to provide a fully relational data base, so that all the information from the great variety of specialists involved can be compared at all stages of analysis. The system has also to be changeable. One of the main ideas of our 'contextual' approach is that codes and definitions and objects are not 'fixed' but can continually be changed on the basis of contextual information. In order to develop this fluid system, Tim Ritchey has been exploring categorical systems based on neural networks.
The data base will also be placed on the World Wide Web. The project already has a page on the Web, designed by Tim Ritchie. We intend to place our archive data on the Web, rather than in microfiche or in unnecessarily weighty tomes. In this way the data can be continually updated and will be widely accessible.
Micromorphology
Micromorphological samples were taken from Space 70 in Building 1 in order to study the deposits on the floors. This year we were able to take a microscope for use in the lab on the site. This proved to be very useful because Wendy Matthews was able to compare her results in the laboratory immediately with the deposits on the site. This lead to re-investigation and further sampling of Mellaart's sections. In particular, two new discoveries were made.
The first discovery was the identification in thin section of deposits derived from in-situ stabling of animals, probably ovicaprids, in a sequence of orange and white deposits in a walled space just to the east of Courtyard 15. This sequence of thin interbedded lenses of dung rich deposits has abundant spherulites, phytoliths, diatoms, organic staining and salts, and closely resembles modern samples from stables in the region of Pinarbasi and Asikli Hoyuk, collected by Seona Anderson, University of Sheffield, which have been studied in thin section by the NERC micromorphology project at Cambridge. These deposits were sampled further so that bile acids and coprostanols, which are specific to different animal species, can be studied by Dr R Evershed and colleagues.
The second new observation occurred during reinvestigation of one of the floors recorded in 1993 (in section 3 in the Mellaart area). Further erosion has exposed a grave cut containing human foot and long bones. The significance of this discovery lies in the context of the grave cut. The grave was cut from a level which coincides with a change in the use of floors from i) earlier domestic activities attested by thick floors and layers of occupation deposits, associated with a pot emplacement, to ii) later more formal or ritual activities attested by a sequence of fine white and orange plastered floors which were kept remarkably clean, and are associated with a collapsed Bos jaw, horn cores and plastered features. This change in the use of space within a building is important. Its association now with a grave cut perhaps suggests that the death of an inhabitant resulted in a domestic building being turned into an ancestral shrine. There is a thin layer of dung on the final 'ritual' floor, and the lack of spherulites suggests that only very young animals were involved. Of course, it would only be young animals that could be got through the roof entrance with any ease. But why were the animals separated from their mothers? Were they being milked by humans in an abandoned buildng, or were they part of the offerings in the ancestral shrine? We know more and more about the detail of what happened on the site, but the secular versus ritual problem dogs all the interpretation.
Finds
Artifacts turned up in the excavation areas in very low quantities. Nevertheless, some interesting patterns emerged. For example, work on the faunal remains by Louise Martin, assisted by Rissa Russell, showed that larger fragments occurred in midden deposits than in the buildings. Also, the density of bone in the buildings was very low. This implies that bone refuse was on the whole cleared out of building areas. However, some large pieces of bone were recovered in Building 1 - but in special locations (eg attached to the bench or cross-wall in room 70) or near those locations. Perhaps all such large bones in the buildings were there intentionally, perhaps as part of ritual activities (eg attached to walls, placed in rafters). One set of midden deposits in the Mellaart area had much higher percentages of Bos and Equid than elsewhere (sheep and goat normally dominate). Were these larger animals being processed and discarded differently as part of separate activities?
A seed machine was built by Anne Butler (with advice from Mark Nesbitt and Gordon Hillman). Some charred plant remains were recovered by dry-sieving. Grain legumes, mainly pea, Pisum sativum, were common, as was lentil. Tubers were also identified and this may have been a very important part of the staple diet. Tubers are as yet very seldom recovered or recognised in archaeobotanical assemblages. The evidence supports that from the teeth of a plant diet not heavily based solely on cereals (see human remains report below). About 70 soil samples were obtained for wet-sieving through the seed machine. Much wood charcoal and the remains of cereals, both grains and chaff, were found. In the preliminary analyses, einkorn wheat and barley appear to predominate, with lesser amounts of emmer and bread wheats, but there are also again many other types of plant present.
The obsidian and flint is being studied by James Conolly. The densities in buildings are extremely low - only 189 pieces were found in the excavated parts of Building 1. The primary preparation of raw material was carried out before the obsidian and flint were brought to the site. Debitage from Building 1 is dominated by flake and flake-based components. By studying the lithic material from the 1960s excavations in the Konya museum, Conolly has found that between Level VI and V there is a major change when blades replace flakes as the major type of debitage. The relative proportions of flakes and blades in Building 1 suggest a date at the Level VI/V transition. The presence of significant amounts of chips and thinning flakes indicates working of obsidian on the site, presumably near the building. However, nearly all the lithic evidence comes from 'fill' contexts within the building and must have been incorporated into the material which was pushed into or collapsed into the building. It does not indicate in situ activity within the building.
The ceramics studied by Jonathan Last again occurred in very low densities, and none occurred on the floors of the excavated rooms. Generally, there is a lack of pottery within building fills, and little occurred within the 'midden' of Courtyard 15 perhaps because of the scarcity of ceramics from the earlier levels at Çatalhöyük. The dating of the ceramics from Building 1 confirms the obsidian dating of between Level VI and V. The sherds from the midden or courtyard area are somewhat more abraded and rather smaller than those from the building.
Conclusions.
Despite the limited amount of excavation we have learnt a lot this season. Much of this is about the methods, resources and costs we will need to employ when we start full-scale excavation next year. We were all most struck by the complexity of the site. Of course, we already knew that the site had complex buildings and rituals and art. But what was so remarkable this year was that every square centimetre in Building 1 seemed to be packed with complex information about secondary use, abandonment and re-use. The buildings are involved in complex sequences of activity - they do not just exist as static entities. We are beginning to develop new ideas about these sequences of use. For example, is it generally the case that buildings go through a cycle from 'domestic' to 'ancestral shrine' to 'cleansing and infilling' to re-use for 'domestic' purposes? The more we know the more questions we seem to have. One question that does seem to have found at least a provisional answer is the relative date of the buildings on the top of the northern eminence. Both the ceramics and the obsidian concur in giving a position between Mellaart's Levels V and VI. But this conclusion also raises new questions. In particular, was the northern eminence abandoned while occupation continued on the higher and larger southern mound in levels IV and above? The answer to this question hinges on how much erosion has occurred on the northern eminence. Were there levels above Building 1 which have since been lost? Since this eminence was not so well protected by Classical occupation, perhaps the Building 1 level was not the last on the northern eminence? Such a possibility is supported by the fact that the lithic and ceramic material found on the surface on the northern eminence includes material later than that found in Building 1. Later levels may have been eroded off. This possibility will be explored by a programme of research on the site formation and slope erosional processes at the site. New lines of enquiry, and new questions are continually being raised.
We are trying to answer other questions in very different ways. For example, Mirjana Stevanovic from Berkeley (to be joined by Ruth Tringham next year) has begun work on experimental reconstruction of the buildings. In this way we can experiment with ideas about why the buildings were built in the way they were (eg with separate, rather than party walls). Using these and a wide range of analytical techniques we hope to get closer to some answers. But in the end it is the relationship between all the different types of data on the site which will give us the fullest picture - which is why close interaction between all those involved is at the centre of what we are trying to achieve.