Other projects
The figurines (fig 9) form part of the corpus of small finds from the site being studied by Naomi Hamilton. The majority of the 62 or more figurines found during the 1996 season came from the Mellaart area. Almost all were found in so-called midden layers containing high quantities of charcoal, animal bone, broken artifacts etc. The figurines found in these deposits include animal, humanoid and human figures (both stylised and naturalistic) in states of completeness ranging from very fragmentary to a whole. The presence of complete figurines in apparent midden contexts may be part of a reconsidering of the nature of these deposits.
Figure 9: Animal figurine of baked clay recovered from the Mellaart area during the 1996 excavation season.
The pottery from the site is being studied by Jonathan Last, the knapped stone by James Conolly, and the archaeobotanical materials by Christine Hastorf and Julie Near. Groundstone is being studied by Adnan Baysal, the ubiquitous clay balls by Mehmet Uluceviz, and the stamps by Ali Turkcan. Our main finds on the site, however, are animal bones. These are being studied by Louise Martin, Nerissa Martin and the microfauna by Leola Leblanc. Analysis of the animal bone material is still at an early stage, but some preliminary results permit discussion. For example, it is likely that zooarchaeological findings from the 1960s excavations at the site are potentially severely flawed, at least in terms of taxonomic abundance. Perkins (1969) reported that 69.8% of the remains from Level VI, and 79.4% from Levels X-XII belonged to cattle. The fauna from all areas of the new excavations has so far been dominated by sheep and goat, and of these sheep are more common. For example, the sheep/goat category make up 63% of the assemblages, both from the North house and from the material so far examined from the Mellaart area. Cattle constitute 13% and 11% respectively. It seems most likely that the previously recorded predominance of cattle was simply an artifact of the haphazard collection of large pieces of bone. From the new excavations, pigs are rare, as are deer (although their numbers in the North area are over-inflated by highly fragmented antler pieces), dogs are fairly common although other carnivores are less well represented, and at least two species of equids (Equus hydruntinus and a large form, probably E. caballus) form a small but significant part of the assemblage. The presence of moderate numbers of equids is particularly interesting given that they seem to be totally absent from the art, in contrast to the rarer deer. Horses were apparently not symbolically salient at Çatalhöyük. Perhaps speed was not important?
The Human Remains team in the field in 1996 consisted of Theya Molleson, Peter Andrews, Tona Majo, Basak Boz, Arzu Gungor and Jessica Pearson. Funding was from the Natural History Museum, London. Only one of the more than 37 skeletons has been described in full detail as yet. It is clear, however, that overall there is little evidence to support the widely accepted notion that the burials beneath the floors at Çatalhöyük are secondary. Disturbance to earlier burials does occur when later bodies are added in to pits beneath floor platforms.
A team of Conservators from the University of Pennsylvania and Connie Silver made further progress in developing the treatment techniques that will be needed to conserve wall plasters and paintings when they are found. They also built a drilling and lifting rig that is able to lift up to 2.5 tons of wall so that walls and paintings can be taken to the laboratories and layers of plaster separated and restored in a safe and controlled environment.
A team from Karlsruhe in Germany continued video documentation and feeding digitised videos onto the database. Experimental archaeology and ethnoarchaeology dealing with building construction, use and collapse were continued by specialists and students from the Universities of California, Berkeley and Istanbul.