ANTHROPOLOGY AT ÇATALHÖYÜK
The reflexive methodology which we are using at Çatalhöyük is involving a number of social anthropologists. The work of David Shankland in the local village of Küçüökköy has been reported in earlier publications and concentrates on the impact of the project on the local community. In 1997 Ayfer Bartu, recently appointed to a teaching post in Koç University, Istanbul, has begun a 'multi-sited' ethnography, exploring the various groups from Goddess worshippers to local communities and tourists which have an interest in the site. Ethnoarchaeology is being undertaken by Nurcan Yalman and she is to be joined by Wendy Matthews and a team from METU.
An important part of the anthropological work is conducted by Carolyn Hamilton and Nessa Leibhammer, who have sent the following report from South Africa. Carolyn Hamilton and Nessa Leibhammer travelled from South Africa to be on the site at Çatalhöyük. Carolyn is engaged in a study of how archaeological knowledge is produced at Çatalhöyük. In the 1997 season she focused attention on how the pressures on the archaeologists to animate the site, both in the time of the original Mellaart excavation and in the present, affect the way in which knowledge of the site develops and is presented in the public domain. Her work drew attention to opportunuties at Çatalhöyük for the developing of a radically new and different archaeological archive, as well as different modes of recording excavation information.
Nessa Leibhammer (left) drawing the wall of space 117.
Nessa's study examines visual representation of, and from, the site. For purposes of her Master's thesis, she has chosen to focus on two areas of study, based on representations produced during the Mellaartian era. The first is the key 'icon' of Çatalhöyük - the 'fertility' goddess figurine - around which Mellaart developed an elaborate mythology; and the second is the rendering of the interior spaces. Both these visualisations exert an influence on how the site is interpreted today. The thesis will show how from the original three-dimensional evidence, the subsequent two-dimensional renderings enhance the material in ways which favour particular readings. The styles of these renderings have their origins in historically specific traditions and these in themselves condition the reception of the image. The study will also look at how a shift from three-dimensionality to two-dimensionality inevitably results in the 'loss' of qualities present in the original object or space (see fig 6 for a three-dimensional detail of the walls recorded in figure 10).
Fig 6: Part of a drawing of a wall of space 117 by Nessa Leibhammer, compare South Facing Elevation drawing in Figure 10.
Fig 10: Space117 and wall elevations