The Web Site
by Anja WolleThe Web site for the Çatalhöyük Project (http://www.catalhoyuk.com/catal.html) has proved a great success as the steadily rising numbers of visits show (Figure 25). The site has proved popular with the general public, inclusions of its address in publications usually results in a surge of visits, and a flood of positive enthusiastic remarks. A recent search revealed that there are about 250 other sites in the World Wide Web which provide links to our site - these sites fall mainly into two categories: the overwhelming number of links come from Archaeology resources, especially those compiled for students following specific courses, followed by links from Turkish resources.
Figure 25: Average numbers of visits per day to the Çatalhöyük Web site per day. During the summer of 97 the site was hosted by another server, thus no log information is available.
Direct access to the excavation database, and fast access to interim annual archive reports has also been received enthusiastically, not only by team members whose research benefits from having access to the most up-to-date information, but also from the wider archaeological fraternity. As far as we know, we are still the only project to date who make the original excavation data freely accessible, and this resource had proved particularly popular with teachers and lecturers.
Sponsors in particular have been attracted to the web site: they can link to it from their respective web sites, and they can be sure to reach an audience far larger than can be reached by this newsletter. When analysing where the visits to the web site come from, this again shows how extensive an audience we reach (see Tables 1 and 2). Of identifiable addresses, the biggest number of visits come of course from the US, both the commercial and the educational sector (.COM and .EDU). The top part of the table does also reflect the infrastructure, and availability of access to the net in those countries, as well as interest in the site, as it is notable that Turkey records considerably more visits to our site than the next country down the line, France. At the very bottom end of the table, those countries where people only came to look at us once, shows how very global and wide-reaching a publication medium the world wide web really is.
Tables 1 and 2: Top and bottom visiting countries (1997-1998)
| net address | Country | Number of Visits | net address | Country | Number of Visits | |
| COM | US Commercial | 10196 | MU | Mauritius | 2 | |
| NET | Network | 5096 | PF | French Polynesia | 1 | |
| EDU | US Educational | 3644 | AZ | Azerbaijan | 1 | |
| UK | United Kingdom | 1672 | SA | Saudi Arabia | 1 | |
| DE | Germany | 1044 | NI | Nicaragua | 1 | |
| AU | Australia | 616 | GT | Guatemala | 1 | |
| CA | Canada | 574 | MD | Moldova | 1 | |
| US | United States | 556 | ZW | Zimbabwe | 1 | |
| TR | Turkey | 476 | CN | China | 1 | |
| FR | France | 282 | CU | Cuba | 1 | |
| SE | Sweden | 282 | FM | Micronesia | 1 | |
| GR | Greece | 277 | MT | Malta | 1 |