TP AREA EXCAVATIONS
ARKADIUSZ MARCINIAK &LECHCZERNIAC
The TP team (Team Poznan) made up of 10 archaeologists and students from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences in Poznan and Institute of Prehistory, University of Poznan undertook its second field season at Çatalhöyük. The excavations this year continued in a trench 10m x 10m on top of the East mound, opened up last season and located next to an area excavated by James Mellaart in the 1960s. The objective of this project is to study the latest phases of tell occupation, dated to the end of the seventh millennium BC.
Figure 9: Hellenestic/early Roman buildings in the TP area
In fact the TP team spent much of their time this season again working on much more recent traces of occupation on top of the mound, covering the latest Neolithic levels. The excavations began by defining and excavating two Roman buildings (Fig. 9). They were separated by a narrow passage. The buildings appeared to have been used both for manufacture and storage of clay objects. Five kilns have been excavated in the northern part of the trench (Fig. 10), used for spindle whorl and pot production. There were four rectangular kilns with a superstructure made of large mudbricks and a rakeout area in front, as well as a circular kiln with a domed superstructure made up of many layers of clay. A preliminary analysis of pottery indicated a date in the late Hellenistic and early Roman period for this phase of activity on the top of the East Mound.
Figure 10: Rectangular kilns from the TP area
Below these buildings was a layer containing a large amount of limestone fragments. Its exact function remains unclear at this moment and it might have been a paved area or the remains of walls. Most of these limestone fragments were cleared away by builders of the Hellenistic/early Roman structures, but they survived in situ in some parts of the trench.
The earliest phase of occupation discovered this year comprised clearly defined walls of various small late Neolithic/early Chalcolithic rooms in the western part of the excavated area (Figs. 11 and 12). The excavation of this Neolithic building will begin next season. Red painted plaster associated with this building has already been found, as well as an anthropomorphic figurine.
The first two seasons conducted by the TP team show that the east mound had a long and complicated history continuing much later than the Neolithic. The site became an important element of the Hellenistic, Roman, and then Byzantine landscape and was intensively used as a place for the living and for the dead.
Figure 11: Plan of the late Neolithic buildings in the TP trench
Figure 12: A small niche in one of the late Neolithic buildings