Figure 16. Children on the Çatal education programme at the start of a site tour walking from the dig house to the excavation areas.

Throughout the season a large educational programme took place at the site following on from the EU-funded TEMPER project (see above). Sponsored by Shell and Coca Cola, this scheme brought 20 children to the site every day. Each day the children came from a different school in the region and overall about 500 came in the period of a month to learn about the process of archaeology and about Çatalhöyük. The day long activities started with an introduction to prehistory and Çatalhöyük with slides. The children were then guided across the site, visiting the excavation areas where they could watch the archaeologists at work and ask questions before trying their hand at excavation themselves. The 1960s spoilheaps provide an ideal place for this as small bits of stone and bone which were not collected before were caught in the sieving process. Afternoon sessions were spent either painting Çatal motifs on the plastered walls of the experimental house or making clay models of Çatalhöyük houses, figurines and modelling relief art on small tiles (see front image).