The main objective of this season's work was to compare the results available from earlier work in the South Area to results derived from deposits excavated in different parts of the Neolithic East mound.During the 2004 season Eleni Asouti examined 29 charcoal flotation samples (totaling 2,368 fragments).

The analysis of the data is still at a preliminary stage. Comparisons with the data produced for the South Area would suggest that juniper maintains a much more prominent presence in the samples from the 4040 Area. By contrast, in the South Area virtually all midden samples were dominated by oak. Furthermore, it is evident that in the 4040 Area there is no consistent pattern in taxon representation across samples. Given that the two areas overlap significantly in the Çatalhöyük temporal sequence such differentiation becomes difficult to evaluate. In addition, small woods (shrubs) are substantially fewer in the 4040 samples, although the fact that no part of the >2mm fraction was examined during this season has certainly affected the low frequencies of shrubs such as woody legumes and wormwoods (Asteraceae). Some rare taxa (e.g. alder, chaste tree, caper, fig, wild plum, etc.) that had been previously found in the South Area middens are also absent from the 4040 assemblages. Overall, the first impression is that these samples are less diverse compared to the charcoal samples from the South Area. At the same time however, it must be noted that all the main ecological units reconstructed through previous analyses are also represented in the recent charcoal results: Upland oak-juniper woodland (at the southern edges of the Konya plain on hills and colluvial slopes), riverine forest (most proximate to the site), forest steppe (at the edges of the floodplain protruding into the steppe) and steppe proper (on the marl plain and drier localities).