Abstract
Chalcolithic religious practice at the site of Çadır Höyük (central Anatolia) included the insertion of ritual deposits into the architectural fabric of the settlement, “consecrating” spaces or imbuing them with symbolic properties. These deposits are recognizable in the archaeological record by their consistent use of ritually-charged material, such as ochre, copper, human and animal bone, and certain kinds of ceramics. During the 800-year period considered in this paper, the material practice of making these ritual deposits remained remarkably consistent. However, the types of spaces where the deposits are made change as shifting social organization reforms the divisions between private and public space.
Highlights
The guest editors for “Housing the Sacred” identified themes that are applicable to virtually any location in the world that existed at any time in the past
That the present authors immediately recognized that the buildings and spaces at Late Chalcolithic Çadır Höyük, on the central Anatolian plateau, were contexts that fit snugly into the framework outlined for this thematic issue
The Chalcolithic deposits that we have identified at Çadır Höyük can mainly be divided into two categories: “foundation deposits,” created at the time of a building’s construction or during major renovations, and similar assemblages that are inserted into the architecture later, usually under the floor or in the masonry of the wall at ground level
Summary
The guest editors for “Housing the Sacred” identified themes that are applicable to virtually any location in the world that existed at any time in the past It is not surprising, that the present authors immediately recognized that the buildings and spaces at Late Chalcolithic Çadır Höyük, on the central Anatolian plateau, were contexts that fit snugly into the framework outlined for this thematic issue. The southeastern region of Anatolia is frequently intertwined, both in scholarship and in Chalcolithic reality, with peoples and places in northern Mesopotamia This might suggest that the central plateau, within which Çadır Höyük rests, would exist as its own regional and cultural entity, but the ceramic evidence does not confirm this (Schoop 2005).
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