Çatalhöyük Research Articles

Reviewing the First Settlements

The first humans appeared about 300,000 years ago and were called homo sapiens. As these appeared on the earth, requirement of food and shelter grew and thus the requirement of first settlement. This research paper tries to explore the various concepts given by various authors in different areas across the globe that contributed to the development of first settlements. The authors have tried to cover through some notable settlements in Middle East like Catal Huyuk in Southern Turkey, Nabta Playa in Egypt, Jericho in West Bank region of Middle East. The research type is exploratory with focus on literature from well-known authors in like Smith (2009), Ching et al (2011) as well as anthropologists like Mellart (1967), Kenyon (1956), Wendorf and Schild (1998, 2001). The settlements have been studied in terms of population, housing, religion, occupation, art and pottery etc. In the discussion, some similarities or common features and difference among the settlements have been noted by the researchers.

Book Review of Violence and the Sacred in the Ancient Near East: Girardian Conversations at Çatalhöyük, edited by Ian Hodder

Book Review of Violence and the Sacred in the Ancient Near East: Girardian Conversations at Çatalhöyük, edited by Ian Hodder

Hegel and Nietzsche in the Ruins of Çatalhöyük: Examining Assumptions in the Connection Between Violence and Neolithization

Hegel and Nietzsche in the Ruins of Çatalhöyük: Examining Assumptions in the Connection Between Violence and Neolithization

Ending 25 years of fieldwork at Çatalhöyük

Ending 25 years of fieldwork at Çatalhöyük

ESKİ DOĞU’NUN ANADOLU VE BACTRIA-MARGIANA’DAKİ ÖRNEKLERDE CENAZE GELENEĞİ: KÖKEN Mİ PARALELLİK Mİ?

The article is devoted to an ancient tradition in the burial practices of the peoples of Asia Minor and Central Asia, dating back to the Neolithic Period, namely exposing the dead to be eaten by birds or animals. Exposing the dead was performed at designated areas of natural character (mountains, hills), and special constructions, described in ancient Persian sources (Avesta) with a special term, “dakhma”. After the “purification” of bones from the flesh, the remains were buried in rooms (the sanctuary of Catal Huyuk) or in graves (Bactria). The practice of exposing the dead to the mercy of birds of prey - vultures - is recorded on monuments with figurative representations of the Neolithic Period in ancient Anatolia (reliefs of Gobeklitepe and murals of Catal Huyuk). Catal Huyuk’s paintings clearly illustrate the custom and at the same time are the earliest examples of narrative art. This burial tradition is observed also in the archaeological material and in works of small forms of Central Asia (Bactria, Margiana) of Late Bronze Age. Of great interest in this respect are two seals originating from Bactria. However, the custom of exposing the dead for purification continued in Central Asian and Iran regions for many centuries until the arrival of Islam in these lands. This is evidenced by the data of ancient authors and medieval written sources. One variety of this rite in Central Asia can be observed in the ossuary rite of burial. Remnants of this ancient custom of purification bones are fixed also in the ethnographic material of Central Asia until the late of Middle Ages.

Ups and downs at Çatalhöyük 2016

Ups and downs at Çatalhöyük 2016

English

English

English

English

English

English

English

English

Implications of Dental Caries in Anatolia: From Hunting–Gathering to the Present

Teeth are considered one of the most informative and durable parts of the skeleton. In Dental Anthropology, they are used to obtain information on culture, health, diet, variability and evolutionary trends in dental morphology as well as development, eruption and dental pathologies in the past and modern populations. In this study, an attempt was made to evaluate the results of dental caries, which is the most common dental disease, in order to document changing patterns of health and diet ranging from the transitional period of hunting–gathering through agriculture to the present day in human history in Anatolia. From the total sample of 400 modern individuals, a total of 5,208 maxillary teeth and 5,153 mandibular teeth were studied. The percentage of the occurrence of dental caries based on the individuals was 77.8%, whereas the frequency of dental caries on tooth type and class was 17.1% (18.0% maxillary decay; 16.2% mandibular decay). A comparative study of the frequency of caries in certain periods indicates the following: in the hunting–gathering period it was 1%–2%, in the Early Neolithic it was 3%–5% (Catal Hoyuk), in the Neolithic (beginning of agriculture) it was 5.6% (Cayonu), in the Chalcolithic it was 11.7% (Norsuntepe), in the Roman period it was 11.1% (Panaztepe), and 16% (Datca), in the Late Byzantine it was 10.9% (Iznik) and in the Medieval it is 14.2% (Arslantepe). These findings contribute to understanding how dietary change and life conditions are interrelated with the changing patterns of dental diseases in Anatolian populations.

Jealous gods and chosen people: the mythology of the Middle East

Esteemed scholar David Leeming, who has authored more than twelve books on mythology, here offers the first comprehensive narrative study of the mythology of the Middle East, that tumultuous region that was the cradle of civilization. Leeming begins with a brief, engaging history of the Middle East, spanning Neolithic cultures, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, the invention of writing and the rise of Egypt and Babylonia, Israel and Roman rule, and the early history of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims. This is followed by an in-depth discussion of the mythology of the region, covering individual pantheons, cosmic myths, mythic heroes, and much more. Leeming ranges from prehistoric figures such as the Mother Goddess of Catal Huyuk to Mesopotamian gods such as Marduk and mythic heroes such as Gilgamesh, to the pantheon of Egyptian mythology, including the falcon-headed sky-sun god Horus and jackal-headed Anubis. The author also offers an illuminating exploration of the mythology of the three great monotheistic religions of the region: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In a provocative Epilogue, Leeming depicts today's crisis in the Middle East as violent, clearly immoral, and illegal actions justified by what can only be called myths. He notes that fundamentalists in the area's three religions all see their way as the only way, forgetting that myths represent truths that are spiritual and philosophical-not historical events that can be used to justify acts of violence. With key maps, illustrations, bibliography, and index, Jealous Gods and Chosen People provides an inclusive, authoritative, and captivating account of a mythology that remains a potent-and often destructive-force in the world today.

Women and Men at Çatalhöyük

Women and Men at Çatalhöyük

Women and men at Catalhöyük.

Women and men at Catalhöyük.

Instant evolution. The influence of the city on human genes: a speculative case

The dominant view in today's evolutionary psychology is that our instincts were stamped into our DNA during the infamous EEA, “The Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness” (Cosmides & Tooby, Evolutionary psychology: A primer. Santa Barbara: Center for Evolutionary Psychology, University of California, 1997.). This is generally reckoned as a roughly two and a half million-year hunter-gatherer phase that ended before the climax of the last Ice Age. Since then, our genetically preprogrammed heritage has supposedly been locked in stone (or better yet, in an amino acid code). We are, so says the current argument, tribal hunter-gatherers decked out in modern clothes. However a strong case can be made for the possibility that human biology has continued to evolve during the 10,000 years since Jericho's builders erected the first city walls. Genes change far more speedily than most evolutionary psychologists realize. Natural selection has had 400 generations to rework our bodies and our brains since the days when Catal Huyuk, Suberde, and Tepe Yahya joined Jericho's mesh of intercity trade. Four thousand years before the rise of the Sumerian cities of Ur, Uruk, and Kish, Stone Age metropolises from Anatolia to the edges of India were already rich in challenges and opportunities. These urban traps and niches may well have been selectors forming much of what we are today. Homo urbanis has not only arrived, he has long since elbowed Homo tribalis far off to the side.

Life in neolithic farming communities: social organization, identity, and differentiation

Part I: Introduction. 1. Social Configurations of the Near Eastern Neolithic: An Introduction I. Kuijt. Part II: Sedentism, Early Villages and Households in Transition. 2. Early Sedentism in the Near East - A Bumpy Ride to Village Life A. Belfer-Cohen, O. Bar-Yosef. 3. Hallan Cemi and Early Village Organization in Eastern Anatolia M. Rosenberg, R.W. Redding. 4. Households in Transition: Neolithic Social Organization within Southwest Asia B.F. Byrd. Part III: Organization of Social Relations: Mortuary Ritual, Social Differentiation, and Settlement Systems. 5. The Quick and the Dead: The Social Context of Aceramic Neolithic Mortuary Practices as Seen from Kfar Hahoresh N. Goring-Morris. 6. Keeping the Peace: Ritual, Skull Caching and Community Integration in the Levantine Neolithic I. Kuijt. 7. Ritual and Social Structure at Neolithic Ain Ghazal G.O. Rollefson. 8. Is Size Important? Function and Hierarchy in Neolithic Settlements F. Hole. 9. Villages on the Edge: Regional Settlement Change and the End of the Levantine Pre-Pottery Neolithic A. Simmons. Part IV: Social Relations and Material Culture: Symbolism and Meaning. 10. The Symbolic Foundations of the Neolithic Revolution in the Near East J. Cauvin. 11. Catal Huyuk in Context Ritual at Early Neolithic Sites in Central and Eastern Turkey M.M. Voigt. 12. The Pottery Neolithic Period: Questions about Pottery Decoration, Symbolism and Meaning E. Orrelle, A. Gopher. Part V: Conclusion. 13. NearEastern Neolithic Research.

Hunting, herding, feasting: animal use at Neolithic Catalhoyuk, Turkey

Hunting, herding, feasting: animal use at Neolithic Catalhoyuk, Turkey

A Revolution of Ideas in Agricultural Origins

Ideas about the origin of sedentism and agriculture have been changing in recent years, with a greater emphasis on examining the details of sites case by case. Some new evidence seems to indicate that there was no simple transition or rapid revolution from nomadic subsistence to agriculture and sedentism in the Neolithic. Evidence described from Abu Hureyra, Catal Huyuk, and 'Ain Ghazal suggests that these settlements were not simply either hunting and gathering or farming. In addition, there was probably not a uniform shift at these sites from simple, egalitarian farming villages to large culturally sophisticated settlements. New information supporting these conclusions is given. A discussion is provided concerning whether or not a single factor caused the development of agriculture (which emerged virtually simultaneously throughout the world). Population pressure and climatic change are described as two possible causes. Other workers suggest that evidence from local sites (such as from Abu Hureyra) do not fit these type of general causal models.

Continuity and discontinuity. How to account for a two thousand years gap in the cultural history of the Khartoum nile environment

The Khartoum Neolithic inhabitants had a food‐producing economy in the 6th millennium B.P. However, all the sites in the area were abandoned in the fifth millennium B.P. What were the reasons? Was it climatic deterioration as I earlier hypothesized, or was it the result of other factors. Excavated material from 1983 does not support the climatic theory. Alternative factors such as change to less visible settlement patterns caused by a nomadization process is put forward as an alternative hypothesis. Material from other areas such as the Middle‐East Catal Huyuk and Jericho is used to support this argument.

A note on the geomorphological environment of Çatal Hüyük, Turkey

Abstract It had previously been proposed ( Cohen, 1970 ) that after large-scale Early Holocene alluviation, no post-occupational sediment accumulated around the neolithic site of Catal Huyuk in south-central Anatolia. Data presented here, however, indicate that several metres of archaeological deposit at both east and west mounds are overlain by alluvium. This implies that the modern distribution of soil and water resources cannot be used directly to assess past agricultural potential in the vicinity of the site.