Neolithic adult burial in Building 52. The skeleton has been disturbed in the thoracic region by rodent burrowing.
After a slow start to the season, this week we’re finally seeing some action in the field with several Neolithic skeletons having been uncovered. The first skeleton we dealt with in the North Area was the final burial in a sequence of interments under the northeast platform of Building 52. At Çatalhöyük, the northern and eastern house platforms are the most common locations for burials and they typically contain multiple interments. Once we removed the first burial (an adult) we began to see the disturbed remains of an infant and an older child protruding from the sides and bottom of the grave cut. These earlier burials were disturbed by the grave cut for the adult. The excavators will continue to expose both skeletons this week. Later we removed an adult skeleton from the northeast platform of Building 77, where a number of disturbed burials had already been recovered in 2011 and several more individuals are still waiting to be fully exposed.
Neolithic adult burial in Building 96.
While I was working in the North Area, Josh Sadvari was excavating another tightly flexed adult burial from the east platform of Building 96 in the South Area. Last year we removed two burials from this building (a partially disturbed adult skeleton and an undisturbed skeleton of a child) and there are likely to be several more within the east platform of Building 96.
Babies in baskets
Sk.19494- the baby in the basket.
In my last post I wrote about the skeleton of a baby that was block-lifted from the floor of Building 77 in 2012. The baby was buried in a reed basket (or possibly a mat, but “baby in a mat” doesn’t have the same ring to it) which had been partially preserved by the fire that destroyed the building. OSU graduate student Barbara Betz has spent the last two weeks carefully uncovering the skeleton in the human remains lab and now she has fully exposed it (above).
Digitally tracing the neonate skeleton using LibreCAD
Using the four targets in the photograph, I produced a scaled orthophoto which I then traced digitally in LibreCAD, an open-source drafting software. Finally, the digitized plan of the skeleton was georeferenced in the Çatalhöyük GIS by Camilla Mazzucato where it can now be seen in its original location and in relation to the other burials recovered from Building 77.
The finished digitized plan of sk.19494
GIS plan of Building 77 showing location of sk.19494
A Bone to Pick 
Surely Catal Hoyuk was never a place of permanent habitation, but a cemetery where relatives occasionally came to make offerings of young animals, feast with the dead etc. Hence why it is so far from productive fields etc; why so many houses look like shrines; why many walls are so thin, there are no doors etc.
Hi Dylan,
Based on the extensive archaeological work that has been conducted at Çatalhöyük, beginning with James Mellaart (1961-1965) and continuing with Ian Hodder (1993-present), there is absolutely no doubt that it was a permanent settlement inhabited continuously for 1400 years. We know this from the vast middens that surround the houses and contain the remains of domestic refuse. The houses had hearths and ovens and the side rooms contained storage bins filled with wheat – even the few elaborately decorated houses that Mellaart described as “shrines” (although most houses at Çatalhöyük do not look like “shrines”). In addition, burials under the floors of domestic houses are common throughout the Near Eastern Neolithic. In this period, distinctions between spaces for the living (houses) and spaces for the dead (cemeteries) do not appear to have existed.
I’m not sure why you think the site was located far from productive fields. Local farmers continue to grow crops of all varieties right up to the base of the mound at Çatalhöyük today and geoarchaeological evidence suggests that growing conditions were even more favorable in the Neolithic. The walls of the houses are not particularly thin and there are no doors because they entered houses from the roof.
If you’d like to know more, I’d be happy to recommend some good books!
best,
Scott
Sorry to be slow getting back to you on this. The source of my information for the comments made was largely an article by Nadia Durrani in Current World Archaeology 8 (Dec 2004), 56-64, based on interviews with Ian Hodder. This actually included a reconstruction of the site largely surrounded by marsh etc. ‘the nearest place to grow plants or tend animals was a few kilometers away’. It also mentions the ‘thin, windowless mud brick walls’, the ‘scrupulous cleanliness/lack of rubbish’ of the rooms, the occasional open area with evidence of just a few young (sacrificial?) animals. Quotes from CWA. If I can find my article, I will send it. As to reading, I did read an book by someone who participated in the excavations too, which turned out to be largely a description of the experiments in cross-disciplinary exchange which was then the modus operanum of the dig, and thus not much use.
Best Dylan
Our current understanding of local environmental conditions at Çatalhöyük in the Neolithic has changed in the last 10 years. We now have increasing evidence for more variable soil conditions and water availability which suggests that some local cultivation did take place. Nevertheless, the analysis of human remains (as well as other lines of evidence) has shown that the people of Çatalhöyük were highly mobile and that mobility actually increased in the later levels as a result of increased resource exploitation of the landscape, e.g. hunting, herding, timber procurement, etc.
It’s true that houses did not have windows, but that’s because each house is not freestanding; instead, they were abutted by other houses. Access was gained through the roof and these entrances presumably provided sufficient lighting.
I can’t access the full version of the CWA article at the moment so I’m unable to comment on the accuracy of the reportage. We have known for a long time, however, that living spaces within each house are divided into what we call “clean floors” and “dirty floors”. The “clean floors” are the platform areas, typically located in the north and east parts of the house, while “dirty floors” are located in the southern area of the house near the hearths and ovens. Here we find ash deposits, burnt cereals and evidence for stone tool manufacture and other domestic activity.
Here are some links to the project web site that contain an extensive reference list of publications on all aspects of the site. You can also download the excavation reports for each season: http://www.catalhoyuk.com/bibliography.html
http://www.catalhoyuk.com/archive_reports/
There will also be a series of monographs published later this year which covers the work conducted between 2000-2008 in great detail.
best,
Scott
Aha. I have finally tracked down a copy of my piece on CH, and have scanned both this and the CWA article. Can’t see how to attach these here, so please supply means. Thanks
Dylan
WordPress doesn’t allow document attachments and I’m loathe to print my email address here due to spammers. Perhaps you could provide a brief summary of your article and why, despite the intensive research conducted here over the years, you still think that CH was not a place of permanent habitation?
Scott
Well I’m not going to copy-type my article (nor Nadia Durrani’s in CWA) which is what would be required because I am unable to locate my Word doc. So this will be brief and only allude generally to points.
The first thing is to state that I am not questioning the ‘research conducted over the years’ but the conclusions arrived at on the basis of that research. I have no great faith in any conclusions apparently arrived at by James Mellaart, who proved himself through the Dorak Affair and the Kilims business to be a complete charlatan. But let us look at what is being proposed.
Originally Catal Hoyuk was thought to have sat in a fertile area by a nice river, then by December 2004 (date of the CWA article) Ian Hodder was saying it sat in an area of unpleasant marshes, far from fertile lands. Now you say we have reverted to the nice river etc….
Why would anyone build a city of windowless houses crammed together so tightly that no-one could walk around except on roofs, and could not enter except through a hole in the roof? Then, why would their living rooms – under which lay the remains of their recently dead relatives – have been filled with funerary symbols and sculpture? Why were ‘kitchen’ areas accessed only by crawl-holes? It is hard to conceive of less pleasant or convenient accomodation.
It makes a lot more sense to suggest that each plot was a family shrine which was collapsed on to the one beneath after a generation or so, which was visited occasionally by living relatives to cook and feast with the dead before returning to their homes on the plains. This would explain why the living spaces were so clean, why the remains were found of only a few young sheep and goats (sacrifices). It is not impossible that some site custodians or administrators did live on site, but this was basically a cemetery.
It is important to test all theories to see how well the evidence supports them. I think you will find that the evidence supports the basic concept of a cemetery at least as well as it does that of a town.
Dylan
This will probably be my last response, as it seems that you are not really interested in engaging with the information I’ve provided you.
Çatalhöyük is no different from any other Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) site in Anatolia or the wider Near East in terms of settlement layout and burial practices. For example, earlier Anatolian PPNB settlements such as Aşıklı Höyük and Boncuklu Höyük also contain subfloor burials and roof-accessed houses. Subfloor burials are typical throughout the PPNB at Levantine sites such as Jericho and ‘Ain Ghazal. Do you believe that these sites are also cemeteries and not permanent settlements? If so, you should publish your findings as they would certainly rewrite the entire prehistory of the Near East.
To reiterate: the changes in our understanding of the surrounding environment reflect new and ongoing research – this is how science works: our interpretations change when confronted with new evidence. Living spaces at Çatalhöyük were divided into clean and dirty areas – the platform areas were kept clean, while areas around the hearths and ovens contain remains of domestic activities such as plant remains, animal bone fragments and stone tool working. The middens are full of animal bone: sheep, goat, cattle (true, most of these are young animals but this is consistent with butchery practices around the world – there is no need to invoke ceremonial/sacrificial activity). The middens also contain egg shells, fish, bird and other small mammal bones. Are these sacrificial animals as well?
If you were to read any of the publications since Mellaart you’d realize that very few houses contain elaborate sculptural installations and/or wall paintings and that – with the possible exception of the vulture painting – none of these have any conceivable relationship with funerary symbology. The majority of wall paintings are geometric in style, the rest primarily depict animal/human interactions (e.g. hunting).
If Çatalhöyük is simply a cemetery and not a permanent settlement, where did all these people actually live? You refer to them returning to their “homes on the plains” but why have these never been found? Why would people go to the trouble of building such large sites, with hearths, ovens, storage bins, etc, and not bother to actually live there? It makes no sense and the evidence certainly does not support your basic concept.
My last response too. I have read the info, but don’t buy the interpretation.
Quite right. Interpretation should adapt to new evidence. It is a bit worrying though, when we overturn Mellaart’s idyllic environment, to find an infertile hinterland, and revert back to the idyll in just 10 years.
You can argue that most CH structures did not have overtly funerary decoration, but some definitely did, and frankly we have no clue as to what the rest means, so can’t show it isn’t too.
If this was regular housing for living families, why do you think they adapted such an inconvenient form of accomodation?
The middens will contain food stuffs other than the remains of sacrificial aminals. When people dine with the dead today, they eat other foods too.
Most probably these people lived in tents and temporary shelters on the plains (which you would have difficulty finding) and buried theor dead in more permanent ‘habitations’. This was quite a normal balance of permanence amonst ancient peoples as exemplified form instance by the dynastic Egyptians who lived in mud brick buildings, but built in stone for the dead.
If Ian Hodder changes his mind and interprets CH as a cemetery, will you go with him, or will you stand your ground?
You seem to think that archaeological interpretations at Çatalhöyük spring directly from the capricious imagination of Ian Hodder, rather than being the result of extensive interdisciplinary research combining archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, micromorphology, geoarchaeology, human osteology and other lines of evidence.
I will ask you again, do you think that all Neolithic Near Eastern “settlement” sites will need to be reinterpreted in light of your “cemetery” hypothesis, or is it only Çatalhöyük?
Those are pretty burials!
Quesna…may not quite measure up!
L
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Lawrence Owens, Ph.D. University of London
http://www.lawrenceowens.org
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Dear Sir, thank you for sharing your beautiful researches. You say “Subfloor burials are typical throughout the PPNB at Levantine sites such as Jericho and ‘Ain Ghazal.” : so the question is why some individuals were buried in a house and why others were not ? Indeed, if Catal Hoyuk was occupied during 1400 years and everybody buried in the floor, you should dig in a see of bones, shouldn’t you ?