A tourist's introduction to Çatalhöyük: a Stone Age city



Çatalhöyük: a Stone Age city
Workers on site at Çatalhöyük
If you start spouting terms like Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic
over the average dinner table, chances are eyes will glaze over and
someone will seek to change the direction of conversation by asking
you to "Pass the salt, please."


Use the more populist term for this lengthy period (in excess of half
a million years) in mankind's development -- the Stone Age -- and you
may well get more interest. To men of a certain age images of the
voluptuous Raquel Welch, star of the 1960s "so bad it's good" movie
"One Million Years B.C." may well spring to mind. Clad in nothing more
than a skimpy fur bikini, the statuesque Welch fled the unwanted
attentions of ugh-ughing Neanderthal men and rampaging dinosaurs with
a reckless disregard to the period (Neanderthal man became extinct
tens of thousands of years before 1 million B.C. and dinosaurs 65
million years ago). Hannah-Barbara's cartoon classic "The Flintstones"
left many a '60s child with the firm impression that in the Stone Age
(so called because in this period man used stone tools and weapons
rather than metal) people called Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble
commuted to work in stone-wheeled cars, drove home to watch stone TV
sets and petted dinosaurs instead of dogs. But the kind of popular
entertainment that peddled such patent (if entertaining) nonsense did
reflect a genuine and burgeoning popular interest in how mankind
developed.

In 1961 the British archaeologist James Mellaart began excavating a 20-
meter-high hüyük (a mound built of man-made debris, otherwise known as
a tel) in the Konya Plain, near the small town of Çumra. Although he
failed to unearth either a cave girl's fur bikini or a stone TV, what
he did discover over the next four years was every bit as exciting as
fiction. Çatalhöyük turned out to be one of the most important sites
not only in Turkey, but in the world. Prior to Mellaart's discoveries,
it had been thought that urbanization had started much later -- in the
Bronze Age. But here was proof that Neolithic (the last period of the
Stone Age) man had gathered together to live communally, from around
7,500 to 6,300 B.C., in a settlement up to 8,000 strong. Mellaart's
excavations at Çatalhöyük electrified not only the archaeological
world, but also captured the imagination of the public -- and his
populist book about the site propelled both the remains and their
discoverer to fame. How could Stone Age man be thought of as primitive
when he lived in an urban environment of densely packed houses and
decorated the interior of his home with wall paintings, sculptures and
relief carvings? The "city's" dead were ritually buried beneath the
floors of some of the houses, with beautiful objects including
necklaces, marble bracelets and mirrors made from obsidian (a glass
like volcanic rock found in huge quantities in nearby Cappadocia).
Mellaart and his team also found statues of a mother goddess and other
female figures (and no corresponding male figures) -- leading to much
speculation that Çatalhöyük was a matriarchal society.

Of course you have to approach Çatalhöyük with a spirit of adventure
and curiosity. No one can claim that a 20-meter-high dirt eminence,
covering some 15 hectares of the rather bleak Konya Plain is the
world's most visually appealing spectacle -- even if it does contain
16 layers of Neolithic settlement (apparently after around 80 years of
occupation, the mud brick houses were abandoned, filled in and new
ones built on top). Fortunately, much work has been done on site to
make Çatalhöyük visitor friendly. Archaeologists and local villagers
(who until very recently were still building mud-brick structures not
dissimilar to the Neolithic houses) have reconstructed a typical
house. Some three by five meters square, the house is flat roofed and
lime-washed. The inhabitants entered their homes by a trapdoor in the
roof, with a ladder leading down to floor level. Inside, areas of wall
are decorated with paintings of hunting scenes (although the people of
Çatalhöyük had domesticated cattle, they still hunted their wild
forebears in the surrounding marshland and hills) and juniper rafters
support the mud roof. The cooking was done in a dome-shaped clay oven
set on the floor beneath the trapdoor and woven reed baskets used for
storage. It's quite something to stand inside the gloom of a house
lived in 9,500 years ago -- even if it is only a replica.

Just beyond the house lies a large, low building. This is the dig
house, which provides accommodation for the teams of archaeologists
who excavate the site annually. The dig is guided and coordinated by
Ian Hodder of Cambridge University, who has been working here since
1993. The aim of this phase of work is to find out as much as possible
about the way of life of Çatalhöyük's inhabitants, utilizing the
latest methods. Compared to Mellaart's era, progress is slow as new
excavation techniques throw up more information but also take more
time. Although Hodder is Cambridge-based, this is an international
effort with partners from the US, Poland, Israel, Greece, Germany,
Denmark, Sweden and Canada, plus students from Turkish universities
including the Middle East Technical University (ODTÜ), İstanbul,
Ankara, Ege, Anadolu, Çukorova and the local university, Konya Selçuk.
A project like this is expensive (around $1 million per season) and
sponsorship essential with Koç, Shell and Boeing amongst the corporate
big boys helping to fund the excavations. Perhaps even more exciting
is the way in which the local villagers have been involved in this
phase of the project -- and not just in menial (though necessary)
occupations such as guarding the site from marauding flocks of sheep
or cooking and cleaning for the archaeologists. Some are tasked with
sifting through soil samples and separating out and bagging bits of
obsidian, pieces of bone and pottery shards for expert analysis. In
season as many as 80 excavators from all over the world, plus 40 local
villagers, are hard at work on this hot and exposed mound.

One section of the dig house serves as the visitor center. Small but
imaginatively laid-out, it has a number of sign-boards with
photographs of excavators asking themselves, through comic-strip style
thought bubbles, questions about the site -- "How did they make the
mud bricks?" "How many people lived in this building?" or "What did
the murals mean?" It's great for kids -- as is the audio-visual
display which gives lots of background information about this
incredible site. There are recreations of wall paintings, copies of
some of the figurines found on site -- notably that of a seated mother
goddess (the actual figure, along with most of the other finds, is in
the Ankara Museum). The site has become something of a draw for
contemporary followers of the mother goddess and neo-feminists who see
Neolithic Çatalhöyük as a place where women were at least the equals
of, if not superior, to men. This has yet to be proven, but the
ongoing work at the site (and in university research departments
around the globe) may eventually come up with some definitive answers
as to the social structure of this Neolithic "city."

Wander up onto the mound, a sea of vibrant purple larkspur in May, to
look into the excavation areas themselves. The south area is covered
by a large steel-framed structure with semi-translucent plastic
sheeting -- essential to prevent the exposed layers of settlement
being eroded. It's hard to imagine how the archaeologists have been
able to distinguish the mud brick walls of the densely packed houses
from the soil encasing them -- let alone reconstruct so accurately
what they looked like. On the top of the mound, tiny fragments of
worked obsidian, brought here from Cappadocia, glitter amongst the
dirt and swaying clumps of wild barley. Obsidian was worked into tools
used for a multitude of purposes such as skinning animals and
threshing grain -- and was a valuable trading commodity. Fragments of
bone peep out from the soil, too, mostly animal but some may be human.
Sometimes as many as 60 burials in one building. Carbonized grain
found on site, either gathered from wild varieties or cultivated,
shows that the residents of Çatalhöyük were both hunter-gatherers and
settled farmers Over to the northeast of the mound the newer
excavation area (known as Bach) is in the process of being encased in
a protective shed but should soon be open to visitors.

Jericho has a claim to be the world's oldest city, but it is 10 times
smaller than Çatalhöyük, making it more of a large village than a
city. Recent finds in Jordan suggest that there were larger and
earlier urban settlements than Çatalhöyük. But this unique site has
nothing to prove to the world. The work that has been done here since
the early 1960s, and looks set to continue well into the future, has
done a great deal to help us understand the development of our species
and, perhaps more importantly, made it accessible to the general
public as well as to the expert.

[TRAVEL TIPS]

How to get to Side

Nearest airport: Konya. Regular flights from İstanbul. Ankara and
Antalya four hours by bus. Hourly buses from Konya to Çumra take an
hour, then take a taxi to the site (17 kilometers).

When to come:

Late spring and early autumn are best climate-wise, but in 2008 the
archaeologists will be on site in June and July -- be prepared for the
heat.

Site entry and admission:

Free; 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily; donations welcomed.

Where to stay:

There are plenty of decent hotels in Konya -- try the plush new
Dedeman (www.dedeman.com) or the moderate Ulusan
(ulusanhotel@xxxxxxxxx).

Books, Web sites:

"Çatal Hüyük: A Neolithic Town in Anatolia" by James Mellaart;
www.catalhuyuk.com.




http://www.archaeologynews.org/story.asp?ID=291719&Title=%C7atalh%F6y%FCk:%20a%20Stone%20Age%20city
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