Publisher Description

The Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey has been world famous since the 1960s when excavations revealed the large size and dense occupation of the settlement, as well as the spectacular wall paintings and reliefs uncovered inside the houses. Since 1993 an international team of archaeologists, led by Ian Hodder, has been carrying out new excavations and research, in order to shed more light on the people who inhabited the site. The present volume reports on the results of excavations in 2000-2008 that have provided a wealth of new data on the ways in which the Çatalhöyük settlement and environment were dwelled in. A first section explores how houses, open areas and middens in the settlement were enmeshed in the daily lives of the inhabitants, integrating a wide range of different types of data at different scales. A second section examines subsistence practices of the site's inhabitants and builds up a picture of how the overall landscape was exploited and lived within. A third section examines the evidence from the skeletons of those buried within the houses at Çatalhöyük in order to examine health, diet, lifestyle and activity within the settlement and across the landscape. This final section also reports on the burial practices and associations in order to build hypotheses about the social organization of those inhabiting the settlement. A complex picture emerges of a relatively decentralized society, large in size but small-scale in terms of organization, dwelling within a mosaic patchwork of environments. Through time, however, substantial changes occur in the ways in which humans and landscapes interact.

Author Biography

Ian Hodder, Fellow of the British Academy since 1996, is the Dunlevie Family Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University.

Table of Contents

Contents.
Introduction: dwelling at Çatalhöyük – Ian Hodder 8,000 (word length)

Dwelling at Çatalhöyük.
Sampling and mapping Çatalhöyük – Camilla Mazzucato 10,000
Ecology, diet and discard practices: new interdisciplinary approaches to the study of middens – integrating micromorphological, phytolith and geochemical analyses - Lisa-Marie Shillito, Wendy Matthews and Matthew Almond 12,000
The 65-56-44-10 building sequence midden – a multivariate approach – David Orton 5,000

Dwelling in the Çatalhöyük landscape.
Archaeobotany – Amy Bogaard, Michael Charles, Alex Livarda, Müge Ergun, Dragana Filipovic and Glynis Jones 14,000
Charcoal – Eleni Asouti 8,000
Phytoliths – Philippa Ryan 13,000
Starch – Karen Hardy and Renee van de Locht 8,000
Fauna – Katheryn Twiss, Nerissa Russell, David Orton, Arzu Demirergi 10,000
Microfauna – Emma Jenkins 8,000
Human and animal diets as evidenced by stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis– Jessica Pearson 15,000
Sheep isotopes - Elizabeth Henton 8,000
Fish – Wim van Neer 6,000
Birds and eggshells – Claire Christensen 6,000
Shells – Daniella Bar Yosef 7,000

Humans and their lifestyles.
The Human Remains I: Interpreting Community Structure, Health, and Diet in Neolithic Çatalhöyük -
Clark Larsen, Simon Hillson, Marin Pilloud, Jessica Pearson, Baak Boz, Emmy Bocaege, Christopher Ruff, Evan Garofalo, Joshua Sadvari, Lori Hager, Sabrina Agarwal, Bonnie Glencross, and Patrick Beauchesne 26,000
The Human Remains II: Interpreting Lifestyle and Activity in Neolithic Çatalhöyük -
Clark Larsen, Simon Hillson, Basak Boz, Christopher Ruff, Evan Garofalo, Joshua Sadvari 7,000
Burial treatment – Basak Boz and Lori Hager 10,000
Burial associations – Carrie Nakamura, Lynn Meskell, Basak Boz and Lori Hager 10,000

CD – additional figures (50) and images (50) and tables (25)

Details