 |
 |
 |
 |
SITE
The name "Çatalhöyük" (Chat-al
Hoo-yook) originated from a forked road to the north of the hills - "catal"
means fork and "hoyuk" means mound. It is an interesting coincidence
that this name marks the largest Neolithic site in the Near East - an
important crossroad in the history of civilization.
It is one of the first settlements known to have made the transition from hunting-gathering to agrarian society, as early as 7400 BC. The population of the city is estimated to have been in the thousands which would have comprised the most populated city in the world at the time. A number of significant developments occured in Çatalhöyük; for example, the first fabric, mirror, wooden bowl, methodic system of agriculture, cattle farming and the emergence of religion in today's format were first developed and used here. Under the light of all these findings, it is widely accepted that the site is one of the most important archaeological places of recent times.
 |
In Çatalhöyük, we can also trace the early stages of
farming. This is accompanied by the worship of the Mother Goddess along
with the holy animal, the bull. The Mother Goddess stands for fertility
and multiplication of man. In the excavations carried in Hacilar and Çatalhöyük,
hundreds of Mother Goddess statutes have been found. The Goddess, with
exaggerated sexual organs, is almost always depicted nude and lying down
in the posture of crouching, and notably in the process of giving birth.
The fact that similarly designed Mother Goddess statues can also be found
in the Near Eastern and Aegean cultures signifies the existence of matriarchal
societies in these regions during the same time periods. The Goddess Kybele
came into sight around 7000 BC. Most of the finds from this period are
on display in the Ankara Museum of Anatolian Civilizations.
ARCHITECTURE
The Çatalhöyük settlement, on the 52 km southeast
of Konya and north of the town of Cumra, dates back to 6800-5000 BC and
is the most developed center of the Near East and the Aegean. Excavations
have shown that the city with ten different settlement levels was built
according to a designed plan. This was achieved by arranging the rectangular
plan houses next to one another around the courtyards. There are no stone
foundations in Çatalhöyük and all houses carry flat roofs.
 |
Houses were made up of mud brick and they were all built according to the same ground plan. They have no doors. Instead the entrance is accessed through windows on the ceilings by using portable ladders. The windows for air and light are placed on the topmost part of the walls near the roofs. The houses are composed of wide living rooms, storage rooms and kitchens. In the rooms there are seats and furnaces. The dead are buried under the seats in the houses after having been dried in the sun.
The walls of the houses are decorated with bull heads and paintings. These paintings, which signify the ritualistic nature of the community, are placed in a corner in the houses rather than in a special separate location within the settlement area. Bull heads are formed in high reliefs, like statues, and some of them are made by the covering of original bullheads with clay. In the formation of the wall paintings, red, brown, black, white and pink dyes on top of the gray mud brick are used. Among the motifs used are geometrical designs, flowers, stars, circles and some depictions of daily life as well as human hands, deities, human figures, hunting scenes, bulls, birds, vultures, leopards, wild deer and pigs, lions and bears. A depiction of the eruption of a volcanic mountain (very likely, Mount Hasan, near Cappadocia) is the oldest known scenery painting.
CONSERVATION
 |
LOCATION
Çatalhöyük is situated to the south-east of Konya
where the Carsamba river nourishes the fertile plains. The site rises
up in twin mounds from the middle of the Konya plain, some 3,000 feet
above sea level in fertile wheat lands watered by the Carsamba Cay river
flowing down from the Taurus Mountains.