Project Update
Since 2004, Global Heritage Fund has funded conservation and community development work at Çatalhöyük, a 9000-year-old site that has revealed some of the world’s earliest mural art.  In recent years, local, regional, and national interest in Turkey has increased regarding the development of the site for tourism and economic benefit for the local communities. Currently, Çatalhöyük is on the Turkish tentative list for UNESCO World Heritage Site inscription, a designation that would make it the only Neolithic site on the World Heritage list from the Middle East.

GHF Impact
Site Conservation
Considerable progress was made in terms of conservation, with the local community involved in preserving wall paintings and putting them on display. Turkish students in conversation worked on putting mud brick buildings on display and lifting wall paintings and preparing them for museum display.

Under the new shelter in the 4040 Area Building 5 was uncovered and put on display. This involved much consolidation of plasters and grouting of walls. In addition in the same area Building 52 and Building 77, both with bull horn installations were conserved and the bull horns put on display in situ with plastic mounts. Both these burned buildings were treated throughout and are now on permanent display.

In the same area in Building 49 several paintings were uncovered and have been recorded. Throughout the whole 4040 Area under the shelter 14 buildings were treated for permanent display. In the TP Area in the southern part of the mound a frieze excavated in 2007 was uncovered again and lifted by the conservation team and taken down to the dig house. The process was very successful and the team has started preparing the frieze for display in Konya Museum.

The new shelter over the excavation areas was completed and found to work extremely well for excavators, visitors and conservators. The design has been universally praised and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism has been highlighting it in its promotional material and in the press. The shelter was designed by a young Turkish firm and was constructed with local labor.

New walkways and information panels in the shelter were prepared and this was all achieved using local labor and Turkish students working with museum and display specialists.

10 buildings beneath the South shelter and in the 4040 were put on display or prepared for display. Conservation work continued as well on a separate building - Building 5 - so that this could remain on display and so that new techniques of conservation could be experimented with. Paintings were lifted for museum display, but as far as possible installations were prepared for display in situ beneath the shelters.

Because of the large areas of wall plaster that needed conserving, women from the local community were trained to remove the 100s of layers of plasters from the walls looking for wall paintings under the guidance of trained conservators. In addition, men from the local community were trained in aspects of site presentation, especially the preparation of display panels, and the guiding of visitors around the site.

Çatalhöyük does not sit as a ready-made site for tourism and economic development. It has to be developed. As already noted there were no facilities at the site when the project began in 1993. Since then, a Visitor Center has been built, 9000 year old mud brick buildings have been conserved and put on display beneath a major shelter (50m x 26m) in the South area, an experimental house has been constructed, walkways provided, display panels installed on site, an audio guide has been produced, a car park has been built. These investments, together with the public outreach and educational schemes that have been introduced, are the reasons for the increase of tourism from 0 to 13,000 a year.

But the local, regional and national authorities wish to increase tourism to 50,000 or 100,000 a year. To do this requires additional facilities, and in particular a new shelter over the excavated houses in a new area of the site (the North 4040 area). The main difficulty of Çatalhöyük with respect to tourism and economic development is that the buildings are made of mud brick. It is prehistoric and does not have the spectacular stone architecture of Classical and historical sites. It does not have massive and enduring constructions. Although its art is of great interest and importance, the paintings and sculptures are of mud earths and clays. They are placed within and are integral to the architecture of houses made of unfired mud brick. In order to present buildings and the art that is integral to them, conservation is necessary. Conservation itself depends on having suitable covers or shelters.

Conservation underway by trained local community member.
Photo by: Jason Quinlin.

Community Development
Members of the local community gained training in the conservation and treatment of wall paintings, and Turkish students from Istanbul University, Middle East Technical University (METU), and London University participated in a series of conservation and site preservation tasks including cutting and lifting walls with plaster reliefs and paintings for display in Konya museum.

Members of the local community and students and researchers have been taken to the UK and USA on Çatalhöyük Scholarships – so far 23 people have benefited in this way. Members of the local community are also involved in the research at the site, in workshops during the ‘post-excavation’ phase of the project. Their contributions are published in the final publication volumes of the project. There has been much training of local community members in conservation, site development, and in heritage craft production and regeneration.

There is increased income from tourism that has had an impact on the café by the site and in the local town of Cumra and in the village of Kucukkoy. Members of the community sell craft products at the site. We held a consultation with the whole village of Kucukkoy at the site. This was very productive and has been followed up by questionnaire interviews and talks in the villages around the site. There are plans now for an integrated heritage park around the site.

As is clear from the pictures, the new facilities in the shelter have worked well for tourists, and the numbers are gradually increasing. Investing in infrastructure is leading to increases in tourists and thus to local income in the cafe by the site and in the local town and villages.

The project has developed the idea of promoting a Catalhoyuk ‘brand’ that can be associated with the site and with craft products produced at the site. This high quality branding is being supported by authentications from the project team and leads to new markets for local craft production. The success of this local stimulation of employment and income through craft production has attracted media attention, and thus also new sponsors of the project itself. Thus the academic research is here linked in a productive partnership with commercial enterprise, economic development, media, and local government.

The project has started a number of educational schemes centered on teaching middle-school children about the site and about the importance of cultural heritage in Turkey. This led to educational materials (books, CDs etc) and to trained educators. The success of the project stimulated large media coverage and the long-term continuation of the educational schemes has been taken over by Shell and Coca-Cola. Thus at present each year during the excavation season 600 children each spend one day at the site undertaking a range of activities. The scheme has now been taken up at other sites, and the site management plan for Çatalhöyük has been used by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism as a model for all other sites in Turkey. The overall result is a multiplier, snow-ball effect in which more resources are available for archaeology and cultural heritage in Turkey.

Success Stories – Local People
Candemir Zoroglu

Photo by: Elizabeth Ha.

Candemir joined us in 2002 as a student from Selcuk University and continued as part of the team and came until 2006. During that time he gradually gained in expertise and confidence and we were able to give him tasks with increasing degrees of responsibility. By the end of 2006 he was a well trained field archaeologist with a wide range of skills at his disposal. He went on to work for the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in Ankara and is now part of teh team that deals with the illicit trade in antiquities from Turkey, often traveling to major museums and governments around the world to argue Turkey's case.

Photo by: Jason Quinlan.

Mavili Tokyasun
Mavili worked as part of our kitchen and dig house staff from 1994 to 2007. She became a central part of all our lives and her keen sense of fun sustained us through many long summers. She came from the small village, Kucukkoy, near the site and had little income. The experience and financial independence she gained through working in the kitchen gave her the skills to set up her own business. She now supplies local shops in Konya with the Turkish pastry called borek. During the busy ramadan months she employs two helpers. Moving to Konya also means that her son is getting more and better education.

Photo by: Jason Quinlan.

Sadrettin Dural
Sadrettin was a farmer from the village of Kucukkoy near the site although he had also worked in other jobs, such as taxi driving, to supplement his income. In the 1990s he worked as one of the guards at the site. He did not speak English and felt frustrated by his inability to explain the site to tourists. He took it on himself to learn English - from tapes, from us, and from tourists. He asked to know more about the site and Dr. Ian Hodder and Ayfer Bartu spent several happy evenings explaining the details of the Neolithic and of Catalhoyuk to him. As he got to know the site he felt that he would like to write his own book about the site and about the project. We gave him a computer and he sat down and wrote 50,000 words in Turkish, which were then edited and translated into English by Duygu Camurcuoglu Cleere. In the United States this book was published in 2006 by Left Coast Press as 'Protecting Catalhoyuk. Memoir of a site guard.' It has been favourably reviewed - including in American Anthropologist. It is, as far as I am aware, the first time that a 'local' worker or guard has written about his experience and become an international author.

Partner and In-Country Co-Funding
Every year a large amount of archaeological excavation and research takes place at Çatalhöyük. This work is funded by a wide range of sources including NSF, Templeton Foundation, British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, Polish Academy of Sciences, Stanford University, Kress Foundation and Joukowsky Foundation. In terms of corporate sponsors the main sponsors are Boeing and Yapı Kredi, and other sponsors are Shell, Merko, Thames Water.

Summary of Accomplishments
Since 2004, GHF has:

1. Helped transform a mainly archaeological research project into a major regional site conservation and sustainable tourism development project around one of the oldest known towns in the world.
2. Funded Turkish and local training and capacity building for complex house and mural conservation.
3. Funded the design and construction of two state-of-the-art site conservation shelter structures, visitor center and interpretative panels to allow tourist access to the site.
4. Community engagement that included guide training, site employment, school visitation and education.
5. GHF funding also helped the project to secure equal matching funding from in-country corporate and foundation donors of over $800,000 since 2004.

Preparing the 4040 excavation area for visitors.
Photo by: Jason Quinlin.

For the first time in history, visitors are now able to explore a 9000-year-old Neolithic archaeological site and see the art in context within the houses. Plans have been prepared for two major new initiatives at the site – the construction of a new guard house for the three guards and the construction of a new small museum at the site.

2009 Work Plans
In 2009 the aim of GHF-funded work is to consolidate the conservation work completed to date and to further basic conservation efforts while also expanding the presentation and interpretation of Neolithic houses.  There will also be meetings between the community and the project members to discuss the heritage development of the site and the provision of a regional Heritage Park around Çatalhöyük.  As in past years, members of the local community will also continue to be involved in conservation onsite and in the presentation of the site.

 
The new shelter structure over the 4040 excavation area at Çatalhöyük.
Photo by: Jason Quinlin.