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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.
The Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük was
first discovered in the late 1950s and excavated by
James Mellaart between 1961 and 1965. The site
rapidly became famous internationally due to the large
size and dense occupation of the settlement, as well
as the spectacular wall paintings and other art objects
that were uncovered inside houses. The popular Collins
Guide to Turkey is one of many tat describes Çatalhöyük
as 'probably the most important archaeological site
in Turkey'. It is the first urban centre in the world
(7000 BC) and has the first wall paintings and sculptures.
The spectacular art provides a direct window into life
9000 years ago, and the site is an internationally important
key for furthering our understanding of the origins
of agriculture and civilization. Since 1993 an international
team of archaeologists, lead by GHF Advisory Board member
Dr. Ian Hodder, has been carrying out new excavations
and research, in order to shed more light on the people
who inhabited the site.
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
In the 1960s the Turkish government halted a concession
by a foreign team of archaeologists working at the site
due to looting and poor conservation. Subsequently the
site was left to erode. In 1993 a permit was granted
to the Çatalhöyük Research Trust, consisting
of the British School of Archaeology in Iran and others,
to begin a twenty-five-year program to conserve and
display parts of the site. This would include excavations
and reconstruction, a conservation facility, a museum,
and a visitor center. A priority conservation item which
the Trust seeks to address immediately is the imminent
collapse of sections of a hundred-meter wall which contains
bas-reliefs and paintings.
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.
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