Neolithic Çatalhöyük

[Piquerobi]

Bioarchaeology of Neolithic Çatalhöyük reveals fundamental transitions in health, mobility, and lifestyle in early farmers:

Bioarchaeological investigation of human remains from Neolithic Çatalhöyük, Turkey, contributes to a growing body of data documenting population dynamics, health, and lifestyle of early farmers in Holocene settings in the Near East and globally. The extensive archaeological context of foodways, material culture, housing, environment, ecology, population structure and size, social interaction, and community living informs interpretation of the bioarchaeological record representing nearly 1,200 continuous years of community life. This record presents biological outcomes and comprehensive understanding of the challenges associated with dependence on domesticated plants and animals, the labor involved in acquiring food and other resources, impacts of settled community life on health and well-being, and evolving lifeways to the present day.

The transition from a human diet based exclusively on wild plants and animals to one involving dependence on domesticated plants and animals beginning 10,000 to 11,000 y ago in Southwest Asia set into motion a series of profound health, lifestyle, social, and economic changes affecting human populations throughout most of the world. However, the social, cultural, behavioral, and other factors surrounding health and lifestyle associated with the foraging-to-farming transition are vague, owing to an incomplete or poorly understood contextual archaeological record of living conditions. Bioarchaeological investigation of the extraordinary record of human remains and their context from Neolithic Çatalhöyük (7100–5950 cal BCE), a massive archaeological site in south-central Anatolia (Turkey), provides important perspectives on population dynamics, health outcomes, behavioral adaptations, interpersonal conflict, and a record of community resilience over the life of this single early farming settlement having the attributes of a protocity. Study of Çatalhöyük human biology reveals increasing costs to members of the settlement, including elevated exposure to disease and labor demands in response to community dependence on and production of domesticated plant carbohydrates, growing population size and density fueled by elevated fertility, and increasing stresses due to heightened workload and greater mobility required for caprine herding and other resource acquisition activities over the nearly 12 centuries of settlement occupation. These changes in life conditions foreshadow developments that would take place worldwide over the millennia following the abandonment of Neolithic Çatalhöyük, including health challenges, adaptive patterns, physical activity, and emerging social behaviors involving interpersonal violence.

www.pnas.org/content/116/26/12615

www.researchgate.net/publication/333828774_Bioarchaeology_of_Neolithic_Catalhoyuk_reveals_fundamental_transitions_in_health_mobility_and_lifestyle_in_early_farmers

Marija Gimbutas on Çatalhöyük:

The excavation of the 7th millenium BC town of Çatalhöyük by James Mellart in 1961-63 and 1965 has revolutionized our views on the prehistory of Anatolia and the entire Old World. Çatalhöyük consists of two riverside mounds situated on a dry plateau 1000 meters above sea level on the Konya plain in south-central Turkey. The larger mound occupies about 32 acres (16 hectares), one acre of which was excavated. The breathtaking discovery of thirteen building levels with houses, temples, murals, reliefs, sculptures, trade items, and other finds was an eye-opener to the level of Neolithic culture that existed in the 7th millenium BC. The close cultural similarity of the southeast European Neolithic with that of Anatolia makes it indispensable to look first at Çatalhöyük, a monument of concentrated information that sheds light on many aspects of Neolithic life: economy, trade, architecture, house and temple furnishings, religion, and art.

The Konya plain was an especially rich part of the Old World, one that abounded in wild cereal grasses and domesticable animals. The town that developed there and continued for more than a thousand years is dated in calibrated chronology to c. 7250-6150 BC (in uncalibrated chronology, 6500-5750 bc; the latter dates were used in books and articles published by Mellaart and other authors before 1989). Çatalhöyük did not emerge out of a vacuum. Below it was another mound with twelve levels of an aceramic culture. The bottom levels belonged to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic and Late Natufian which yielded materials related to cultures in Syria and Palestine. The Pre-Prottery Neolithic A level contained a temple model, figurines, loom weights, limestone plaquettes with a rich decoreation, and fragments of polychrome wall painting. The late Natufian included wooden plaques with designs, shale plaques, geometric microlithics, and other finds. These preceding levels at Çatalhöyük express the long development of a single culture from the 10th to the 8th millenia BC. During these early millennia, experiments in local domestication of cereals and animals, especially aurochs, must have been made. The inventive spirit of these early people is reflected by a variety of designs on plaques and the polychrome painting of walls. Religious objects, models of temples, and figurines found here continue throughout the whole Neolithic sequence.

Çatalhöyük was an orderly settlement that reflects a remarkable stability of social organization throughout many hundreds of years. It is the largest town of the Early Neolithic period in the whole of the Old World, and it is estimated that up to 7,000 inhabitants could have lived there at one time. (The famous Jericho in the Jordan valley, as it is now estimated, could have housed no more than 400-900 inhabitants). [...]

The townsfolk cultivated three types of wheat and one of barley, and grew or gathered a wide range of green and root vegetables and fruits. While cattle provided them with most of their meat supply and with dairy products, they also kept goats and hunted deer and wild pigs. [...]

Trade must have contributed appreciably to the wealth and prosperity of Çatalhöyük, and industries flourished with specialized workers in obsidian carving, metallurgy, weaving, wood carving, and other disciplines. Many artifacts display the highest standard of craftmanship.

The Civilization of the Goddess, pages 7 and 8.

Çatalhöyük:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrxh2H7JlP8

A short informative video about Neolithic Çatalhöyük, it is in German (on youtube one can get the translation to English):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hf0kIu0brXU