Çatalhöyük
This issue of the Journal of Archaeomythology is dedicated to British archaeologist James Mellaart whose discovery in 1958 of the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük, on Turkey’s Konya Plain, revolutionized the study of Anatolian prehistory. Two years before Mellaart investigated the “forked mound” and discovered that it was “Neolithic at the bottom and Neolithic at the top” (Mellaart, personal communication), Seton Lloyd, former Director of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, had asserted that Anatolia “shows no sign whatever of habitation during the Neolithic period” (Lloyd 1956:53). It was commonly assumed that farming technologies were transported westward by sea, or that Anatolia functioned solely as a land bridge for the introduction of Neolithic technologies into Europe.
Between 1961 and 1965, during four seasons of excavation, Mellaart’s team uncovered hundreds of well-preserved rooms, dozens of polychrome wall paintings and bas reliefs, ritual installations, exquisitely fashioned female figurines, finely crafted tools, and evidence of long-distance trade and peaceful living throughout the duration of the site—now dated to c. 7400-6400 BC. Mellaart’s excavation reports, high profile articles, and his 1967 book, Çatal Hüyük, created enormous public interest which continued long after the excavation was closed by the Turkish government.
In 1993, another British archaeologist, Ian Hodder, reopened the excavation as project director with an international team of specialists, described by journalist Michael Balter (2005:4) as “the greatest concentration of scientific firepower ever focused on an archaeological dig.” In reestablishing the Çatalhöyük excavation, Hodder inherited one of the most important Neolithic sites in the world as well as a locus of intensive interest by a number of very different communities and stakeholders. The articles in this issue provide an introduction to the Neolithic settlement of Çatalhöyük and examine a range of issues concerning various interpretations of the site and its remarkable contents.