in community-wide rituals, or provide for defense 

 against a common enemy. And some sites in Ana- 

 tolia, earlier than Catalhoyiik, clearly emphasize 

 that collective spirit. Art is concentrated in special 

 ritual buildings, houses are laid out in zones, and 

 human skulls are sometimes buried communally. 



I" n contrast, a good case can be made that many 

 X. aspects of life at Catalhoyiik were organized at 

 the domestic, or household, scale. Brian F. Byrd, an 

 archaeologist with the Far Western Anthropologi- 

 cal Research Group in Davis, California, has noted 

 that during the Neolithic there was a general shift 

 in the southern Levant toward greater autonomy 

 and complexity at the household level. A similar his- 

 torical shift can be readily traced in central Anato- 

 lia. For example, at A^ikli Hoyiik, a site dating from 

 about 10,700 until 9,300 years ago, there are cere- 

 monial buildings, but the houses are much less elab- 

 orate than the ones at Catalhoyiik, where a wide 

 range of functions, from burial, ritual, and art to 

 storage, manufacture, and production were more 

 clearly drawn into the house. 



Other evidence we have assembled is consis- 

 tent with the view that the autonomous house- 

 hold at Catalhoyiik was the primary social 

 unit. In size, for instance, Catalhoyiik might 

 have been a town, but despite taking care 

 ful samples from the surface of the mound, 

 we have found no evidence for public 

 spaces, administrative buildings, or elite 

 homes or quarters. There were no streets, 

 and in fact the buildings were embed- 

 ded in extensive midden areas piled 

 with trash, fecal material, and rotting 

 organic material — not at all in accord 

 with modern sensibilities. Perhaps it 

 is little wonder that access to the 

 houses was along the roofs and 

 down some stairs! 



The autonomy of the Catal- 

 hoyiik household is also reflected 

 in how rarely two buildings shared 

 a wall: even though houses might 

 be just a few inches apart, people 

 built and maintained their own 

 walls. Each house was built with 

 bricks of distinct composition or 

 shape. The bins in the houses suggest they all had a 

 similar storage capacity for agricultural produce. And 

 each house seems to have had its own hearth, oven, 

 obsidian cache, storage rooms, work rooms, and so 

 on, for the inhabitants' own activities. 



Yet despite the central role of the individual 

 household, my colleagues and I see hints that Catal- 



hoyiikans were divided into two large groups 

 throughout most of the time it was occupied. The 

 contour of the larger mound reveals two built-up 

 areas, a northern one and a southern one, with a 

 gully between them. A possible explanation is that 

 Catalhoyiik was an endogamous culture, or in oth- 

 er words, people married within the settlement. It 

 may have been organized, as are many other tradi- 

 tional societies, into two intermarrying kinship 

 groups. Surveys in the plain around Catalhoyiik have 

 turned up earlier and later sites, but none of them 

 seem to have flourished at the same time — further 

 evidence that marriage was probably a local affair. 



The standard house had one main room, which 

 accommodated an oven, a burial platform, and 

 other platforms [see illustration below]. One or more 

 side rooms served as storerooms, kitchen, and places 

 for other domestic tasks. The stairs from the roof en- 

 trance — perhaps made of a log with steps notched 

 in it — led into the main room. Walls were built of 



Storage room shown with 

 subsequent soil fill 



Main room 



Lower parts of walls, floor, and the main furnishings of a typical house at Qatalhoyuk 

 are depicted in this artist's reconstruction. The house was inhabited about 8,500 years 

 ago, and excavated by the author's team in 1998 and 7999. The floors have not yet 

 been excavated, but on the basis of similarities with other buildings at the site, the 

 archaeologists expect to find burials beneath the mat-covered northwest platform. 



mud bricks and were windowless. On average, they 

 were 1.3 feet thick and stood eight to ten feet high. 

 The interior walls, floors, and posts for the roof were 

 all plastered. 



So far we have identified two kinds of cooking 

 fires in Catalhoyuk: domed mens were set into 

 house walls, ami hearths stood away from the w alls. 



feet 



June 2006 NATURA1 HISTORY 



45 



