Çatalhöyük

Timeline

1. c. 7500 BCE

   East Mound habitation begins

   The earliest layer of habitation forms at the East Mound on the wheat-farming belt of the Konya Plain, establishing the prototype of dense mud-brick clustered housing.

2. c. 7000 BCE

   Peak population around 10,000

   The East Mound reaches up to about 10,000 inhabitants at its height, completing a Neolithic settlement defined by roof-entry houses, subfloor burial, and a developed wall-painting culture.

3. c. 6300 BCE

   Decline of the East Mound

   Habitation on the East Mound declines and residents begin migrating to the adjacent West Mound, with climate change and exhaustion of farmland cited as likely drivers.

4. c. 5600 BCE

   Chalcolithic West Mound settlement

   A Chalcolithic settlement is established on the West Mound, forming a cultural layer with developed painted pottery and showing continuity with East Mound traditions.

5. c. 4300 BCE

   End of the West Mound

   Habitation on the West Mound ends in a Halaf-equivalent phase, closing roughly three millennia of continuous settlement, after which the mounds were largely forgotten.

6. 1958

   Mellaart's discovery

   While surveying the wider Konya region, British archaeologist James Mellaart noticed the two mounds and pulled the site back into the orbit of modern archaeology.

7. 1961-1965

   Mellaart's excavations

   James Mellaart leads four seasons of excavation, identifying close to 200 buildings across successive layers and drawing international attention as one of the world's oldest cities.

8. 1965

   Dorak affair halts excavation

   Following the Dorak affair, Mellaart is banned from Turkey and the site sees no formal investigation for roughly 28 years.

9. September 1993

   Hodder project begins

   Ian Hodder of the University of Cambridge restarts investigation, organizing an international team that turns the site into a working laboratory for post-processual archaeology.

10. July 2012

    UNESCO World Heritage inscription

    UNESCO inscribes the site as the "Neolithic Site of Çatalhöyük," placing this symbol of human settlement history under international protection.

11. 2018

    Hodder project ends, fabrications shown

    Hodder's 25-year re-excavation concludes, while evidence is published that some of Mellaart's wall paintings and artefacts were fabricated, pushing the field into a re-evaluation phase.

Detailed History

Habitation at Çatalhöyük began around 7500 BCE. Initial estimates suggested an average population of 5,000 to 7,000, but more recent work indicates that only 600 to 800 people would have lived at Çatalhöyük East during an average year of the Middle phase (6700-6500 BCE). Dwellings were densely built of mud-brick with no streets between them, and inhabitants entered through holes in the flat roofs by wooden ladders. The dead were interred in flexed positions beneath house floors, and skulls were sometimes removed and re-modelled with plaster and pigments in a separate location. Plaster walls bore repeated paintings of aurochs, leopards, hunting scenes, and vultures; one mural Mellaart read as a city plan has since been reinterpreted as another wild-animal scene. Around 6300 BCE the East Mound declined and inhabitants shifted to the adjacent West Mound, where a Chalcolithic settlement with developed painted pottery flourished from around 5600 BCE until about 4300 BCE. The mounds were then largely forgotten, used only for occasional graves and forts in the Bronze Age and through the Phrygian, Hellenistic and Roman eras as well as Byzantine and Ottoman times. Modern rediscovery began with Mellaart's 1958 survey, and his 1961-1965 work confirmed 18 successive building layers and nearly 200 structures, drawing international attention as a candidate for one of the earliest urban experiments. In 1965 Mellaart's role in the Dorak affair led to his expulsion from Turkey, and the mounds saw no major investigation for about 28 years. From 1993 a team led by Ian Hodder of the University of Cambridge resumed work, integrating digital recording and community participation in an experimental framework that continued until 2018. In July 2012 UNESCO inscribed the site as the "Neolithic Site of Çatalhöyük," and in 2018 evidence emerged that Mellaart had fabricated some wall-painting drawings and artefacts, pushing the field into re-evaluation.

Cultural Significance

Çatalhöyük rewrote the early chapters of human settlement history as a "pre-urban village." Tightly packed houses with no obvious hierarchy and no clear public architecture suggested a possibly egalitarian society from an early stage, deeply influencing anthropology and popular prehistory. Its most famous artefact is a clay figurine of a plump woman enthroned between two leopards, read in the 20th century as a Great Mother symbol and a touchstone for feminist archaeology, though scholars today offer more varied readings such as an authoritative elder female. Subfloor burial and skull-removal rituals connect the site with Neolithic Jericho and northern Syrian sites along the eastern Mediterranean, signaling an agricultural-revolution sensibility of dwelling alongside the dead. Within Turkey it appears in school textbooks, with finds forming the core of the Konya Archaeology Museum and the Anatolian Civilizations Museum in Ankara. Since 2018, when fabrication of some Mellaart wall paintings and artefacts came to light, many famous illustrations have been re-examined, making Çatalhöyük a key case study in archaeological ethics as well.

Architectural Details

Çatalhöyük's dwellings are mud-brick agglutinated houses, each with a main room of about 25 square meters plus one or two auxiliary chambers. The most striking feature is a honeycomb-like layout with no streets or ground-level doorways; access was through roof openings that doubled as ventilation, reached by wooden ladders. This has been read both as defense against wild animals and outsiders and as an expression of communal cohesion. The flat earthen roofs served as streets, with communal hearths and cooking areas placed there. Interior walls and floors were coated with successive layers of fine white clay plaster, in some buildings reaching about 120 layers, suggesting nearly annual replastering. Plastered benches along the walls of the main room served for sitting, sleeping, and working, while the dead were buried in flexed position about 60 cm beneath these platforms. Hearths and cooking ovens were placed along the south wall, with the entry ladder leaning against the same wall. Wall paintings used Anatolian minerals such as ochre, azurite, cinnabar, malachite, and galena as pigments, applied mainly in red and reddish-brown on a white or cream ground. Houses were partially dismantled and rebuilt atop rubble across generations, producing 18 layers at the East Mound and a total height of about 20 meters.