Catalhoyuk

The people of Çatalhöyük lived in mudbrick houses that were crammed tightly together. In fact, they were so close that there was no space between them and no streets or walkways. Instead, people traveled across the rooftops and entered the houses through rooftop entrances with ladders. Ceiling entrances also served as ventilation, specifically for hearths for cooking. Typical houses contained two rooms for everyday activity, such as cooking, and smaller rooms for storage. One portion of the main room was also often sued for subfloor burials. Walls were plastered and painted with elaborate motifs or scenes (many featuring humans and animals like bulls, goat heads, or leopard-like felines). The houses seemed to be kept clean, and all garbage and sewage was piled outside the buildings. Homes were rebuilt throughout the site's history, requiring significant labor, but always reproduced in the same style.

The deceased were placed under the floors or platforms in houses and sometimes the skulls were removed and plastered to resemble live faces. The burials at Çatalhöyük show no significant variations, either based on wealth or gender; the only bodies which were treated differently, decorated with beads and covered with ochre, were those of children. The excavator of Çatalhöyük believes that this special concern for youths at the site may be a reflection of the society becoming more sedentary and required larger numbers of children because of increased labor, exchange and inheritance needs. While some houses have no burials, others may have as many as sixty-eight bodies buried under the floor (including infants interred during the construction of the house). Given the life of a mud-brick house at perhaps seventy years, it is inconceivable that a family group living in a single-roomed house could have suffered on average one death per year. Some houses seem to have been special, and to have attracted many burials, perhaps functioning as the focal household in a lineage, or something similar, like ancestor worship.

A replica of a Catalhoyuk room with what is believed to be a map painted on the wall

Researchers have recently uncovered "goddess figurines" at Catalhoyuk dating to 8,000 years ago. The figurines are also thought to represent an elderly woman who had risen to prominence in Çatalhöyük’s famously egalitarian society. Whether they were considered gods or not, the elderly in Neolithic Çatalhöyük may have held elite status, performing rituals and making decisions that impacted the entire community. Fatness may have been a sign of social standing and of age, with calorie-burning manual labor replaced by sedentary religious and political duties.

The figurine might also signal a shift from a sharing to an exchange/trade economy, with some individuals accumulating more than others, rather than sharing resources equally among all. “We think society was changing at this time, becoming relatively less egalitarian, with houses being more independent and more based on agricultural production and with fatness (as seen in the figurines) represented an elevated place in society,” said one of the lead archaeologists.