0.3 Remixing çatalhöyük: archaeology at different scales  (Page 2/2)

During the last two decades, archaeological researchers have begun to interweave a more intimate or microscale understanding of individual households, and the people who made up these households, into broader scales of interpretation. The development of analytical and observational instrumentation and digitization at the micro-scale (including, for example, techniques for studying micromorphology and microstratigraphy, and for the analysis of DNA) has increased immensely the detail and complexity with which archaeologists can observe data.

The excavations at Çatalhöyük provide an important example of archaeology at multiple scales. Recent work done by different specialists has shown that the people of Çatalhöyük were part of a large social network of trade: date palm baskets may have come from as far away as the Levant (the southeast Mediterranean coast); obsidian used to make stone tools was brought in from Cappadocia (a region in central Turkey); some shells found at the site came all the way from the Red Sea. Although we know the site was part of a regional network system, it was made up of different households that participated in the system. What is very important in archaeological research is to connect smaller households’ intimate stories to larger systems. The individual stories of households are important because culture and social networks exist through combinations and interactions of these intimate histories.

At Çatalhöyük, we are able to connect these households and intimate stories through meticulous excavation and detailed analysis. For example, the baskets are known to exist because we find their imprints on the floors of the houses. By taking a small sample of the soil containing the imprint and analyzing it under a microscope, a specialist trained in identifying the silica remains of plants (called phytoliths) can identify the basket as having been woven from date-palm leaves not native to the area.

Careful excavation also reveals clues as to what people were doing within a space. While excavating Building 3, for example, Ruth Tringham and Mirjana Stevanovic identified a collapsed roof by its remains. However, they did not have any clues about what had actually happened on the roof in the past, as there were no activity remains. When a block of material from the roof was analyzed under a microscope, however, remains of a burnt surface showed that there had been a hearth on the roof. Microscopic bits of refuse from stone-tool production were found in the material as well, showing us that people also worked on top of their houses.

At the same time, the intimate events and histories of Çatalhöyük can also contribute to our understanding of the past at a larger scale. They allow us to interpret different paths of change within Anatolia, such as the processes of sedentism (settling down), for example, or the domestication of plants and animals, social transformation, urbanism, and so on, within the context of the Near East and Europe. These characteristics of change can be further interpreted as part of a larger evolutionary pattern, and even on a global scale. This multi-scalar approach ensures that the Big Picture is constructed on a solid framework of all the smaller events and processes from which it is constructed.

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Remixing Çatalhöyük Project