During this summer, the site at Çatalhöyük hosted its possibly largest team ever. As opposed to the small-scale excavation studies of the previous years, this large team improved the excavations in terms of consistency and multiplicity.
A lot of midden spots were excavated in the 40×40 Area, resulting in a season rich in terms of findings, which also included the face-pot.
Thanks to the support by Global Heritage Fund, women workers from Küçükköy had an opportunity to get training in wall-painting conservation.
A specific artifact found in this year caused a revision of the existing theories and the reevaluation of certain predictions that had not been fully explored. Seeing what a couple of little findings can change is an amazing feeling for a team. A figurine with a partially missing head that was previously thought as a goddess, was identified the representation of a bear by means of an intact stamp seal.
IST Team started their excavations.
2004 was full of significant findings and fresh faces, and it turned out to be one the richest in terms of small artefacts and architecture.
The news of our finding of a mother goddess figurine spread far and wide. This limestone figurine that was quite worn, fit all the classical measurements of the naked women representations found and described by Mellaart at the higher levels of the settlement during the 1960’s excavations. Throughout the excavations that have been ongoing since 1993, no earlier precedence of this important figurine has been found. Therefore, this unique figurine found in a midden fill cause quite a bit of excitement in our team.
The project celebrated its 10th anniversary.
Both Mellaart’s work and Çatalhöyük Research project had revealed the houses and the midden spots. How was the settlement’s social geography? How did this entire system work? Excavations in the 40×40 (North) Area started to find answers to these questions.
“Çatalhöyük Children Workshop” was founded as part of TEMPER Project (Training, Education, Management and Prehistory in the Mediterranean).
Towards the conclusion of the season, the newly established Geo-Magnetic Team started tracing the settlement’s plan with a Cyrax® 2500 3D Portable Laser Scanner. This equipment made it possible to register Çatalhöyük’s Neolithic structures in a way that never been possible before.
The construction of South Shelter was completed. There would be no more working under the sun.
The Berkeley team completed the excavation of Building 3 in the BACH area in the northern part of the site.
This year, the dig house was also used as the venue for a seminar where 7 Palestinian and 7 Israeli archaeologists held discussions on “a shared past and a common cultural heritage.”
TP (Team Poznan) started excavation work.
Construction of all parts of the dig house and the labs were completed. In addition, a new library/seminar room was added.
The project established a Çatalhöyük Thames Water Scholarship to help young Turkish archaeologists train and travel abroad. This year, seven applicants have been awarded through these funds.
This was the season of the preparation of the first publication. Having only a few projects provides an opportunity to bring data to a significant level of analysis. During this year, we got busy with the preparation of publications that would cover all data through interpretational themes and questions varying among contexts. These four new volumes would be the first study containing the excavation results analyzed in-depth by the members of the 120-strong team.