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uk
in the Context
C
atalhoy
of the Middle Eastern
Neolithic
Ian Hodder
Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology, Stanford University, Stanford,
California 94305; email: [email protected]

Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2007. 36:10520

Key words

First published online as a Review in Advance on

May 24, 2007

domestication, sedentism, memory, history, symbolism

The Annual Review of Anthropology is online at

anthro.annualreviews.org
This articles doi:
10.1146/annurev.anthro.36.081406.094308
c 2007 by Annual Reviews.
Copyright 
All rights reserved
0084-6570/07/1021-0105$20.00

Abstract
uk
in
This review aims to show how the new results from C
atalhoy
central Turkey contribute to wider theories about the Neolithic in
Anatolia and the Middle East. I argue that many of the themes found
uk
occur very early in the
in symbolism and daily practice at C
atalhoy
processes of village formation and the domestication of plants and
animals throughout the region. These themes include a social focus
on memory construction; a symbolic focus on wild animals, violence,
and death; and a central dominant role for humans in relation to the
animal world. These themes occur early enough throughout the
region that we can claim they are integral to the development of
settled life and the domestication of plants and animals. Particularly
the focus on time depth in house sequences may have been part of the
suite of conditions, along with environmental and ecological factors,
that selected for sedentism and domestication.

105

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INTRODUCTION

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Anatolia: Asian
region of Turkey,
although the main
focus here is on the
region from central
to southeastern
Turkey
Epipalaeolithic:
time period between
the Palaeolithic and
the Neolithic.
Associated with a
changed lithic
technology and more
intensive subsistence
strategies
Kebaran:
Epipalaeolthic
groups in the Levant
prior to the Natuan
include those with
material culture
assemblages
incorporating
microlithic tools
Levant: region in
the eastern
Mediterranean that
now includes Israel,
Palestine, the West
Bank, Syria, Jordan,
and Lebanon
Natufian: cultural
group that has
distinctive material
culture, lasts from
approximately 12500
to 10000 bc, and is
associated with
predomesticated
cultivation
Pre-Pottery
Neolithic A
(PPNA): cultural
group found in the
Levant from 10000
to 8700 cal bc

106

uk
in central Turkey was rst excaC
atalhoy
vated by James Mellaart between 1961 and
1965. At that time the main impact of the site
was to show that early settled villages existed
outside the Fertile Crescent of the Middle
East. The site also had a wide impact because
of Mellaarts (1967; Todd 1976) reconstructions of elaborate shrines with complex paintings, installations, and sculptures. Much of the
symbolism of the Neolithic of the Middle East
has been interpreted in terms of the bull and
mother goddess themes that Mellaart thought
uk
(see for exwere so prominent at C
atalhoy
ample Cauvin 1994).
Since the 1960s, our understanding of the
Neolithic of the Middle East has changed
substantially. In particular, new nds from
throughout the region have pushed back the
dates of early settled life and have shown that
the process is diversefor example, the differences between the Levantine sequence and
that in southeastern Turkey are marked. How uk
has
ever, our understanding of C
atalhoy
also changed as a result of new excavations
started by Hodder in 1993 (Balter 2005; Dural
2007; Hodder 1996, 2000, 2005a,b,c, 2006,
2007). For example, it is clear that the sym uk
is part of domestic cults
bolism at C
atalhoy
and that female imagery is only a small part
of a diverse set in which mother and goddess
characteristics are hard to nd.
The main focus of this review is on how
uk
t into or
the new results from C
atalhoy
challenge wider theories about the Neolithic
uk,

in Anatolia and the Middle East. C

atalhoy
dated to 74006000 bc (Cessford 2005; all
dates here are calibrated), occurs a long time
after the rst sedentary settlements in the
Middle East (which emerge in the period between the twelfth and ninth millennia bc)
and well after the rst domesticated plants
(in the ninth millennium bc but see below
for the debate about the dates). The Levantine sequence, described below, involves
Epipalaeolithic groups such as the Kebaran
and Natuan (the latter from approximately

Hodder

12,500 bc to 10,000 bc) with increasingly intensive hunting, gathering, and cultivation of
wild plants; followed by the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) from 10,000 to 8700 bc
and Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) from
8700 to 6800; followed by the Pre-Pottery
Neolithic C (PPNC) and Pottery Neolithic
(PN). Because of the polycentric character of
the processes of sedentism and domestication
(Gebel 2004) throughout the Middle Eastern
and the Anatolian region, it is incorrect to use
these terms and sequences outside the Levant, and other terms have been proposed for

Anatolia (e.g., Ozbas

aran & Buitenhuis 2002).
However, the Levantine sequence is best understood and documented and provides a
benchmark for the sequences elsewhere.
As comparatively well known as the Levantine sequence may be, there remains little
consensus about the causes of the emergence
of sedentism in agglomerated villages and the
domestication of plants and animals. Despite
uk,
the detailed evthe late date of C
atalhoy
idence and the long-term projects at the site
allow insight into the character of prepottery
and early pottery agglomerated settlement in
the region. The site has remarkably dense settlement (3500 to 8000 people in 13.5 ha) and
was occupied for a long period. The Neolithic
East mound is 21 m high, has 18 levels of occupation, and lasts 1400 years before settlement
relocated to the West Mound on the other
side of the river (the C
arsamba C
ay in the at
Konya Plain) during the early Chalcolithic in
the early sixth millennium bc. The Neolithic
economy was based on a wide range of domesticated and wild plants (Fairbairn et al. 2005,
Hastorf 2005) and based only partially on domesticated animals (sheep and goatcattle
and pig were not domesticated through the
main Neolithic sequence according to Russell
uk
can thus provide
& Martin 2005). C
atalhoy
some insight into the ways in which people
lived in these early villages.
Early theories of agricultural origins in
the Middle East were based on single environmental, climatic, and population density
causes. The last glacial maximum occurred at

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24,000 to 18,000 years ago when the region

was cold and dry. The gradual change to
warmer and wetter conditions after this time
suffered a setback in the Younger Dryas
(11,500 to 10,000 bc) during the second half
of the Natuan. Bar-Yosef (2001) is among
many that see the Younger Dryas conditions
leading to intensication and then to PPNA
and the rst agriculture. One limitation of
the climatic argument is that scholars now
indicate that sustained domestication of
plants did not occur at the end of the Younger
Dryas in the PPNA but considerably later
in the PPNB (Colledge et al. 2004, Nesbitt
2002, Willcox 2002).
External causes of change have tended to
be balanced during recent decades by theories
that focus on social factors such as prestige
exchange (Bender 1978), feasting (Hayden
1990), and symbolism (Cauvin 1994). Social factors may have provided the driving
forces behind sedentism and intensication.
Although evidence from the Natuan onward of large-scale communal building works,
and of open areas used for roasting pits, is
widespread, evidence throughout the region
and period of marked social ranking, except
u in southeastern Turkey, is lacking
at C
ayon

& Ozdo
1990).
(Ozdo
gan
gan
Certainly recent nds have shown with
great clarity that initial sedentism was closely
tied to ritual. Landscapes may have been
drawn together at ritual centers to which people came for initiation, feasting, burial, exchange, marriage, etc. (Schmidt 2000). In fact
several of the early sites seem to have been
ritual centers, whatever other functions they
may have had. In north Syria and southeast Turkey, at sites such as Tell Abr 3,

Jerf el Ahmar, and Gobekli,

one nds large
PPNA buildings, circular and semisubterranean, which have generally been accepted
as communal ritual buildings. Those at Tell
Abr 3 are 712 m in diameter (Yartah 2005).
The internal furnishings of these communal
buildings are certainly elaborate, but we need
to avoid getting caught in a possibly inappropriate opposition of ritual versus domestic. At

Tell Abr 3, building B2 was dug 1.55 m into

virgin soil and had a bench within its circular walls. This in turn was lined with stone
slabs polished and decorated with wild animals. Bucrania (cattle skulls) were deposited
in a bench. But in another building, M1, a
hearth was found, and on the oor were found
limestone basins and bowls as well as grinding
stones (Yartah 2005).
Indeed, Yartah (2005) argues that the large
early PPNA communal buildings at Mureybet
and Jerf el Ahmar are not elaborate ritually and symbolically and were probably used
for stockage and multiple functions. But at
the end of PPNA Yartah suggests that there
is less evidence of economic functions and
much decoration and rituale.g., at Jerf el

Ahmar, Tell Abr 3, and probably Gobekli.

However, the interpretations of these buildings, their communal and domestic versus ritual nature, remain problematic until detailed
accounts of oor residues and discard practices are available. The forensic work on the
uk
shows that oors can be
oors at C
atalhoy
carefully cleaned and abandoned and that microresidues of activities can be discerned only
with careful analysis. This work showed that
uk
were
the supposed shrines at C
atalhoy
actually used as domestic houses (Bull et al.
2005, Matthews 2005, Middleton et al. 2005).
Even if, as seems likely, social and ritual
gathering was an important component of the
processes that created permanent sedentary
gatherings of people, we are left with the issue of why people adopted more elaborate and
larger-scale social and ritual practices, including the fashioning and erection of large monoliths and semisubterranean circular structures,
and all the investments of labor necessary for
large-scale feasting and ritual. Disadvantages
of economic intensication and of collective
living in one spot can be cited: hard work (seen
in stress markers on skeletons) and depletion
of resources, sanitation, disease, etc. (Larsen
1995). So by which process did people submit
themselves to greater work and intensication
to achieve the benets of social and ritual elaboration and sedentary village life?
www.annualreviews.org Catalhoyuk

Pre-Pottery
Neolithic B
(PPNB): cultural
group found in the
Levant from 8700 to
6800 cal bc
PN: Pottery
Neolithic

107

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Many authors have summarized the social relations of hunter-gatherers (e.g., Ingold
1999, Meillassoux 1972, Sahlins 1972). In
general scholars argue that in hunter-gatherer
societies, the means of production are collectively owned, groups achieved reciprocal
rights to the resources of other bands by asking permission, and studies show a lack of accumulation of personal wealth, with storage
being only a technique for preparing for seasonal shortfalls. Ingold (1999) discusses the
notion of collective access (p. 401), and social relations are immediate (Woodburn 1980)
in that there is a lack of temporal depth in
the relations between self and other (Ingold
1999). Formal institutions that structure social rules and regulations (p. 406) are relatively
lacking. People trust good hunters, but they
trust the hunters not to reduce their autonomy. A leader cannot place a person under
obligation or compulsion because this action
is a betrayal of trust.
Such descriptions of hunter-gatherer society are difcult to apply to societies in
the millennia that approach the domestication of plants and animals. An investment of
labor already accompanied the more intensive economies of the Kebaran and Natuan,
and social relations could be decreasingly described as immediate. We nd little evidence
for storage beyond that needed to tide over
from season to season, and accumulation of
personal wealth is limited right up into the
PPNB. But there is undoubtedly an increased
focus on temporal depth. As people depended
more on things, and on intensive resource
extraction and cultivation, they would have
needed to depend on others to provide objects (in exchange), to tend objects (elds and
animals, houses and boats), to construct objects (houses), to discard objects (organizing
refuse and discard in dense villages), etc.
One of the conditions that made agriculture possible in the Middle East was a
changed relation to time and history. Rather
than immediate and short-term relationships,
societies in the region developed a strong
sense of temporal depth tied to specic

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ANRV323-AN36-07

108

Hodder

places well before domesticated plants and

animals emerged. Intensive collecting and
early farming involved delayed return systems
(Woodburn 1980). But for delayed return systems to be viable (selected for), given the
harder work and restrictions involved, there
had also to be wider structural changes. One
of these was a greater sense of temporal depth,
history, and memory. Temporal depth is the
main focus of this review, but I briey consider
two other regional conditions of possibility
for sedentism and the emergence of farming.
These possibilities include a symbolic focus
on wild animals, violence, and death and a central dominant role for humans in relation to
the animal world.

REPETITIVE PRACTICES IN
THE HOUSE AND MEMORY
CONSTRUCTION
One of the main results from the new ex uk
is that the buildings
cavations at C
atalhoy
Mellaart (1967) saw as static entities are now
understood as the by-products of continuous processes. The new project has documented the extraordinary sequences of plasters on oors, walls, and relief sculptures.
These monthly and yearly replasterings with
their associated residues often occurred up to
450 times in houses that lasted 70 to 100 years.
A house was then often rebuilt in the same
place. The old house was dismantled, often
carefully and with much careful cleaning and
placing of objects, and lled in with clean
soil, and the new house was built on the
stumps of the walls of the previous house.
In some places we have up to 6 rebuildings
in the same place. The repetition of the ordering of social space within these building
sequences is remarkable and has led to the
hypothesis that social life was organized at
least partly through the routines and practices of domestic socialization (Hodder 2006,
Hodder & Cessford 2004). Embedded within
a complex symbolic world, the daily activities
within houses formed and reformed the social
world.

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As well as these continuities in practices

uk,
one
and functions in houses at C
atalhoy
nds very specic house-based continuities in

the art and symbolism (During

2006, Hodder
2006). For example, the building that Mellaart
called VI.8 had VII.8 below it, and in both
cases investigators found stylized hands in
horizontal rows. VIII.8 and VII.8 both had
vulture scenes. But perhaps the best example
was the repetition of the paired leopards in
VII.44 and VI.44. An individual leopard and
rather stylized ghting leopards were found
in two other buildings (VIII.27 and VI.80),
but these differed from the distinct pairings
in building 44 in Levels VII and VI.
Although some evidence shows feasting
uk,
the bulk
and prestige exchange at C
atalhoy
of the evidence suggests that status and power
were very much based on the control of people
and their socialization within domestic units.
But how widely applicable is this view that
socialization through daily routines in houses
(Watkins 2004, 2006) was an important mechanism for creating and maintaining social relationships and access to resources? This article
looks at how similar interpretations might be
relevant elsewhere (Nadel 2006), even though
the preservation of detailed activity sequences
uk.

is usually not as good as at C

atalhoy
uk
also indiSome evidence at C
atalhoy
cates a practice of burying the dead beneath
the oors of houses and then digging up
and recirculating selected human heads before
the nal burial of these heads in foundation
and abandonment deposits. Some evidence
demonstrates the digging up of early relief
sculptures and animal heads and their use
in later houses and installations in houses. A
good case can be made (Hodder 2006, Hodder
& Cessford 2004) that the houses that invested
more in the construction of long-term memories in these ways were also more socially
and ritually successful. These houses tended
to have more burials and to be more elab
orate in terms of internal xtures (During
2006, Hodder 2006). The ancestral houses
are not larger than other houses, and they do
not have more storage or productive facili-

ties (Cutting 2005). Although plastered skulls

have long been recognized in the Neolithic
of the Levant, does evidence indicate the type
uk?
Can we
of recirculation seen at C
atalhoy
argue that social power everywhere was based
on the control of history and links to the past?
We could argue that the repetition of
houses in the same place results from the
crowding and permanence of settlements.
However, the specic continuities in function
uk
cannot
and art just alluded to at C
atalhoy
be explained in this way; neither can the digging down and retrieval of earlier skulls and
sculptures. In any case we see that repetition of house sites occurs very early in small,
relatively short-term settlements. Certainly,
by the time of the PPNA and PPNB the
decreased residential mobility and intensity
of habitation would have produced greater
internal site organization (N.B. Goodale &
I. Kuijt, circulated manuscript, 2006; Nadel
1998). But even in densely occupied settlements a number of strategies can be taken in
locating new houses above, by, or near older
houses (Tringham 2000). Rather, it seems that
the repetition of houses and the construction
of house-based memories were formative processes that played a part in producing sedentism, long-term duration in one place, and
agglomerated settlement.
Of course, repetitive practices took place
early in the Palaeolithic. These involved repeated seasonal uses of the landscape in such
a way that certain sites that provided shelter, such as cave sites, were returned to over
long periods of time. For example, Ksar Akil
in Lebanon has 23 m of deposit covering the
period from the Middle Palaeolithic through
the Upper Palaeolithic to the Kebaran EpiPalaeolithic. In the upper levels there was
a ne and complex stratigraphy (Bergman
1987, p. 3). Kebara cave also has deposits spanning the Middle Palaeolithic and Natuan periods, or from 60,000 to 10,000 bc. The
Middle Palaeolithic deposits show repeated
use of part of the cave for hearths, while an
inner part of the cave was used as a dump area
(Goldberg 2001). The hearth area has deep
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deposits of overlapping hearths, each of which

results from several episodes of combustion
(Meignen et al. 2000, p. 14). These multiphase hearths indicate long periods of repetitive use in the same depression (p. 15), and
similar processes are found in other sites in
the Middle East. Many re installations were
vertically superimposed (p. 16) at Kebara, but
the placing of these hearths was not exact.
Rather investigators found a zone in the cave
where, over a long period of time, people
made hearths. Each hearth involved rerings,
but the hearths themselves created a vertical
palimpsest of overlaps. A part of the cave was
generally used for hearths, but investigators
did not nd specic backward reference.
The Kebaran in the Levant has lowland
aggregation sites of 2550 people and upland camps of 1417 people, and there may
have been seasonal cycles of aggregation and
dispersal. Little architecture has been excavated, but evidence shows a possible twicea-year or even year-long occupation in the
early Kebaran at Ohalo II about 21,500 years
ago (Nadel 1990). The largest hut at Ohalo II
had three successive oors and erect stones as
well as a probable stone arrangement under
them (Nadel 2006). The mud oors were covered with rich artifact debris, probably in situ.
Nadel (2006) suggests a clear focus on continuity of place. Burial beneath oors probably occurred in the Kebaran at Kharaneh
IV and Ein Gev (Valla 1991). At Ein Gev 1
in the Jordan Valley in Israel investigators
found a fourteenth-millennium-bc Kebaran
site on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee
(Arensburg & Bar-Yosef 1973). A hut was
found dug into the slope of a hill. The hut
was periodically occupied as indicated by six
successive layers which accumulated within it
(Arensburg & Bar-Yosef 1973, p. 201). Each
layer had a oor 57 m in diameter littered
with artifacts and bones, covered by a sandy
layer that included artifacts. In section, the
oors clearly repeat each other, and from one
of the middle oors a grave was cut. Evidence
does not indicate specic repetitions of feature or artifact placements, but this example

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Hodder

clearly indicates some specic backward reference in the location of a house structure, even
in the absence of permanent occupation.
In the Natuan we see some degree of
sedentism. Ain Mallaha has animals and birds
from all seasons (Valla 1991), and commensals
(such as the house mouse) indicate sedentism.
Settlements occur in the hill zones of Israel,
Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, and related sites
are found to the north in Mureybet and Abu
Hureyra. The later Natuan starts at the same
time as the Younger Dryas climatic deterioration. In the Levant in the later Natuan,
many but not all hamlets dispersed and became more mobile (Bar-Yosef 2001). But in
the Taurus in southeastern Turkey and adjacent areas, the response to the Younger Dryas
may have been greater sedentism at sites such
as Hallan C
emi (Bar-Yosef 2004).
Investigators noted both base camps and
short-term intermittent sites in the Natuan.
In the short-term sites, there is little evidence
of repetitive practices, for example, at Hatula
and Beidha (Byrd 1989, Ronen & Lechevallier
1991). Even in substantial Natuan sites we
nd little evidence of structured repetition.
Valla (1991) notes that it is often difcult to
follow coherent levels of habitation in Natuan sites, and it is difcult to show the absolute contemporaneity of buildings (see also
Kenyon 1981, Moore et al. 2000).
However, in the early Natuan site of
Wadi Hammeh 27 in the central Jordan valley
there is a continuity in spatial arrangement
of constructed features through successive
phases (Edwards 1991, p. 125). The earliest
evidence of Natuan occupation at Hayonim
Cave is Grave XIII which was covered by the
oor of Locus 3that is, by one of the structures with undressed stone walls (Bar-Yosef
1991, p. 86). At Ain Mallaha we denitely
nd superpositioning of houses. In the ancient level houses, 131, 51, and 6273 succeeded each other on the same spot (Perrot
1966). And in the recent level houses we
nd another sequence of houses dug into each
other (houses 26, 45, and 22). In the Final
Natuan at Mallaha, each major building had

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a succession of oors, one on top of another,

with no sterile layers between (i.e., no abandonment ll) (N. Samuelian, H. Khalaily, F.R.
Valla, circulated manuscript, 2003).
uk
important evidence for
At C
atalhoy
memory construction is the removal, circulation, and reuse of human skulls. By the end
of the Natuan evidence indicates the removal
of the human skull after death, although in the
absence of evidence for circulation and reuse,
this does not by itself indicate the construction
of historical links to ancestors. Skull removal
may have had other roles such as healing, divination, etc. Skeletons were found within the
houses at Mallaha, but the stratigraphical positioning is often unclear in Valla (1991). According to the reanalysis by Boyd (1995) the
131516273 sequence of buildings started
with 12 skeletons beneath the oor of 131.
He draws attention to the continuity of activity in the same place starting with a set of
burials.
uk
the focus on repetitive pracAt C
atalhoy
tices in the house and on memory construction is associated with careful and elaborate
abandonment practices, including the placement of objects and the lling of houses with
clean earth before rebuilding. For societies in
which temporal depth and memory construction are important, ending and starting buildings are likely to be signicant events surrounded in ritual. Did such practices already
occur in the Natuan? In the ruins of one
house at Mallaha investigators found several
boar heads (Valla 1991), which could indicate
ritualized abandonment processes. In what he
called Abri 26 at Mallaha, Perrot (1966) found
a child skeleton and necklace on the abandoned oor. Complete basalt artifacts were
found discarded or cached on interior oors
at Wadi Hammeh 27 (Edwards 1991), but it
is not clear whether they were just abandoned
in a context of use or whether this act was ritualized in some way.
In the PPNA in the Levant, settlements
were 0.2 to 2.5 hectares in size and are thus
3 to 8 times larger than the largest Natuan
sites (Bar-Yosef 2001). The houses were of-

ten oval and semisubterranean, with internal hearths and plaster oors. As in northern
Syria, mounds were often long-lived. Jerf el
Ahmar had at least 10 building levels comprising 800 years of settlement (Akkermans
2004, p. 287). PPNA and related sites were
also often much more structured than most
Natuan sites. Nadel (1998, p. 9) has noted
that in Natuan and other Epipalaeolithic
sites, it is common to nd the entire range of
typological variability in each site, and even
in each locus . . . However, in PPNA cases,
it is common to nd typological differences
between assemblages from contemporaneous
loci at a site. N.B. Goodale & I. Kuijt (circulated manuscript, 2006) have noted a similar
shift in the way that sites are formed, as a result
of their work at Iraq ed-Dubb in Jordan. Here
a late Natuan occupation had fairly nondelineated use of space compared to a more
delineated use of space during the PPNA.
We see much more evidence of repeated
use of the same space or house in the PPNA
throughout the region. Qermez Dere in
northern Iraq has good evidence of rebuilding in the same place (Watkins 2004, 2006).
In Phase II at Mureybet on the Middle Euphrates investigators found round houses that
were superimposed on an Epi-Natuan house
xxxvii. Trois niveaux dhabitation en maisons
rondes se superposent directement a` la maison xxxvii de la phase IB. Il sagit manifestement de la reutilization du meme espace
dhabitat en continuite directe avec la periode
e pinatouenne (Cauvin 1979, p. 26). In part
of the site they found ve levels of occupation
in this phase.
At Jericho in Trench DII Kenyon (1981)
found a huge amount of very repetitive
surfaces adjacent to the tower in PPNA
between the tower and adjacent circular enclosures. It is inside the settlement that one
sees most residential continuity in PPNA and
PPNB deposits, although, on the whole, walls
uk.

were cut down further than at C

atalhoy
In PPNA in Squares EI, EII, and EV there
were 24 main building phases. In most cases
there Kenyon saw only 24 oors for each
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111

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building phase. Some of the houses lasted

through several phases, but usually with rebuildings almost from the base of the walls.
Associated with most of the phases was usually
a long succession of surfaces, particularly in
the courtyard areas linking the various buildings (Kenyon 1981, p. 269).
The greater delineation of space in PPNA
sites has already been noted and is relevant
to abandonment and foundation processes.
One can nd more evidence of refuse management practices, with separate middens and
more cleaning out of houses on abandonment
(Hardy-Smith & Edwards 2004, Rosenberg &
Redding 2000; N.B. Goodale & I. Kuijt, circulated manuscript, 2006). In PPNA at Jericho
in trenches EI, EII, and EV Kenyon found one
building with a central stone lined post socket
under which was an infant burial (Kenyon
1981), which may represent a foundation deposit. In Square M1 in PPNA in phase xlii
in house MM the clay oor had a foundation of cobble stones. Set in the cobbles, but
sealed by the clay oor, and therefore contemporary with the construction of the building, were two burials (Kenyon 1981, p. 232).
Skull removal also occurred in the PPNA
(Bar-Yosef 2001). At Jerf el Ahmar in northern Syria, in Village 1/east there Stordeur
found a sunken building with wooden posts
to hold up the roof. At the bottom of one of
these posts two human skulls were found
(Stordeur 2000, p. 1). These ndings begin to
suggest the specic use of skulls to build histories in houses, although the use of skulls in
this way may have been simply protective or
magical. Yet the use suggests that links to the
past and past individuals were of increasing
salience.
Turning to the PPNB in the Levant,
Ain Ghazal has frequent oor replasterings
(Banning 2003), but perhaps the best evidence
is from the extensive excavations and soundings at Jericho. As in PPNA, walls are built on
walls and oors are repeated inside houses.
So in EI, EII, and EV, in phase xlvii the levels in the northern room of the eastern range
[of rooms] were gradually raised by a series

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Hodder

of oors. . . . The numerous oor levels suggest a prolonged period of use (Kenyon 1981,
p. 295). But the best evidence for repeated
surfaces was in the outside, courtyard areas
between buildings. The courtyards had alternating layers of clay or mud oors and spreads
of charcoal (Kenyon 1981, p. 294). Kenyon
found hearths in these areas, but she did not
plan these; therefore, we cannot determine
whether location of hearths was repetitive in
outside areas.
In Jordan at PPNB Beidha, the inhabitants were extremely conservative in their siting of the different elements of the village
(Kirkbride 1966, p. 14). In one building at
Beidha the total thickness of the multiple plaster layers was more than 5.5 cm, and paral uk
(p. 18). At
lels were drawn with C
atalhoy
Abu Hureyra 2 each house was usually constructed on the remains of an earlier one, and
the form of that building largely determined
the plan of its successor (Moore et al. 2000,
p. 262). The rooms of the ruined house were
lled in and the stubs of the walls cut down.
The houses in Trench E were rebuilt four,
and the houses in Trench B no fewer than
nine times (p. 266). Floors were renewed
at least 23 times, and sometimes up to 10
times. Walls also had mud plaster or whitewash refreshed several times during a rooms
life. The hearths were often set in the same
place in successive houses (p. 265), e.g., the
series of hearths in houses of phases 27 in
Trench B. We conclude from this that the
builders of a new house often remembered
not only the plan but also the internal arrangements of its predecessor, and considered
it appropriate to replicate both (p. 265). We
know, too, that in some instances they themselves were the descendants of the inhabitants
of the earlier structures (p. 266) because some
distinctive skeletal and dental traits that are
probably genetically transmitted were identied in house burials.
u there
In southeastern Turkey at C
ayon
seems at rst sight to be much more evidence of conformity within phases than between phases because houses changed in form

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from round to grill to channeled to pebble

paved to cell to large room. We see a striking homogeneity of building types in each

building layer (Ozdo

gan
& Ozdo
gan
1990,
p. 72). Thus investigators indicate more of a
focus on horizontal similarity than on verti

cal continuity. However, even here Ozdo

gan

(1990, p. 73) argue that in ev& Ozdo

gan
ery building layer, the foundations of the
new building are always directly on top of
the preceding one, without disturbing or
reusing its stones. Several buildings are mentioned as having several rebuilds, and the
Skull Building went through at least ve major
rebuilds.
uk
in central Turkey, dated
At Askl Hoy
to the late ninth and early eighth millennia
bc, in one of the excavated rooms, room A
(trench 3K . . . ) 13 oor levels have been rec
ognized (During
2006, p. 73). At this site
variation between houses in memory construction is a possibility. Only 35% of rooms
have hearths at this site, but in the deep sounding, a building was knocked down and rebuilt in the same place at least 7 times, a
practice that continued throughout the entire 8-m-deep sequence in the mound (Esin
& Harmankaya 1999). In each rebuilding a
hearth is seen in exactly the same position.
Given the relatively small percentage of buildings with hearths, this evidence suggests that
some buildings passed down the practices of
hearth use, whereas others did not. We also
nd much continuity at the site in terms of
the location of the major street by the ritual complex and the location of midden areas (in the deep sounding). The emphasis on
uk

continuity of houses seen at Askl Hoy

uk
is also found elsewhere in
and C
atalhoy
the Ceramic Neolithic in central Anatolia

(During
2006, p. 236).
Much evidence indicates repetitive practices in houses and memory construction in
the PPNB and related groups in the Middle
East and Turkey. Evidence also suggest abandonment and foundation practices, although
walls were generally cut down much more
uk.
Burning of houses, assothan at C
atalhoy

ciated with death, is found as part of abandonment practices (Verhoeven 1999, 2000,
2002). Heads tend to be found in groups in
the Levant, sometimes with features plastered
on, but how much they were circulated is
not clear. Investigators found male and female skulls, as well as subadults, raising the
question of whether the skulls represent ancestor veneration at all rather than apotropaic
or other protective functions (Bonogofsky
2004, Talalay 2004). However, the depositional contexts of some skull deposition suggest practices that may have involved backward or forward reference. The skull of a
child was found between the stones of the
foundations of Wall E180 at PPNB Jericho
(Kenyon 1981). In phase lxi in a room in a
house in EI, EII, EV the cranium of an elderly man was set upright in the corner about
15 cm below oor level. In EIII-IV a plastered
skull was found in a building ll. GoringMorris (2000, p. 119) argues that many PPNB
burials denitely stratigraphically predated
the construction of the overlying architectural features and oors. For example, in
at least three instances at Kfar HaHoresh
burial pits clearly stratigraphically underlie
and are sealed by plaster surfaces (p. 119).
In some cases we see a time lapse between
burial and/or skull removal and the making of
the oor. Thus buildings remembered the
location of the burials or skulls. Sometimes
there is evidence of markers above the burials
or skulls. Goring-Morris suggests that constructing buildings in relation to earlier buildings may have started at Mallaha in the Levant
(see above). Special abandonment practices
ufor

are found at C
ayon
example, in the Cell
phase investigators found blocking of doorways, and intact artifacts are abandoned in cell

rooms (Ozdo
gan
& Ozdo
gan
1990). Charnel houses or buildings for the dead occur
u (the Skull Building) and at Abu
at C
ayon
Hureyra and Djade el Mughara (the Maison
des Morts) in Syria (Akkermans 2004, p. 289).
Through much of the region in the PPNB
evidence indicates circulation and handing
down of artifacts through time. Practices of
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113

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stone recirculation and reuse were found at

u.
Standing stones up to 2 m high
C
ayon
were found in the plaza and in the Skull
and Flagstone ceremonial buildings. Some
of the standing stones were intentionally broken and then buried under the subsequent re

& Ozdo

ooring of the plaza (Ozdo

gan
gan
1990, p. 74). At Jericho in the PPNB levels Kenyon found a large bituminous block
(Kenyon 1981, pp. 3067). It had been carefully aked and was obtained from the Nebi
Musa district some 17 miles away. Investigators found it in the foundation of wall E223
of phase lxv. But it t exactly into a niche of
the earlier phase lxiv, where it probably stood
on a stone set on a pillar of earth on which
there were traces of plaster. So this stone had
a role in phase lxiv and was then reused in the
foundation of lv. In phase lxiii this same room
had a distinctive green clay oor, all suggesting that this part of the building had a special
character over three phases.
Overall, then, the pre-Neolithic and Neolithic societies of the Middle East and Turkey
were increasingly concerned with temporal
depth. Evidence increasingly suggested repetitive practices in houses, and sometimes in
outside areas (e.g., courtyard or midden ar uk),
as well as in
eas at Jericho and Askl Hoy
public spaces such as paved streets (at Askl
uk).

Hoy
Evidence of specic memory construction as houses are built over burials, or
skulls and other objects are circulated and
passed down through time is also increasing.
The concern with time depth, history, and
memory reaches its apogee in the PPNB at
the same time that domesticated plants appear
in quantity, but it starts to emerge at least by
Kebaran and Natuan times, even in contexts
in which sedentism is limited. It is difcult
to explain the focus on temporal depth as the
result of living in dense villages. Rather, the
emergence of greater temporal depth was a
necessary condition for dense settled life, the
delayed returns of intensive subsistence systems, and the shift to domesticated plants and
animals, as well as for the staging of large-scale
feasts, exchanges, and marriages.

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114

Hodder

THE RITUAL VALUE OF

VIOLENCE, DEATH, AND SEX
uk
has shown that
The new work at C
atalhoy
much of the symbolism, far from having a
focus on a nurturing mother, centers on violence, death, and perhaps sex. The horns,
teeth, claws, and beaks of animals and birds
are preferentially brought into the house and
installed on or in house walls (Hodder 2006,
Russell & Meece 2005). Investigators found
scenes of humans teasing, baiting, and killing
wild animals, and they found phallic images
uk
the prevalence
(Meskell 2007). At C
atalhoy
of such imagery in domestic and ritual contexts demonstrates that much social life was
embedded within these themes. They also
found scenes in the paintings that suggest
that death and violence were linked to rites
of passage in which the social order was created and recreated through moments of transcendence and transformation (Bataille 1962,
Bloch 1992, Hodder 2006). It is of interest,
therefore, that themes of death, violence, and
sexuality dominate the symbolism of earlier

sites such as Gobekli

Tepe (Schmidt 2003).
This particular suite of ideas, linked to ceremony and public feasting, was central to the
creation of large-scale social order on which
settled village or early town life depended.
At Nahal Oren and other Natuan sites
Noy found carved stones with incised decoration, and animal heads carved on bone handles (e.g., of sickles) (Noy 1991). The sickle
shafts from El Wad and Kebara are in the form
of deer and goat heads (Henry 1989). Fox
(Vulpes sp.) teeth are widely used as raw materials for pendants (Goring-Morris & BelferCohen 2002, p. 70). In the Natuan we see a
marked rise in the numbers of raptor talons
(Goring-Morris & Belfer-Cohen 2002, p. 71)
and pendants of bone and canine teeth (Henry
1989). Investigators also found phallic objects.
Natuan art also had an erotic element seen
in a calcite statuette from Ain Sakhri (Henry
1989, p. 206).
In the PPNA wild cattle imagery is found
throughout the region (Goring-Morris &

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Belfer-Cohen 2002). At Tell Abr 3, a series of stone slabs line the bench around the
walls (Yartah 2005) in building B2. These are
polished and decorated with wild animals
gazelle, panther, aurochsas well as with geometric designs. The panthers are spotted and
highly stylized and look rather like lizards.
Bucrania are deposited within a bench, but
there are also bucrania on view in smaller
buildings, interpreted as houses, at the site.
At Jerf el Ahmar investigators also found
a building with four cattle bucrania probably suspended on the interior walls (Stordeur
2000, Yartah 2005). At Jerf el Ahmar there
is also serpent decoration on the stone slabs
of the benches of the large circular buildings
(Stordeur 2000), along with a separate depiction of a vulture (for parallel symbolism at
Hallan C
emi and Nemrik 9 see Rosenberg
& Redding 2000, p. 45; Kozlowski 1992). At

Gobekli
Tepe in the PPNA and early PPNB,
megalithic pillars have reliefs of snakes, foxes,
wild boar, cattle, gazelle, wild ass, lion, scorpions, spiders, water birds, and centipedes. The
fox and wild boar have erect penises (Schmidt
2003). The reliefs also show a headless human body with an erect penis. In the PPNB
there continues to be a widespread symbolic
focus on the fox, wild cattle, wild boar, and
birds of prey (Goring-Morris & Belfer-Cohen
2002, pp. 7071). At Nevali C
ori, Hauptmann
(1999) reconstructs a large stone statue of a
man holding his erect penis.
This association in the early village societies of the Middle East with violence, sex,
and death in the symbolic imagery could
be interpreted in many ways (Hodder 2006,
Verhoeven 2002). But perhaps at the simplest
level, we can say that these associations give
power (Guenther 1999). The powers to give
feasts, to provide, and to protect would be enhanced by the images of violence, sex, and
uk
there is an association
death. At C
atalhoy
between feasting deposits and wild male cattle. The art shows large numbers of people
engaged in the killing of dangerous animals
such as bulls that then appear in the feasting
residues and in the installations in houses. In

uk,
a set of wild goat
Building 1 at C
atalhoy
horns covers and perhaps protects a bin of
lentils (Hodder 2006). The key aspect of giving a feast may not have been simply the provision of calories, but also the demonstration
of intercession with and control of wild animals and the use of their powers to protect and
nurture.
The demonstration of power in relation to
wild animals and animal spirits created the basis for building the long-term social structures
of sedentary and then agricultural societies.
The ability to harness the power of animals
may have attracted followers and allowed the
creation of trust and dependencies. The existence of an elaborate symbolic world of violence, danger, and sexual power, and the ability to intercede with the ancestors, may have
created the conditions in which sedentary life
and intensive delayed-return economies became possible (selected for).

HUMAN AND MATERIAL

AGENCY
In many hunter-gatherer societies animals
must be hunted with respect (Fowler &
Turner 1999, p. 422). Appropriate prayers
must be offered to the spirits of the animals
if humans are to expect the animals to yield
up their lives to the hunters. If humans cease
predation the animals will do less well and
decline in numbers (p. 422). There is a relationship of friendship and respect, of reciprocity and complementarity between hunter
and game animal (Guenther 1999). Hunters
maintain relations of trust with their animal
prey . . . assuming that animals present themselves with hunters in mind, allowing themselves to be taken so long as hunters treat
them with respect and do nothing to curb their
autonomy of action (Ingold 1999, p. 409).
Powerful hunters attract animals as they attract followers. They inhabit a giving environment so that far from seeking control
over nature, their aim is to maintain proper
relationships with these beings in the natural
world (Ingold 1999, p. 409).
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115

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But already at Gobekli

we see something
very different from this perspective. In the
PPNA and early PPNB there are 23 m high
stone stele on which have been carved the images of wild animals, birds, and insects described above. The pillars themselves clearly
have an anthropomorphic meaning (Schmidt
2003, p. 3) and the human gure is entirely
dominant. This is no longer a balanced re uk

lationship. Even more clearly at C

atalhoy
are scenes in the art showing people teasing,
baiting, and playing with wild animals such
as bulls, bear, wild boar, and stags. In these
cases the humans are dominating animals and
interfering with them. This increased importance of the dominant or active human in the
symbolic or mythic world may also be linked
to the ancestors. But the result was that the
conditions were created for the domestication
of animals, which involved interfering with
and dominating animals (Cauvin 1994, Ingold
1999).

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ANRV323-AN36-07

CONCLUSION
uk
is well known for its elaborate
C
atalhoy
symbolism, including narrative scenes. These
scenes allow a unique insight into the symbolic

world of its inhabitants. The rich preservation

at the site also allows the symbolism to be contextualized in the micropractices of daily life.
Many of the themes found in the symbolism at
uk
occur widely in the Neolithic of
C
atalhoy
Anatolia and the Middle East, despite the regional differences (for example, there is more
evidence of decentralized social equivalence at
uk
and strong evidence of long temC
atalhoy
poral sequences of houses).
Many of the themes found in symbolism
uk
occur very
and daily practice at C
atalhoy
early in the processes of sedentism and the
domestication of plants and animals. These
themes include a social focus on memory construction and temporal depth, a symbolic focus on wild animals, violence, and death, and
a central dominant role for humans in relation to the animal world. These themes
occur early enough throughout the region
that they are integral to the development of
settled life and the domestication of plants
and animals. Some of the themes, particularly
the focus on time depth in house sequences,
may have been part of the suite of conditions, along with environmental and ecological factors, that selected for sedentism and
domestication.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
The author is not aware of any biases that might be perceived as affecting the objectivity of
this review.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I thank Dani Nadel and Ian Kuijt for help in gaining access to literature for this paper. I also
uk
researchers on whose work this review is based.
thank the team of C
atalhoy

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Contents

Volume 36, 2007

Prefatory Chapter
Overview: Sixty Years in Anthropology
Fredrik Barth p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p1
Archaeology
The Archaeology of Religious Ritual
Lars Fogelin p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 55
atalhyk in the Context of the Middle Eastern Neolithic
Ian Hodder p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p105
The Archaeology of Sudan and Nubia
David N. Edwards p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p211
A Bicycle Made for Two? The Integration of Scientic Techniques into
Archaeological Interpretation
A. Mark Pollard and Peter Bray p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p245
Biological Anthropology
Evolutionary Medicine
Wenda R. Trevathan p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p139
Genomic Comparisons of Humans and Chimpanzees
Ajit Varki and David L. Nelson p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p191
Geometric Morphometrics
Dennis E. Slice p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p261
Genetic Basis of Physical Fitness
Hugh Montgomery and Latif Safari p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p391
Linguistics and Communicative Practices
Sociophonetics
Jennifer Hay and Katie Drager p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 89

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Comparative Studies in Conversation Analysis

Jack Sidnell p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p229
Semiotic Anthropology
Elizabeth Mertz p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p337
Sociocultural Anthropology
Queer Studies in the House of Anthropology
Tom Boellstorff p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 17
Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2007.36:105-120. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org
by University of Washington on 09/15/11. For personal use only.

Gender and Technology

Francesca Bray p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 37
The Anthropology of Organized Labor in the United States
E. Paul Durrenberger p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 73
Embattled Ranchers, Endangered Species, and Urban Sprawl:
The Political Ecology of the New American West
Thomas E. Sheridan p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p121
Anthropology and Militarism
Hugh Gusterson p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p155
The Ecologically Noble Savage Debate
Raymond Hames p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p177
The Genetic Reinscription of Race
Nadia Abu El-Haj p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p283
Community Forestry in Theory and Practice: Where Are We Now?
Susan Charnley and Melissa R. Poe p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p301
Legacies of Derrida: Anthropology
Rosalind C. Morris p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p355
Indexes
Cumulative Index of Contributing Authors, Volumes 2836 p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p407
Cumulative Index of Chapter Titles, Volumes 2836 p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p410
Errata
An online log of corrections to Annual Review of Anthropology articles may be found
at http://anthro.annualreviews.org/errata.shtml

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