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Chapter 9 - Abandoning Çatalhöyük

Re-shuffling, Re-location and Migration as the Means of Mitigating Social Unease in the Late Neolithic

from Part II - Anatolia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 April 2022

Peter F. Biehl
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Cruz
Eva Rosenstock
Affiliation:
Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
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Summary

Recent excavations of upper strata of the Neolithic Çatalhöyük East Mound conducted by the Polish team revealed a sequence characterized by a considerable departure from previous arrangements in terms of settlement layout, house architecture, burial practices, human-animal relations, lithics procurement and technology, and the like. In this chapter we intend to scrutinize a spatial dimension of these developments by comparing the Team Poznań (TP) stratigraphic sequence with the 4040 Area on the north eminence of the East Mound. Furthermore, we aim to redefine relations of the TP sequence with structures revealed by Mellaart in the 1960s in the uppermost levels of his excavations. On this basis, the chapter shall provide an in-depth overview of the changes that occurred at Çatalhöyük toward the end of the 7th millennium cal BC.

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Chapter
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6000 BC
Transformation and Change in the Near East and Europe
, pp. 136 - 157
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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