Preface

Summary

This volume results from a seminar funded by the John Templeton Foundation that took place at the Neolithic tell site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey over three years (2009–2011). The processes of engagement that led to the volume are described in Chapter 1. At the end of 2010, one of our original group, Alejandro Garcia-Rivera (Professor of Systematic Theology, Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University, California), passed away at fifty-nine. This volume is dedicated to his memory.

Alejandro was mischievous, warm, brilliant, and creative, a wonderful mix of reverence and irreverence. He insisted that he and I should edit a “Journal of Irresponsible Archaeology,” and at the same time he came up with a whole series of wonderful ideas about Çatalhöyük that he had only begun to explore. With the permission of his wife, Kathryn, I have included as a postscript a note he sent me after his visit to the site in 2009. Preliminary as the text is, the writing is, on the one hand, remarkably prescient – picking up already the themes that have become dominant in this volume, such as vitality and the symbolic importance of flesh – and, on the other hand, his text shows what a long way we as a project have still to go. Alejandro was already well ahead of us and he raised issues and ideas, such as devotion and the dramatic horizon, that I hope others may be stimulated to pursue.