On beasts in breasts. Another reading of women, wildness and danger at Çatalhöyük

Abstract

Since its discovery, Çatalhöyük's iconography has provoked interpretative comment. In a series of writings, Hodder critiqued earlier interpretations of the Çatalhöyük corpus, arguing for asymmetrical gender relations of an enduring and particular type in the European past. While recent research at Çatalhöyük appears to have tempered some of Hodder's interpretative oppositions and scope, it is worthwhile to propose an alternate contextual approach to his original oppositions. This begins with the multiple examples of small carnivores' heads encysted in what may be clay effigies of human breasts and reads the same corpus as involving gender not solely with danger or death, but also with food and fleshly transformation. In this interpretation, the roles and essences of wild and domestic animals, women and men, food and death, are more complex, interpenetrating and mutable. Building on recent work at the site, it is possible to propose the existence of zones of transformation within households.