Pictures from around Çatalhöyük

Monday being our first full day at Çatalhöyük, they let us sleep in until breakfast was served at 9:30am to adjust to being here and getting in so late the night before. We were shown the West Mound site where we would be working that morning, and then went over some of the procedural things for how things work around the site and camp. At the West Mound we were also joined by Ian Hodder who is the head guy at Çatalhöyük, and he went over some things with our site and another trench that was opened on another side of the mound. For those who do not know - when i say mound, there are 2 mounds at the site, an East and a West. The East is the bigger of the two and has been studied more over the years. The West has not been studied very much, and there are some important questions to still really be looked at in comparing the two settlements. The mound itself is a build up of housing material over the time that people occupied the settlement. The people here would destroy their mudbrick home and then build another one on top. Give that about 1500 years of occupancy and you have a man made hill. The Konya plain which is where we are is totally flat, minus these Mounds.

We got a special treat due to the turkish representatives visiting the site. A turkish band and dancers performed on top of the terrace for all of us. Video attached, there is sound as well, but ignore me at the end I was getting distracted by another student Jana that is working with me. This is a traditional dance for the people who live in the mountain area, and this is the Konya plain interpretation of this. It was usually performed at wedding ceremonies,

We started cleaning up the site on Tuesday, since it has been sitting under sandbags for a year everything needs to get swept so we can see where to start digging again. After Tuesday we started to to actual excavate a portion of the trench.

That is all I can write for now! To be continued next Friday!

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Part of trip: Turkey

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