Liverpool TAG 96

POSTPROCESSUAL METHODOLOGY AT ÇATAL

Find here the abstracts for the papers presented by project members at TAG. In some cases the full text is available. Please note that these papers are preliminary versions not for publication and should not be quoted.

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General Session abstract

    Ian Hodder (University of Cambdridge)

    Postprocessual attitudes towards the issue of methodology have been ambivalent. In the practice of digging Çatalhöyük it is possible to explore a range of themes dealing with contextuality in the interpretation of data. One such theme is the practical problem of operationalising a hermeneutic or dialectic process. Within such a process the aim is to define 'objects' relationally, and yet archaeological method has always relied on fixed objects (type series, context forms and the like). Possible ways of dealing with this conundrum are outlined. Another theme is the attempt to make information available in an open, interactive or 'global' database. Some of the problems and implications of this aim are discussed, including writing the past in non-linear formats. A final theme concerns the problems involved in simultaneously constructing and deconstructing accounts about the past. Throughout, the work being undertaken at Çatalhöyük is used an example, but the focus is on the methodological issues that are raised.

    The session is divided into two parts. The morning Global Çatal session deals with aspects of the relationship between data construction and the various communities which might have an interest in that construction. If 'interpretation' is understood as not secondary but integral to the archaeological process, if it is pulled down to the level of the very definition of 'objects', how can we deal with the open flows of information that ensue? Is 'authority' still an issue? How can we engender global and local involvement simultaneously? What responsibilities are involved?

    The afternoon Interpreting Çatal session deals with a range of interpretive issues regarding particular types of data. Interpretations of the art at Çatalhöyük are deconstructed and then some radical alternatives outlined. Issues dealing with the 'origins' of domestication of plants and animals are explored and contextualised methodologies described. Lithics, pottery and soil micromorphology studies can also develop integrated methods which involve breaking down 'specialist' categories and which foreground contextualised interpretation and non-fixity in even the most 'objectively scientific' aspects of the archaeological process.

Global Çatal Morning session

Glocalising Çatal: towards postprocessual methodology.

      Ian Hodder (University of Cambridge)

      Is a postprocessual field method possible? In attempting to explore this question in the first field seasons at Çatalhöyük, the main themes have been the following. (1) The problematising of categories and codes imposed from outside and developed within specialised disciplinary discourses. (2) The construction of local and relational understandings at all points in the field and analytical process. (3) The return from the local to participation in wider and multivocal debates- This tension between the global and the local is described as an example of general processes within a ‘post’ or ‘high’ modern era.

Constructing an interactive database and the non-fixity problem.

    Tim Ritchey (University of Cambridge)

Virtually real: integrating a database with VR models.

    Burkhard Detzler (Karlsruhe)

    The ‘virtual environment’ of Çatalhöyük constitutes a 3D-reconstruction of the excavation site. It is built upon a knowledge-based data structure, which not only integrates 3D-objects, but also video, audio, pictures and text. This databases serves as an initial information layer, created to ‘publish’ the outcome on an in-house VR-Computer, CD-Rom and on the Internet. The ‘virtual user’ can plunge into a multiuser virtual environment (VR), a realtime simulation of this imaginary world, where he navigates and interacts with 3D-objects within it.

Video-recording as part of the critical archaeological process

    Dagmar Cee, Martin Emele and Lothar Spree (Karlsruhe)

    During the entire excavation period, students of the HfG-Karlsruhe, are filming an overall documentary, including not only the process itself, but also group discussions, special events, statements etc. The ‘video mapping’ of the ongoing excavation and the resulting databases serves as a catalysator of critical reflection and analytical methodology for the excavators. Special sequences are included in- and are the material for the ‘virtual environment’" (VE) of Çatalhöyük.

Faultlines: the construction of archaeological knowledge at Çatalhöyük in 1996.

    Carolyn Hamilton (University of Witswatersrand)

    On 29 August, 1996, Shahina Farid, supervisor of the Mellaart area of the Çatalhöyük excavation, drew the attention of the various teams and specialists conducting a tour of the progress of the excavation to three instances of faultlines on the cast walls of spaces 106 and 108. Reflecting the discussions of the excavators as they revealed these features, she speculated as to whether the faultlines were the result of an earthquake or of cases of bricks slumping, possibly because they were still moist when removed from their moulds and placed on the walls.

    As with the excavation, investigation of the Çatalhöyük project, ie the various activities, methods and dynamics by means of which archaeological knowledge of Çatalhöyük around 6000 BC is produced, reveals interesting faultlines, the causes and implications of which it might be useful to consider. Just as Farid drew the touring group's attention to the on-site discussions of the structural faultlines as they emerged, so too does this paper explore the explanations offered by project participants of the project faultlines. In so doing the paper seeks not simply to account for thocc faultlines, but to understand the recursive relations between them and the way in which features like the structual faultlines, are observed, discussed and turned into archaeological knowledge.

Çatalhöyük and its living context.

    David Shankland (University of Wales at Lampeter)

    The Çumra plain in which Çatalhöyük is situated, is rich with the evidence of the past from many periods. Otherwise very flat, the landscape is dotted with mounds of varying sizes. These mounds vary from the extremely large to being no more than slight swells in the ground. As well as this more obvious evidence, them are large areas littered with pottery and tiles, and still more sites are being exposed every day by the continuous work on the implementation of concrete drainage channels.

    Whilst archaeologists are now beginning to explore this heritage in a systematic way, they have so far completely ignored the relationship between the archaeological landscape and the villagers who still inhabit this area. This research project, which is now in its second year, aims to explore the role the diverse sites play in the life of the present day inhabitants of the plain, from both the natural and supernatural points of view. Evidence is mostly drawn from the neighbouring village of Küçükköy, though in ultimately the project. will be extended to consider the other local villages.

The use of hypermedia in site interpretation.

    Ruth Tringham (University of California at Berkeley)

    The impact of computer-generated imagery comprising rendered drawings of past landscapes and buildings that look like photographic images on the brains of people of all ages is immense. Archaeologists, artists and publishers are not all agreed, however, on how to capitalize on the impact of computer-generated reconstructions. In this paper I discuss the uses to which this imagery may be put and I present a demonstration of its incorporation into a computer designed non-linear hypermedia "production" of linked texts, sounds, and images, whereby it becomes the medium through which the concepts of the feminist critique and practice of archaeology may be expressed so that others can understand, appreciate, and enjoy its complexities. In my view hypermedia products comprise one of the few media that goes beyond the de-construction that characterizes much of feminist and post-processual archaeology and enables the construction of an engendered prehistory.

    In this presentation, I describe the creation of a non-linear hypermedia web - the Chimera Web - that provides access to and interpretation of the data of the Opovo Archaeological Project (OAP). The field research that forms the basis for the Chimera Web comprises excavations that I have carried out at Neolithic sites in Southeast Europe during the last fifteen years in the former Yugoslavia, particularly at Opovo. Such a hypermedia project is possible, however, in the interpretation of any archaeological site, including Çatalhöyük.

    The Chimera Web takes advantage of the computer's multimedia technology, hypertext linking concept, and interactive (reader intentionality/participation) format. However, it is about much more than "surfing" and "navigating" The interpretive Chimera Web is linked to the primary visual, textual and numeric database of the OAP. The hypermedia "web" acts as the mediator between the reader and the data, so that a reader can participate seriously in their interpretation. In this way the Chimera Web has not only the important function of archiving the archaeological database of the Opovo Archaeological Project and making it available in a format that can be kept current, but it also has the aim of engaging a wider audience than just a few professionals in its exploration and interpretation - high school and college students, professional researchers, teachers, people who want to do n-iore than passively sit back and have knowledge and great discoveries fed to them.

Online hypertext: archaeological narratives on the Web.

    Sue Thomas (University of Cambridge)

    This paper will address the methodology of communicating archaeological narratives to varying audiences/readerships with differing needs and demands by using new technologies. It will explore the potential of hypertext applications to enable the production of multiple or non-linear narratives. Questions to be considered include the following how and whether such narrative forms may enable active readerly involvement in constructing accounts of archaeology; how such an approach affects the authority of professional archaeologists and the discipline in creating, and accepting knowledge of the past; how enablement of multiple narratives relates to the responsibility of the archaeologist and of archaeology to produce knowledge and communicate it in narrative form; and, how initial interpretations can inform data classification and interpretation, with implications for the potential for 'alternative' interpretations.

Interpreting Çatal Afternoon session

Çatalhöyük and Mother Earth.

    Ronald Hutton (Bristol University)

    When James Mellaart excavated Çatalhöyük, he immediately interpreted its religious life in terms of the veneration of a Mother Goddess. This was wholly in keeping with a scholarly orthodoxy which had reached its fullest growth at the time that his excavation took place, and which had become so familiar by then that its origins had generally been long forgotten. In fact, its roots lay far in the past, among English Romantic poets and German philosophers, and its growth had been closely intertwined with some of the most important themes of European culture. This paper traces the outline of its story.

A neolithic culture on the analytic couch.

    Linda Donley-Reid (California)

    This paper explores the relationships between mental development and the external world. The interpretations presented are an attempt to integrate drive theory (Freud), developmental theories (Klein), ego psychology, and object relations theory(Winnicott) and to apply this combination of theories to archaeological data, (artifacts, images and architectural features). It is proposed that conflicts are "worked through" via the psychological uses of material culture.

Constructing a cosmos: image, power and domestication at Çatalhöyük.

    David Lewis-Williams (University of Cape Town)

    This paper draws on recent research on Upper Palaeolithic art and religion to argue that Upper Palaeolithic shamanic cosmology and symbols were transmuted at Çatalhöyük. The. structures, particularly the shrines, of Çatalhöyük were constructed exemplars of a typical tiered shamanic cosmology that had been developed in the limestone caves of western Europe and (apparently without a proliferation of imagery) in the cares of the Taurus Mountains not far to the south of the town. Nineteenth-century southern African San ethnography shows that some shamans believed that animal spirit-helpers could become 'real' animals and thereby a manifestation of their status and power. It is argued that the domestication of wild aurochs at Çatalhöyük was implicated in comparable shamanic practices of control and status display.

Redefining the archaeological object.

    James Conolly (University College London)

    Materially defined objects such as ‘lithic’, ‘ceramic’ or ‘plant’ are constructs hat may inhibit, rather than facilitate our ‘making-sense’ of the past through material culture. An arbitrary categorisation is immediately established that begins with the separation of the objects at time of retrieval and is maintained through the analytical and interpretative process. If we redefine the ‘object’ as a conceptual construct as opposed to material construct, in effect interpret rather than define object, a certain blurring of categories results. They become contextual, and the relativity of relationships between things becomes central. This promotes alternative ways of thinking about data. Contextual objects such as 'rubbish', 'decoration', 'domestication' cross-cut traditional boundaries between material categories and as conceptual objects are greater than the sum of their material constituents. Examples of this form of analysis are provided in the next three presentations.

Trashing rubbish.

    Nerissa Russell and Louise Martin

    Tell formation intrinsically means that people and rubbish in close proximity. 'Rubbish' can be defined as those things which leave the day-to-day sphere of being used or wanted, and hence change their meaning. Archaeologically we tend to define, a deposit as rubbish if it is outside houses or in pits, has a high density of mixed finds, displays non in situ burning and contains objects that are used up or broken. Implicit in this is an assumed distinction between clean and unclean, useful and not useful. At Çatalhöyük, integrated analyses of all kinds of objects in ‘rubbish', and a detailed examination of such deposits' context allows exploration of the life-cycles of objects and when they become rubbish, and whether our assumptions of 'rubbish' remain robust.

The culture of burning.

    Mirjana Stevanovic

    Fire transforms materials by changing their appearance and physical make up. At sites like Çatalhöyük traces of fire are therefore frequently visible and are one of the most commonly described past activities. Yet fires have different sources and vary in cultural significance that are often unstated. These range form conflagrations to daily cooking activities and ritual fires, some being intentional or unintentional, controlled or uncontrolled, natural or cultural. As part of the daily practice of on site archaeology, individual Çatalhöyük team members have described series a of material signatures the commonly use to categorise burning sources. These working definitions often vary between members and have illustrated the potential for significantly contrasting interpretations of burned contexts. Continuous discussions at multiple stages of analysis about burned contexts and heat affected artifacts have e to re-evaluations of burning. This has helped us to reconsider our traditional views of the activities and concepts linked to the evidence of fire on archaeological sites.

More than just a pretty face: the place of decoration at Çatalhöyük.

    Jonathan Last (University of Cambridge)

    Any discussion of decoration at Çatalhöyük transcends simplistic dichotomies between style and function. The famous wall paintings and reliefs depict a distinctive aesthetic but are clearly more than merely decorative. If these elements define particular spaces, was a bucranium in fact considered just as integral to a building as the walls or the roof? What does the presence of art then imply about the valuation of different areas of the house? And how deos the elaborate architectural decoration relate to the portable objets used within the buildings - for example, do the plain, burnished pots represent items of lower value, or a different aesthetic appropriate for their own contexts of production and use? Where do we then draw the boundaries of art? This paper aims to show that studying the concept of decoration across many types of context can shed new light on how the meanings of objects and places are constructed and expressed.

Domestication and society

    Project members

    We are exploring the concept of domestication by adopting a more reflexive way of viewing our assumptions and definitions of domestication, and by contextual analysis of a wide range of data in addition to the study of plant remains and animal bone. We are studying the behavioural implications and effects of domestication, which include constraints and potentials of living in a complex settlement, management of animals and new ecological niches within the settlement as attested in coprolites and microfauna, domestication of new materials such a clay for pottery, and the relationship between domestic and communal or ritual activities and time.

The excavation process at Çatalhöyük

    Project members recorded in the field (Mary Alexander, Shahina Farid and Roddy Regan)

    How do those excavating at Çatalhöyük respond to the input of specialist information in the digging environment, and how do they respond to the film documentation and the anthropological enquiry and the critiquing of categories? Is the process enabling or disabling in a context in which there is some financial and public interest pressure, to uncover buildings quickly? Is there a conflict between the emphasis on interpretation at the point of excavation and the need to move earth? The balancing of different demands is played out in examples of decisions such as whether to dig in section or in plan and in other examples demonstrated in the field context.