ÇATALHÖYÜK 1996 ARCHIVE REPORT

Animal bone report

Nerissa Russell, Louise Martin and Leola LeBlanc

During the 1996 field season, the detailed recording of animal bone material from the renewed excavations at Çatalhöyük was initiated. The aim of this is not only to identify each specimen of bone from the excavations to some level, but also to record all attributes of the material, such as condition, surface markings and modifications, weathering, fragmentation and burning, which will aid the fuller contextual analysis of the deposits, and contribute to discussions of animal acquisition and treatment at the site. The focus of study in 1996 was House 1 in the North area, although some of the midden deposits from the Mellaart area were also analysed. A total of 11634 fragments of animal bone was recorded, 8088 of which were from House 1 and its vicinity, and 3544 from the Mellaart midden area. Bone from the Kopal trench was recorded in a much more limited fashion, in order to address questions of site formation and erosion. Careful excavation and sieving of all deposits through a 4 mm mesh produced excellent recovery. Additionally, bone from the heavy residues of the flotation process were sorted for microfaunal remains; these await secure identification, but some initial results are outlined below.

Analysis of the animal bone material is still at an early stage, but some preliminary results permit discussion. It is clearly problematic to either compare the material from the two areas of excavation (North and Mellaart) since they not only relate to different 'levels' of occupation, but also represent different types of contexts (ie. house and midden area). However, some general comment on the patterning of the bone from these areas can be made.

Firstly, it is likely that zooarchaeological findings from the 1960s excavations at the site are potentially severely flawed, at least in terms taxonomic abundance. Perkins (1969) reported that 69.8% of the remains from Level VI, and 79.4% from Levels X-XII belonged to cattle. The fauna from all areas of the new excavations has so far been dominated by sheep and goat, and of these sheep are more common (tables 1a and b, figures 1 and 2). For example, the sheep/goat category make up 63% of the assemblages, both from the North house and from the material so far examined from the Mellaart area. Cattle constitute 13% and 11% respectively. It seems most likely that the previously recorded predominance of cattle was simply an artifact of the haphazard collection of large pieces of bone. From the new excavations, pigs are rare, as are deer (although their numbers in the North area are over-inflated by highly fragmented antler pieces), dogs are fairly common although other carnivores are less well represented, and at least two species of equids (Equus hydruntinus and a large form, probably E. caballus) form a small but significant part of the assemblage. The presence of moderate numbers of equids is particularly interesting given that they seem to be totally absent from the art, in contrast to the rarer deer. Horses were apparently not symbolically salient at Çatalhöyük. Perhaps speed was not important?

North area, House 1

Spatially, there is a strong distinction between inside and outside House 1 in terms of animal bone deposition. Internally, House 1 contained little bone, considering the volume of matrix excavated, even in the room fill. Some of the bone retained a coat of plaster, and might be derived from collapsed walls, given the practice of using midden as mortar. There was somewhat higher density of bone immediately outside the walls of House 1 (space 73), but still relatively little compared to the copious quantities from the ‘middens' excavated in the Mellaart area of the site. Finds from inside the house consist chiefly of either occasional small pieces that may have escaped cleaning efforts, or what seem to be special deposits of various sorts. These special deposits include a cattle bucranium and cattle horn cores, some of them set into the walls, a pile of burnt wild goat horn cores on top of the lentil bin, numerous fragments of deer antler from the 'crawlhole' area, a boar's tusk found close to the oven in the south-west corner of the building, and several sheep's feet in various places in the house. There is also a cattle scapula (1264.X1) which is an unused, possibly unfinished tool, found carefully placed over the phase III hearth in the north part of space 70, which is strongly suggestive of abandonment behaviour.

Just outside House 1, in the narrow space to the east (space 73), that separates the house from the next building, there is much greater variety of skeletal parts and fragment sizes. Taxonomic representation, however, remains similar as figures 3 and 4 show, with the exception of higher proportions of dog and bird outside the building, and a higher percentage of fragments (horn cores) positively identifiable to goat inside. At the north end of the space (units 1297, 1306, 1346, 1310, 1320, 1340), the bones are roughly the inverse of what is found in the house: a range of fragment sizes, with many more large pieces of the larger animals. Cranial elements are underrepresented. It is easy to imagine this as the debris cleared from the house (or the one next door), and dumped from the roof. Unit 1320 has more sheep-size taxa, with a variety of taxa and elements represented. Toward the south end, units 1347, 1315, and 1323 have a wide variety of taxa and elements, and include a group of several ‘special' items: a well-preserved burnt horn core of a morphologically wild female aurochs, the wing of a large bird with abundant cut marks that seem more indicative of feather removal than meat consumption, more wild goat horn cores, and a complete dog skull with the mandibles and first vertebra. The cattle horn core was found on top of a pile of rocks that the excavators suspect may have fallen from the roof in the fire that partially destroyed the house, and this could be the origin of all these items. Burning seems to increase somewhat from north to south in space 73, and is concentrated in the upper units. Unit 1320 has less burning than 1310. Unit 1315 is nearly all burnt, 1347 seems to have localized heavy burning, and 1323 has little burning.

The cattle heads and horns in and near House 1 received variable treatment. The very poorly preserved horns and partial skull of one animal (1400.X3) were covered with plaster and so are assumed to have been originally mounted on the wall or on a free-standing feature. A single horn (1952.X1) was found still firmly set in the west wall of space 71, without plaster coating and reasonably well preserved. This horn is very large at its base, but rather short. Given the orientation of the horn to the intercornual ridge, it does appear to be cattle rather than bison (which have shorter horns than cattle), probably male, and comfortably in the wild size range. Mellaart (1967, p101) suggests that animal bones and horns were used at Çatalhöyük to attach animal heads to walls of building, and this might be the purpose of this horn core, given its positioning in the wall, and its orientation (pointing upwards). A single horn core with attached frontal (skull) bone (1347.X1) was found leaning against the outer side of the east wall of House 1, unplastered, burnt, and well preserved (certainly not weathered as it would have been had it been exposed to the elements for any length of time). This is a female at the small end of the wild size range.

In addition to the cattle horn core, a small group of bones was set firmly and apparently deliberately into the north face of the internal wall running east-west through space 71 (1393.X1). This rather odd group consists of several fragments of large mammal long bone and rib shafts, a sheep-size carpal, and a piece of a wolf (or very large dog) ulna. The wolf ulna has been thoroughly chewed by carnivores, probably dogs. That is, it was not set into the wall as an intact wolf leg, but had already been fragmented, probably defleshed, and was recovered after dogs had worked it over. This set of bones does not seem to make a lot of sense as a display in itself, although given Mellaart's observation cited above, they may have served as the base for mounting a bucranium or other feature.

A pile of at least 12 morphologically wild goat (Capra aegagrus) horn cores, nearly all burnt to varying degrees, and mostly heavily charred, was found on top of the lentils in the lentil bin (units 1314 and 1344). Most of these from 1314 are left-hand side horn cores, while those from 1344 are rights, suggesting a spatial separation. All the charred specimens are covered with a shiny, vitrified deposit, both inside and out (but not on broken surfaces). This deposit has been found on other horn cores and phalanges, and we speculated that it might be the remains of the burnt horns and hooves themselves. Its occurrence inside the skull casts doubt on this idea, however. Peter Andrews has suggested that it may be the remnants of some greasy substance, perhaps from surrounding oily seeds. This pile is particularly striking given the general paucity of postcranial goat bones at the site. The horn cores may have been placed on top of the lentils to hold down a cover, and perhaps also to protect them symbolically. If the goats are indeed wild, as it appears, this makes for an interesting exploration of the wild and domestic. Two more C. aegagrus horn cores were found at the south end of space 73, just outside the house.

Sheep's feet, from the metapodial or occasionally carpals/tarsals down to the third phalanges (wrist/ankle to hoof), seem to have been collected in the house. Although there is little identifiable bone in the house, there are at least nine such feet, all burnt, all from sheep (as opposed to goat, which are very similar osteologically) where this is determinable (units 1135, 1140, 1148, 1175 [at least 2], 1199, 1215, and 1291 [2]). In one case where the foot was observed in the ground (unit 1291, just north of FI 11), the pattern of burning makes it clear that it was burnt in articulation, probably with the skin on, but it was found scattered over a small area. This might suggest that the articulated foot was hung from the ceiling or wall and fell as the house burned. The fact that all the sheep's feet are burnt might indicate deliberate burning, although all come from units where more than half the total quantity of bone is burnt. At any rate, these appear to be things which are purposely kept in the house, whether as a store for making broth, as part of hides with feet attached, or as tokens, for example as ‘lucky sheep's feet'.

In sum, it seems likely that many of the more 'diagnostic' animal bones from inside House 1 derive from structural features, either inserted into walls or hanging from walls or ceilings. These pieces are therefore the result of special treatment, rather than the direct remains of cooking or food preparation (although they may once have represented this). For evidence of such cooking or consumption activities, it may well be more relevant to look at the micro-artifact plots, which represent the bone fragments counted from flotation residues. These show that in phase I, most micro-bone fragments are found in the western room of the house (space 70) and also on the platform in the south-west corner of space 71. Hence, do these represent cooking and food preparation areas, where bone was either not cleaned up, or trampled into floors? In phase II, bone fragments are also found in higher densities in space 70, but also in the southern area, around the hearth, in space 71. Interestingly, there is also a high density of bone localised in the north part of space 71 which remains enigmatic: are these fragments of human bone - since they are in proximity to the grave pits - or other animal bone? After the destruction and burning of part of the southern part of the house (post phase II), phase III shows micro-bone fragments to be concentrated mainly around the new hearth in the north of space 71 and on the north-west platform. Many of these fragments, as outlined below, are fish bones - and their mode of deposition (are they eroding from the plaster or deposited on it?) is not yet clear.

Mellaart area

The middens in the Mellaart area of the site had abundant bone throughout, but also seemed to have some special deposits. Most of the bone was quite fragmented, apparently for marrow and bone grease extraction, but large intact bones were occasionally found, sometimes in concentrations. These seem to occur either on the top of midden layers or under walls, especially at corners. It is possible to see these as foundation deposits or the remains of feasts used to mark the symbolic end of the midden deposit, or the beginning of the new one. Indeed, it is possible that these ‘middens' resulted from quite different activities from those carried on in the houses. One interpretation would be that the limited number of bones found immediately outside House 1 reflect a low level of daily household meat consumption, while the large middens are not an additional multi-household dumping site, but the repository of remains from supra-household-level feasting and ceremonies. Only selected pieces, such as heads and horn cores, would be brought back into the houses for their symbolic value.

There is a strikingly high proportion of digested bone in the units analyzed from the Mellaart area, especially the ‘room fill' units (see table 2a). Many of the digested fragments are three or occasionally even four centimeters long. This is generally considered too large to pass through human digestive systems, so is likely to represent carnivore, probably dog, faeces (Payne and Munson 1985). Pigs are also a possibility, but pig bone consumption has received much less study. Greenfield (1988) notes that pigs totally consume cooked, broken lamb bones, and largely consumed pig bones. However, his brief examination of the pig faeces (from animals which had eaten bone) revealed no bone fragments present. His experiment, however, does not seem conclusive enough to reject the possibility that this area was used as a pig sty or pig manure pile. An alternative might be that significant amounts of dog faeces accumulated either by dumping them here or because dogs frequented the area extensively. It does not appear that the dogs were coming to work over bones discarded in the area, because gnawing rates are relatively low: one might expect this to be higher if dogs were chewing over bone actually in the midden.

Although carnivore gnawing is higher in the Mellaart area (and especially in the ‘room fill' portion) than in the North area (table 2b), it is quite low everywhere at the site, despite a relatively high proportion of dog bones. In comparison, at Opovo, a Neolithic site in Yugoslavia, 18% of the animal bones were gnawed by carnivores, .9% of the postcranial bones were digested, and dogs formed 3-4% of the identified fauna (Russell, 1993:97-99, 181-183). Pig gnawing is difficult to distinguish from carnivore gnawing. Greenfield found that bones fed to pigs were heavily gnawed with smaller bones disappearing altogether, while the larger bones exhibited extensive gnaw marks but were left alone by the pigs once they removed the soft tissues. Thus if this were actually a pig sty, one would expect the bone to consist primarily of heavily gnawed large mammal bones. This is not the case. From what we have seen so far, it does not appear that dogs or pigs were fed or allowed to scavenge bone to any significant extent.

There is on the whole much more burnt bone in and near House 1 than in the Mellaart units analyzed (table 3a and b). Given that the burning patterns do not indicate roasting of the bone, it is likely that most of this burning is secondary, rather than the result of cooking. Much of this may have occurred in the partial burning of the house itself, and this is supported by the distributions of burnt bone within the house (see figure 5). The highest percentages of burnt bone within units is seen in the southern part of the building, between spaces 70 and 71; after this, a high percentage of burnt bone was found in the western part of the house (space 70): both of these are in the destroyed/burnt part of the structure. Bone from floors is less burnt (35% in space 70, and 17% in space 71 - although it is interesting to note that bone from the fill of space 71 also saw a relatively high proportion of burning (43%). Maybe this bone has washed in from elsewhere, from a midden where bone was frequently burnt, as in the outside area (space 73)?

Most of the bone at Çatalhöyük is highly fragmented, largely predepositionally. This likely results from breaking up the bones to make broth or bone grease. This kind of intensive processing indicates a concern for extracting maximum nutrition from animal products, and tends to suggest that meat was not eaten very frequently.

People who frequently use stone tools for butchery/processing often leave few cut marks on bones. Hitting the bone damages the edge of the tool, so is avoided when possible. As a result, Neolithic bone assemblages generally have relatively low numbers of cut marks. The Çatalhöyük animal bone seems particularly unmarked, with only .3% of the bones analyzed bearing cut marks (table 4). In comparison, Opovo, which has by no means a high proportion of cuts for the Neolithic, the proportion was 1.8%. This is no doubt due in part to the finer-grained recovery at Çatalhöyük (with universal use of 4 mm screens, as opposed to the screening of only a sample of the sediments through 1 cm mesh at Opovo), resulting in a larger proportion of small fragments entering the count, which are less likely to have cut marks. Nevertheless, there seems to be a real difference, seen particularly in the relative paucity of dismemberment marks (those produced while taking apart the carcass) (table 5). These accounted for more than half of the Opovo cut marks, but less than a quarter of those at Çatalhöyük.

There are several possible explanations. Firstly, it may be that carcasses were left in relatively large pieces. Secondly, the low number of cut marks could indicate that people carrying out butchery at Çatalhöyük made very few mistakes, since cut marks indicate the contact of stone tools with bone, and are essentially mis-cuts. Thirdly, it may be that the obsidian tools used at Çatalhöyük allowed greater precision than for example the flint tools used at Opovo. A further possibility is that butchers were highly skilled, and fairly specialised, if, for example, meat was eaten frequently (although see discussion of fragmentation above). A final consideration is that animals at «atalhöyük might have been butchered under favorable conditions, or at particular times e.g. before rigor mortis set in, or before carcasses froze in winter. Analyses of the seasons of cull may go some way to help with these alternatives.

While there are few cut marks overall, some bones do show signs of having been sliced through the joint with a large, heavy, cleaver-like tool. This poses something of a mystery, as no such stone tools have been found at the site.

There are hints of interesting differences in the distribution of cut mark types between the Mellaart and North areas (table 5). Consumption cuts, for example, which seem to result from carving the meat after cooking, are considerably more common in the Mellaart area. Also, skinning cuts (although rare) are only seen in the Mellaart area, and there are slightly more dismemberment cuts here also. This might suggest that the two areas saw different carcass-treatment activities, and that they tended to receive bone at a different point in the consumption process, or that different consumption patterns contributed to the two assemblages.

In conclusion, the initial analysis of the animal bone assemblages from the 1996 excavations show there to be intriguing spatial, and perhaps spatial-temporal patterning in the treatment of animals and carcasses, and animal bone deposition, which is to be investigated in greater detail in the near future.

Microfauna by Leola LeBlanc

Approximately 3760 skeletal elements of microfauna were examined and recorded during the 1996 season, all of which were retrieved from the residue of the flotation process. The majority of these (2982 elements) were fish bones, including pharyngeal elements, vertebrae, fish scales and a few otoliths. The fish elements examined all appear to derive from one taxon, which awaits proper species identification. The bones so far collected would suggest that the fish is small - perhaps between 5 and 15 cms in length.

Most of the fish elements from the North area derive from space 71 inside the house, and more specifically there is a concentration over the platform in the north-west corner of this area. The depositional history of this bone material is still under consideration: it is not yet certain whether the fish bones represent an 'activity' taking place on top of the platform (ie. fish processing, fish discard), or whether these small fish could have arrived in the deposits by being 'naturally' present in mud (which was used for mud-brick) or lime (used for plastering the walls, floors or platforms).

Elements of the same kind of fish were also collected from the Mellaart area, from the deposits temorarily termed 'middens'.

The remainder of the microfauna included rodents and amphibians. Among the former, the bones of Mus (mouse), Meriones (jird), Spalax (mole rat) and a single tooth of Clethrionomys (the social vole) were identified. Rodent bones were scattered more or less equally across the floor areas of the house, and were not concentrated in a specific location, as were the fish bones.

Further study of these bones will be undertaken in 1997, and the focus of analysis will be on the taphonomic and palaeoecological information which the microfauna can yield.

References

Greenfield, Haskel J. 1988 Bone consumption by pigs in a contemporary Serbian village: Implications for the interpretation of prehistoric faunal assemblages. Journal of Field Archaeology 15(4):473-479.

Mellaart, James 1967 Çatal Hüyük: a Neolithic Town in Anatolia. London: Thames & Hudson.

Payne, Sebastian and Munson, Patrick 1985 Ruby and how many squirrels? The destruction of bones by dogs. In (eds) N. Fieller, D. Gilbertson and N. Ralph, Palaeobiological Investigations - Research Design, Methods and Data Analysis. pp 31-39. Oxford: BAR International Series 266.

Perkins, Dexter 1969 Fauna of Çatal Hüyük: Evidence for Early Cattle Domestication in Anatolia, Science vol 164, 177-179.

Russell, Nerissa 1993 Hunting, Herding and Feasting: Human Use of Animals in Neolithic Southeast Europe. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Berkeley.