| Entry: | I have started excavating what will probably show to be another burial in one of the eastern platforms (the second one counted from the north wall) in Building 97/Space 370. The burial fill has been exposed for some years, trampled by archaeologists working in the building, and has probably been hardened by this. But it still seems unreasonable hard and compact to remove. Someone mentioned the idea that the Neolithic inhabitants of Chatalhöyük might have poured the basal fill into the burial in wet form, which would explain why it is now almost hard as cement (well, not really, but almost…). I think that suggestion is a brilliant idea. It would not only explain why the fill is often so tightly packed around the skeletons, and therefore so hard to excavate. It would also have been a very functional thing to do by the inhabitants of the buildings, as filling and packing the burials with wet make-up-like substance, would minimize (if not fully eliminate) the problem of sagging in the floor afterwards. |
