| Entry: | Another solid day of recording - we have now produced a marvellous 1:20 plan of Building 1, with much detail on it - levels, slopes, plaster lines, Munsell colours etc. It will serve as a base map for all future analyses of the building and its contents. We have also finished drawing elevation views of all walls in the building - some are very impressive, eg the one with the cow horn, plaster reliefs and red paint, while others are more modest. There are just a few cross-sections of walls left to do. Atakan is now zapping the walls with the 3D in order to put the info in the computer, but it is invaluable, and more accurate, to have the hand done plans in any case. The process of recording the walls and other features of Building 1 has encouraged us to look closely at the building and its construction history. We are now convinced that the walls of Space 110 are at least partly built directly on burnt collapsed material and that therefore some of the occupation in the northern part of the building post-dates the destruction of the southern part of the building. The details are not yet entirely clear, but should become so as we dismantle the building. One possible story is: at some stage Space 71 was divided into two parts by the building of wall 18 (perhaps at the same time as Space 70 was divided by wall 15). The next development was the destruction by fire of the southern half of the building, a burning intense enough to bake the clay of the roof and to reach into the walls to redden the bricks. Burnt material was then pushed, or fell, into the standing shell of the building, charring the floors and organic material thereon (lentils, acorns etc). The southern part of the building may then not have been re-occupied, although floors high up on top of the burnt collapse may originally have existed but have been subsequently eroded off the mound. Indeed, the top phase of FI 11 in Space 70 may be a relict of this upper occupation in the south part of the building, as may be the curving wall feature 20. In any case, occupation was re-started in the north half of the building, with Space 110 being extended out over the collapsed burnt material, its walls and plaster all being renewed - Space 110 is the only instance where we have heavily burnt bricks in the wall ( no. 7) without the attached wall plaster being burnt. We can also estimate the relative ages of the walls by counting the number of plaster layers on each face, making the assumption that walls with fewer applications are more recent than walls with lots of applications. Wall 9, the western limit of the expanded Space 110 indeed has much fewer plaster applications than wall 7 or the eastern stretches of walls 8 and 10, strongly supporting the idea that wall 9 post-dates wall 7 and the east parts of walls 8 and 10. This technique also works well with wall 21, the barely surviving wall that creates Space 111 - this wall has floors going under it and only a scant couple of plaster applications on its west face and none on its east face. So we may imagine occupation continuing in the north half of Space 71 while the south part lay covered in burnt rubble. This would explain the fact that wall 18 has plaster only along its north face - its south face may have backed directly on to rubble. It would also explain the location of FI 14 at a point where we would expect passage through to the south part of the building - if fact there never was any communication between the N and S parts. What on earth is happening with Pit 17?! I am now convinced that this is a Neolithic pit. This pit has cut away a lot of information but in turn it has provided some data of its own. We know for sure that the pit was dug in order to investigate the E face of wall 3 and that some lavishly plastered feature was removed from this wall face at this time. We are left with either the last vestiges of that feature on the wall face or with some more modest applied features that were moulded on to the wall face immediately before the pit was refilled. The diggers of pit 17 cut through the edge of the platform, feature 13, to the north and in the process encountered human remains of at least 2 individuals. The careful replacing of these remains back under the undercut roof of the platform indicates that the bones may still have been revered in some way. A key fact is the articulation of the lower jaw to one of the skulls - this suggests that the pit must have been dug not too long after the original deposition of the human remains within the platform. Alternatively, the bones may not have been originally under the platform but may have been deposited in the pit for the first time immediately before the refilling of the pit and as part of the same operation which saw the removal of the feature on the face of wall 3. In either case, the pit must have been dug during the lifetime of the building or very shortly after its final abandonment. The cut of the pit was visible from the surface of the mound, high up in the unburnt fill of the building. We must assume that wall 3 stood proud of this room fill when the pit was dug, providing a guide for the precise location of the pit. It is possible that pit 17 is contemporary with a putative upper occupation in the S half of Space 71 and may have been dug from upper surfaces which have now eroded away. We are very fortunate that Building 1 is proving so productive of information regarding the intricacies of Neolithic life and death at Catalhoyuk. Essentially it is overwhelming in a way that only Catalhoyuk could ever be.Entered By: Roger Matthews |
