As I’d previously mentioned, I was digging a lovely burned building at Çatalhöyük before I left. Happily, several interesting discoveries were made in that short time. We uncovered a seated stone figurine with a beard that was painted (sadly, I don’t have any photos, but I’m sure it will make the official Çatalhöyük press release), an interior wall with plaster on both sides, a red-painted niche, part of a collapsed roof, and plaster “caps” on the pillars. We had originally planned to excavate the building down to the occupation surface (some 1.8m below the collapse!) but the building was halfway in the large “Mellaart” section, where there was ongoing work to understand the phasing of the tell, keying off the 1960s excavation. It was decided that though the building had great finds and a good chance of answering some broader questions about life at Çatalhöyük, we were unable to dig it properly and so excavation will cease–it will be conserved and backfilled carefully, waiting until the entire building can be exposed. I deeply respect that decision–though it was a bit disappointing at the time, I completely understood.

Anyway, the plaster “caps” were a great find; the caps were illustrated in the original Mellaart reconstructions, but there weren’t any particular notes or photographs of them, so we weren’t sure if they were an elaboration of the building or an actual find.  We found two, and while the easternmost cap was unlikely to be disturbed, the westernmost cap (they were both on the north wall) had fallen off the pillar during the building’s collapse and cracked in half. The directors decided to lift the cap to preserve it, and possibly to investigate how it was constructed.

It was well photographed in situ and drawn from several perspectives by the site artist, Kathryn Killackey. We planned it, recorded it fully, and then it was ready to go. Shahina also mentioned that she might like a quick photoshop of it, “put back in place.” I took a few of my own photographs after we had lifted the cap, to get more exposure of the pillar:

Sadly, my camera’s light sensor is broken–which only became obvious after I downloaded these photos and the pillar cap was already gone. So I had to merge Jason Quinlan’s photo above with my own, like so:

I also did a semi-crazy full repair job. Fans of bad photoshop jobs, rejoice!

I then decided that I didn’t like the angle of the original job and tilted it some, erasing the part of cap where it had broken in half and tilted upwards in the back.

So, not perfect by any means, but about an hour’s worth of fun. The best part was moving around the cap and seeing exactly where it had fallen off–like two puzzle pieces that fit together perfectly.

(my site diary entry from a few days ago)

This year I am working in Building 49, Space 100, probably for the duration of the excavation.  Building 49 is a small house, with plaster and the traditional features that characterize Catalhoyuk.  I started excavating platform f. 1651, located in the northwest corner of the building, which had a very large round impression in the center of the plaster, layer 13668.  I took off a series of red make-up, dirty surfaces, and white plaster, revealing the top of burial cut [14437], starting f. 4000.  After excavating the burial fill (14429), skeletons 14441 (a young woman) and 14440 (an infant) were revealed by Lori Hagar.  Along with the young female skeleton were a number of ground stone beads closely associated with the neck of the skeleton.  There was a small greenstone axe in the fill, possibly associated with the infant 14440.  A number of phytoliths were found associated with the young female skeleton, samples of which were taken by Lori.  After the skeletons were removed, I cleared out the burial cut [14437] to bottom of the burial cut, revealing a darker layer with construction debris throughout.  This layer has several instances of semi-articulated human bones, possibly disturbed by the later burials.  To date, I have cleaned most of this layer, in preparation for the next burial fill.

While the burial was being excavated by Lori, I moved to the south end of the building, to work on the north-facing wall f. 1658 and the interior wall, f. 1659.  I removed a layer of plaster that was overlying both walls, 14442.  The plaster was heavily degraded and had been conserved, making excavation difficult.  This plaster was overlying a niche [14450] in the wall above the oven that had been blocked (14448) with brick-like material, both excavated and recorded by Dan.  This wall plaster, 14442, also covered the internal wall f. 1659, a somewhat ephemeral construction of plaster and makeup on the western extent of platform f. 1666.  I excavated several layers of make-up, and another layer of plaster, 14451, overlying, again, both f. 1658 and f. 1659.  This revealed a post-like column 14454, comprised of make-up and plaster.  This column was painted red during a phase of its use-life, and a sample was taken by Duygu Camurcuoglu for further study of painted plasters.  After the column was removed, another layer of plaster, 14453, was removed from the wall f. 1658 and the remains of f. 1659.  The removal of this plaster layer freed 14458, which was plaster in oven f. 4003, removed by Dan.  The last layer of make-up for f. 1659 was also beneath 14453, and the removal of this last instance of make-up freed a series of floors 14423 on platform f. 1666, which were removed as the end of the phase.

“Amid the doomsday chaos, among toppled wrecks of old City Line ferries, will stretch vast fields of bottle caps and seaweed. Adorning the mossy masts of American transatlantic lines that ran aground when the last of the water receded overnight, we shall find skeletons of Celts and Ligurians, their mouths gaping open in deference to the unknown gods of prehistory. As this new civilization grows up amid mussel-encrusted Byzantine treasures, tin and silver knives and forks, thousand-year-old wine corks and soda bottles, and the sharp-nosed wrecks of galleons, I can also imagine its denizens drawing fuel for their lamps and stoves from a dilapidated Romanian oil tanker whose propeller has become lodged in the mud….

…No longer will we soothe our souls with songs about the birds of spring, the fast-flowing waters of the Bosphorus, or the fishermen lining its shores; the air will ring instead with the anguished cries of men whose fear of death has driven them to smite their foes with the knives, daggers, bullets, and rusting scimitars that their forefathers, hoping to fend off the usual thousand-year inquiries, tossed into the sea.“

Orhan Pamuk, The Black Book
(poetry and prose that reminds me of archaeology, pt 3)

It’s no secret that I deeply enjoy the works of Pamuk, especially My Name is Red. I brought Istanbul with me during my last trip to Turkey, and especially enjoyed his descriptions of the quiet neighborhoods I was walking through. He writes very evocatively of the Bosphorus, and Istanbullus’ relationship with the large, muddy river, so I was happy to catch this bit in The Black Book about the history that not only surrounds the channel on both sides, but that which lies underneath.

I’m looking forward to his multiple Bay Area engagements later this month, but am a little annoyed that he is not giving a talk here on campus–I have to schlep to a church (he’s speaking at one in the city and one here in Berkeley) or to Stanford. I don’t mind the schlepping necessarily, it’s more the surprise that he’d be around and Berkeley wouldn’t be taking advantage of his presence.