Content uploaded by Başak Boz
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Başak Boz on Jan 07, 2016
Content may be subject to copyright.
Death and its relationship to life: Neolithic burials from Building 3 and Space 87 at Çatalhöyük, Turkey
... Did people ever fall down the ladder or off the roof? At this point we can ask ourselves how did the mature woman who is buried under platform F.162 and identified as F.634 dislocate her hip and break her ribs (Hager and Boz 2012)? ...
In this paper I come to the more general issues of a sensuous archaeology through the sense of
touch - the haptic sense. Using data from the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük, Turkey, I stress that
the sense of touch involves far more than just fingers and skin, far more than the obvious haptic
sensations, such as surface, form, pressure, pain, temperature, and texture. It involves the fullbody
sensations of balance and the sense of movement in any part of the body. I anchor my
investigation of touch and movement in the past in the archaeological data using existing
methodologies such as contact trace analysis and human kinetics. I argue that the concept of
taskscapes enables us to think about the temporality, events, and rhythms of the body's haptic
responses, which themselves are essential elements of understanding social practice. I suggest
that another anchor to investigating sensory responses in the past is the process by which
practices that started as new and unfamiliar experiences became familiar and ‘enactive
knowledge’. I end with an exploration of the potential of digital technologies to transform the
sharing of archaeological interpretations of past multisensorial experience that include the sense
of touch.
The site of Uğurlu on the island of Gökçeada (Imbros) is the earliest known Neolithic settlement within the Aegean Islands (c.6800–4500 cal. BC). In total, 37 pits, associated with a rich variety of artefacts as well as human and animal bones were excavated in the Late Neolithic and Early Chalcolithic levels of the site (c.5900–4500 BC). The pits belonging to the early sixth millennium BC levels of Uğurlu were small and located within the houses that seem to have gone through multiple episodes of house destruction and renovation rituals. During the late sixth millennium BC, this area became the focus of extensive pit‐digging activity, when large pits involving rich variety of artefacts were set within the courtyard of a special building (Building 4). Among the pits, a collective human burial pit (P188) incorporating the remains of 11 individuals and another pit (P52) involving a partial human skeleton were also found. From a comparative point of view, the construction techniques of these pits, their spatio‐temporal relations as well as their associated archaeological artefacts resemble the Anatolian and Near Eastern Neolithic practices of house destruction and renovation cycles, which are activities related to the ancestor cults of the region. We argue that all of these practices reflect public events during which social relations were negotiated through the agency of place. The differences observed during the sixth millennium BC at Uğurlu reflect the changing concepts of place and society in the immediate aftermath of the Neolithic Process, when interactions with the Balkans as well as the Aegean intensified in this region.
As anthropologists we know that the heart is considered a source of strength in many cultures. Yet in Western society and the culture of science, the heart is generally feminized and, as a consequence, devalued. Guided by feminist and Indigenous theory, I have established an archaeological practice that foregrounds heartfelt thinking as part of community-based heritage work. Importantly, I strive to train the next generation of archaeology professionals to recognize the role of the heart in promoting an effective multivocal research perspective. There are many challenges to such an approach, not least of which is the perception that inclusive and reflexive practice is a sign of weakness. This chapter reviews personal challenges I have experienced in operationalizing an epistemology of the heart. I explore why it is imperative to overcome these problems to reinvent the discipline of archaeology.
Moral sanctions, religion, oral stories/histories, and other codes of ethics that evolved to ensure the sustainable management of natural resources are a cornerstone of human social organization. The management of archaeological and heritage resources today are generally top-down and government-sanctioned efforts that are woefully inadequate for considering culturally attributed meaning and value. We argue that a more heart-centered approach to archaeology considers culturally attributed value to heritage, which, in Northwestern North America, includes an array of ecocultural, land-based, and ephemeral heritage sites resulting from the careful management of people over millennia. Consulting archaeology practiced in Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en territory, a contested landscape where oil and gas development displaces people from their lands, is fundamentally at odds with these communities’ treatment and ethos of their ecocultural inheritance. The consideration of ecocultural and land-based heritage is not merely good practice for archaeologists; it follows from a suite of resource management strategies that have been tried and tested by Indigenous peoples over millennia—it is a more effective, just, and productive practice.
I excavate layers of dead people’s residential debris; my trowel gradually reveals the thousands of events that have created the layers and material fragments of past lives. At the same time, my mind buzzes with all the small stories that rise up out of the debris of the dead residents. This chapter, inspired by the writing of George Saunders, by Slow (Careful) Archaeology, and by Slow Data, finds the heart in the specifics of the archaeological record and the slow versioning of one story that emerges from them about a house and its 10 residents who lived and died and were buried at the East Mound of Çatalhöyük at least 9000 years ago.
In the Neolithic of Anatolia, Turkey, intramural burial practices were common. Dating from 6000 to 7400 B.C.E., the large east mound of Çatalhöyük was a place both for the living and for the dead who were buried mainly under the floors of the houses. Single primary interments were the norm, and secondary depositions, although less common, offer insights into the range of possibilities for the deceased after interment. Çatalhöyük houses had preferred areas for interment, and through several burial events in the same locale, the primary inhumations were frequently disturbed for the burial of others, leaving the disturbed bones in the pit or transporting them elsewhere. As part of their burial customs, dismemberment of the deceased body, partially or fully decomposed, also occurred at Çatalhöyük. Once a grave pit was open, they sometimes retrieved bones, possibly of specific individuals, or placed other bones into the grave. The complicated post-interment movement of human bones by the Neolithic people required the use of six depositional categories in order to accommodate the specific conditions of interment and the post-interment disturbance, dismemberment, and bone retrieval that characterize the site. From the 1995 to 2010 excavations, an MNI of 384 was determined for the number of primary, secondary, and primary disturbed skeletons interred on the site. A high percentage of the human remains were tertiary bones or loose bones from the disturbed contexts of the primary interments. The actions of the Çatalhöyük people relative to the deceased post-interment were the major source of the abundance of commingled remains on the site. © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York. All rights are reserved.
The bibliography of studies conducted in the field of Human Osteology by researchers who have studied Anthropology in Turkey has been provided herein in this article. These studies include subjects such as osteometry, paleodemography, paleopathology and dental anthropology. In this article, 449 articles and symposium proceedings, 96 books and book chapters been published between the years 1930-2014 are listed chronologically. With this study, it is aimed to facilitate researchers and to provide the inspiration for new articles.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.