Title

The Extent to Which We Can Analyse Children within Archaeology: With ÇatalHöyük as a Case
Study

Author
Beliz B. Tecirli

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the Degree of

General Archaeology
of the University of London in 2005
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON
INSTITUTE OF ARCHAEOLOGY
Note; This dissertation is an unrevised examination copy for consultation only and should not be
quoted or cited without permission of the Head of Department

1
 Abstract

Through the interpretation of the archaeological data derived from the site of
Neolithic ÇatalHöyük, within this research study, taking ethnographic correlations on board
as our guides we revisited the childhood of the ÇatalHöyük people. After discussing the
problems in distinguishing children in the material record, simply by reworking the current
meaning of the archaeological fabric in a method which emphasises the experiences of the
Neolithic child, we realised and explored the prospect of recovering children and their social
position through the archaeological material.

2
 Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction……………………………………………………………..…6

Chapter 2: What is a child?..........................................................................................14

Chapter 3: Child burials and the skeletal evidence…………………………………..19

Chapter 4: The children of ÇatalHöyük and their toys………………………………30

Chapter 5: The art and craftwork at ÇatalHöyük and the search for the children’s
Input…………………………………………………………………….45

Chapter 6: The domestic space and chores for the ÇatalHöyük children…………..54

Chapter 7: Conclusion……………………………………………………………...70

3
 Illustrations

List of figures

Figure 1: Cover page: Photograph of the 2004excavations at ÇatalHöyük……………….…1

Figure 2: Adornments recovered from ÇatalHöyük burials during the 1960s

excavations……………………………………………………………………….26

Figure 3: Examples of figurine types from the 1960s excavations at ÇatalHöyük East
Mound; 544, 545: animals, 532; human, 498; humanoid, 527,513; schematic
human (reproduced at 75% of original size) (Hamilton 1996:216:figure 12.1)…..31

Figure 4: Animal figurines bearing wounds, from Level VI (Mellaart 1967:138:66)…......35

Figure 5: A diagrammatic view of a typical main room at ÇatalHöyük, showing

platforms, bench, hearth, oven & ladder (Mellaart 1967:61:figure 11)……….…56

Figure 6: Monochrome red painting of a deer hunt from the southwall of ‘Shrine’A.III.i.
At ÇatalHöyük (Mellaart 1967:40:figure 54)…………………………………....62

Figure 7: Horn cores set into a platform in ‘Shrine’ VI.6i. at

ÇatalHöyük (Mellaart 1967:42: figure 16)………………………………....…...65

4
 List of tables

Table 1: The number of figurines found in different areas at ÇatalHöyük during the
1995-99 excavations (excluding figurines from the BACH & Summit Areas
(data from Hamilton, forthcomingb)…………………………….…………………32

Table 2: The number of figurines found in different areas within buildings at ÇatalHöyük
during the 1995-99 excavations (excluding figurines from the BACH & Summit
Areas) (data from Hamilton, forthcomingb)……………………………………….32

Table 3: The economic activities of children aged 4 and older residing in their parents’
household (after Cain 1977:219:table 2)…………………………………………..57

Table 4: Children’s activities in Cuzco, Peru and Potosi and Cochabamba,

Bolivia according to age (Sillar 1994:50)………………………… ……………..58

5
 Chapter 1
Introduction

The misplaced children

Despite knowing that children peopled the past (Wilkie 2000:100), the contribution
children have made to past societies (Moore 1997:255), their intentions and experiences as
reflected by the material culture, have been infrequently addressed within mainstream
archaeology. This has lead to an under-estimation of the social and economic roles of
children in the past.
The recognition of the missing children within archaeology began with the third
wave feminist movement when the realisation that the activities of women had always been
a part of the archaeological record was extended to children. However, there still exists
reluctance for the development of a theoretical framework within which the roles and
perceptions of children as individual persons could be accommodated. The reason for the
reluctance are twofold: Firstly, children, in terms of their actual bodily form, are claimed to
lack preservation and thus be under represented in the archaeological record; Secondly,
backwards inference from our own culturally specific concepts of childhood, as a prolonged
period of dependence on the parent, has lead us to perceive the archaeological child as
unable to negotiate his/her position in society without the help from adults who in this sense
are assumed to own political and social control over the production of material culture and
social ideologies (Sofaer Derevenski 1997:193). Thus we have come to regard children as
irrelevant to archaeological study as a subject and as a main field of study (Mizoguchi 2000:
141, Lillehammer 1989:89).
However, literature emphasising the role of children in site-formation processes
(Hammond & Hammond 1981, Lillehammer 1989) has demonstrated that the actual
difficulty does not stem from the invisibility of children but in the identification of their
behaviour and material expressions as opposed to other agents in the archaeological record
(Sofaer Derevenski 1997:193). For example, we observe many cases within mainstream
archaeological literature, where the interpretation of an artefact as a toy is disregarded
because this is regarded as demeaning the significance of that artefact. When an artefact is

6
associated with children it is therefore rarely related to social significance or meaning
because we lack the understanding that children’s material realities are just as complex as
those of adults, despite the fact we have access to many ethnographic examples that
demonstrate how children communicate through toys and use them to assert both their
opinions and sense of individuality (Sofaer Derevenski 2000:11).
If adults are more effective in enlarging the material world, it’s merely a question of
scale (Qvortrup 1994 in Sofaer Derevenski 2000:11) because there is no fundamental
ontological distinction between childhood and adulthood (see chapter 2), therefore,
archaeologically we must divert from ascribing to the artefacts associated with children an
essentially different status to those associated with adults (Sofaer Derevenski 1994 in Sofaer
Derevenski 2000:2000:11).
Within this introductory chapter, I will examine the importance of studying children
within archaeology in general, as well as its importance within ÇatalHöyük, the site chosen
as our case study. Later, I will go onto establish the aims of our research study and the
methodology that will be adopted in order to meet these aims.

The importance of studying children within archaeology

‘Children perceive, react and add to the world through material culture from the very
moment of birth’, and in death, their bodies are intimately encircled by material expressions
of grief (ibid:XIII). If objects guide the child’s experience, then we may recover this
experience through these objects, because this experience will potentially reveal valuable
insights that are vital to our understanding of any given society.
The past can be elucidated through a study of children because the experiences of
children moulded the past (Sofaer Derevenski 1997:193). Children internalised the world
differently according to their developmental stage (Mizoguchi 2000:142), therefore ignoring
the childhood experiences will mean ignoring the world of a considerable sector of the
society, not to mention the stage of life that all adults once occupied (Lillehammer 1989,
Sofaer Derevenski 1997, Scott 1997 in Wilkie 2000:100).
Children mature surrounded by a repository of experimental knowledge accumulated
over time (Mizoguchi 2000:141), knowledge of which its teaching and learning are key
components of the human capacity to adapt to a changing environment (Greenfield

7
2000:84), thereby a preoccupation with the archaeological child will not only throw light
upon the transference of knowledge and tradition from one generation to another
(Lillehammer 1989:90), but will also face us with the individual and communal predictions
and expectations for the past, present and future, embodied in the existence of the child
(Mizoguchi 2000:141).
Finally, considering its potentials in contributing to the main field of general social
history (Lillehammer 1989:90), the centrality of children to our own lives, as relations or as
reflections of our own childhood, ensures their validity as valuable subjects of study (Sofaer
Derevenski 2000:XIII).
Within this research study, the visibility and value of the archaeological child will be
demonstrated using the archaeological material from the Neolithic site of ÇatalHöyük as a
case study. Once we have briefly familiarised ourselves with this area, we will go on to
discuss why it is important to recover the children and childhood of ÇatalHöyük.

The study area: ÇatalHöyük

The site of ÇatalHöyük consists of two distinct mounds located in the heart of the
wide Konya Plain, south central Turkey, central to fertile wheat lands watered by the
Çarşamba Çay River. The site reaches back a time depth of 9000 years. The two mounds
reveal an unbroken sequence of development of culture from Neolithic to Early Chalcolithic
settlement (Mellaart 1965:81). At the main, or East mound (covering 13.5 ha with a
maximum height of about 20m) begins the Neolithic occupation which shifts to an almost
exclusively Early Chalcolithic occupation on the smaller West mound (covering 8.5 ha)
(Matthews and Hodder 1998:45).

The focus area of the research study

This research study is concerned with the Neolithic society of the East mound,
where excavations have uncovered twelve Neolithic building levels, encompassing the 7 th to
6th millennia. This mound is a visual metaphor of the Neolithic community, where the
practice of burying the generations of ancestors under their traditional mud brick house
floors has made them a part of the permanent and ever growing mound, while the living

8
spent their short and transient lives inhabiting its surface (Pearson 1999:164).

Past and present excavations conducted at ÇatalHöyük

Directed by James Mellaart, excavations at the site began in 1961 and continued
until 1965. The site remained closed for almost thirty years until it re-opened in 1993 to
accommodate a new excavation project under the direction of Professor Ian Hodder with
full-scale excavation beginning in 1995 (Matthews and Hodder 1998:47).

ÇatalHöyük within a broad archaeological context

ÇatalHöyük is renowned for its vast size; it is currently the largest Neolithic
settlement to be discovered. Until their much earlier demise; ÇatalHöyük shared
technologies and practices that defined a sphere of interaction with other Neolithic
communities’ located in central Anatolia. Amongst these other Neolithic sites, as amongst
any archaeological site in the world, why have we chosen the site of ÇatalHöyük as a case
study?

The importance of studying the archaeological children of ÇatalHöyük

The importance of performing a child-centred approach to the ÇatalHöyük

archaeological material is twofold: firstly, because children were numerically the
predominant group of individuals in the living population of ÇatalHöyük, as revealed by the
demographic estimations (Molleson et Al. forthcominga). ‘The children were most certainly
there…and there were lots of them’, therefore a child-centred approach to the ÇatalHöyük
data will produce information about a large proportion of the population
(Chamberlain1997:249).
Secondly, the unique focus of archaeological recovery currently in place at
ÇatalHöyük, that is the retrieval of the finer details of individual houses, which trace the
daily routine and burial practices of the ÇatalHöyük people, offers particularly rich material
through which we have a good opportunity to analyse children in the daily practice of
Neolithic life, while the sites transpiration into a laboratory of testing new approaches to

9
analytical practices and archaeological interpretation (Asouti, forthcoming) will more than
welcome a fresh, child-centered approach.
We can only begin to seek access into the world of the ÇatalHöyük child, how they
were perceived and constructed, by firstly determining if the ÇatalHöyük people recognised
biological and/or socio-cultural differences between the child and the adult, and if so, how
they recorded this distinction materially? Yet, before we delve into the heart of this
research, that is, the examination of what constituted the material culture of the ÇatalHöyük
child and the meanings attached to these material expressions, we must establish, in our next
chapter, what we mean by the term ‘child’? We cannot, however, end this chapter without
the introduction and establishment of our aims for this research study and our methodology
in meeting these aims.

The aims of the research study

1. To identify the children of ÇatalHöyük and access and explore their

materiality.

2. To use ethnographic analogies effectively to seek children within the

archaeology of ÇatalHöyük.

3. To identify the implications of what it meant to be a child at ÇatalHöyük.

4. To challenge the general adult bias within mainstream archaeology.

The methodology that ill we adopted to meet each aim

1. The children, in their physical form, will be identified through the data literature 1
while their materiality will be identified using a combination of the data literature and
ethnographic analogies (below).
1
The data literature for ÇatalHöyük will comprise of the published material from the 1960’s excavations at ÇatalHöyük (Mellaart 1962,
1963, 1964, 1966, 1967, Angel 1971) and the published (Matthews & Hodder 1998, Hodder 1996, http://catal.arch.cam.ac.uk) and
unpublished (Hodder (ed.) forthcoming) material by the members of the current ÇatalHöyük Project. It is worth establishing here that the
1960s data is problematic as the context for the data samples have either not been recorded with accuracy or have not been fully
published, the contextual information supplied by the current excavation team offer more reliability.

10
 2. Throughout this study, the identification of the children’s material culture and its
associated meanings will be met with the aid of cross-cultural field observations in the
ethnographic present which demonstrate a close parallel with the archaeological
material from ÇatalHöyük. Let us briefly consider how and why we will call on these
analogies as well as identifying their shortfall.

Ethnographic analogies: their function within this research study

Ethnographic analogies will be called upon to facilitate the reaching and refinement
of insights into the archaeologically recovered practices of children, their experiences and
their contributions (Roveland 2000:31). Where textual evidence is non existent and where
the Neolithic past has not been satisfactorily explained by the archaeological data alone,
checking the content and context of the archaeological data against a numerous and varied
collection of ethnographic parallels will help to widen our scope in the interpretation of the
‘otherness’ of the Neolithic children at ÇatalHöyük (Matthews et Al. 2000 in Matthews
forthcoming), and in the process they will help in preventing the problems of projecting our
particular ethnocentric rationalisations onto the past.
In order to utilise this material effectively we must assess its drawbacks.

Ethnographic analogies: the limits of their validity within this research

These observations of contemporary behaviour are particularly useful when close

correlations can be shown to exist between the environments and technologies of the past
and contemporary societies facing comparison (Kramer 1979:1). However, despite even the
closest of similarities, these parallels must only be used as a provision of framework for
understanding social and individual motivations behind the human action (Pearson 1999:
44), simply because no two societies have ever been the same, and it is not safe to assume
that all forms of cultural behaviour which existed in the past, exists in the present (Kramer
1979:3). Their reliability is further challenged by the fact that ethnographic studies are often
compiled from a short intermittent duration of fieldwork which is not sufficient to gain
information on the full range of processes which take place within societies (Chapman &

11
Randsborg 1981:13-4).
However, one of the most unfortunate drawbacks of ethnographic analogies is that
the emotions of individuals are largely beyond our purview (Huntington & Metcalf
1979:23). Emotional states present problems for anthropologists because the discipline
focuses on culture and society, communal ideas and corporate structures (ibid:23). Although
we may clearly recognise emotions that are familiar to us, the arrays of acceptable emotions
to a given situation are fixed to the unique institutions and concepts of each society
(ibid:43).

Ethnographic analogies: how to use them for this study

The purpose and reliability of ethnographic studies considered, interpretations within

this study will call on ethnographic parallels to generate hypothesis, while relying more
heavily on the contextual analysis of the Neolithic data to produce trial interpretations.

3. Aim 3 will be met through 1) an analysis of the burial treatment that children
received in death and their productive work contributions to the maintenance of their
household in order to understand the socio-economic role and value of children within
their family and society;
2) an analysis of the children’s role in craft and art production and the leisure activities
they occupied themselves with in order to understand the experiences that filled the
daily hours of childhood at ÇatalHöyük, and the implications that these experiences in
being a child at Neolithic ÇatalHöyük.

4. The adult bias will be challenged throughout our study as we detangle all links
between the ÇatalHöyük material and the adult world and offer alternative insights,
supported by ethnographic analogies, which effectively link the same material with the
world of the children, thus demonstrating how we can seek the children’s agency
within the archaeology.

12
13
 Chapter 2
What is a child?

‘The child is familiar to us and yet strange, she inhabits our worlds and yet seems to
answer to another; she is essentially of ourselves and yet appears to display a different order
of being.’
(Jenks 1982:9 in Sofaer Derevenski 2000:5).

This chapter aims to show the importance of reconceptualising the concept of the
‘child’ for each society under investigation by drawing attention to the problems which arise
from 1) the categorisation of the archaeological child in a purely developmental point of
view, and 2) the extension of the western perception of the ‘child’ into the past; the two
common practices within mainstream archaeology which ultimately limit and often thwart
our perception of the implications of what it meant to be a child in the past society under
examination. This focus will later extend to the identification of the problems ensued when
exploring the materiality of children and the resolutions for these problems.

The physiological child

The archaeological meaning of the term ‘child’ is above all physiological, primarily
located through the identification of the body (Ginn & Arber 1995 in ibid:8). Yet, just as we
have come to realise that sex classifications alone cannot account for cultural variation in
attitudes and classifications (ibid: 194), we must also understand that children cannot be
identified by our imposed link between biological development and social involvement
(ibid:8). Children from past societies are not identical and interchangeable (Tringham and
Conkey 1998:22), the time and state of being a child varies amongst cultures depending on
social, economic and technological factors (Lillehammer 1989:93). Therefore they must be
received as social beings whose categorisation is a relative concept negotiated through
context and the materiality of experience (Sofaer Derevenski 2000:8).
Furthermore, the studies of children from entirely developmental point of view gives
precedence to the adult as complete thus not only reducing the child to sub-adult and

14
therefore incomplete, but also ignoring the culturally constructed concept of ‘child’ for the
society under question. For example, cultural ideals of purity and innocence attributed to
childhood is claimed to be a Western and very recent construction (Ross and Rapp 1997:161
in Meskell 1999:129).
However, we must warn against viewing the child as essentially culturally
constructed, because such an approach will dismiss the powerful physical reality of the child
within the archaeological record. ‘The body in childhood is a crucial resource for making
and breaking identity precisely because of its unstable materiality’ (James et Al. 1998:156 in
Sofaer Derevenski 2000:8).
We can safely assume that children have a particular place in the social order for a
vast majority of societies. However, as there are many cross-cultural/historical variations in
the notions attached to what constitutes a child as a social phenomenon, we must
reconceptualise the concept of the ‘child’ for each society under investigation.

The Western concept of ‘children’ and ‘childhood’ vs. the ‘other’ concepts of
‘children’ and ‘childhood’

In contrast to traditional societies, in Western cultures children are deemed to be

more dependent on adults and so are denied a political and social role
(Chamberlain1997:250). This concept is often associated with Freudian theories of
suppression, assuming that children need to be shaped to a certain model (Burman 1994 in
Sofaer Derevenski 2000:1). But, the notion of socialisation may itself be culturally specific,
not existing in all cultures (MacCormack & Strathern 1980 in ibid:1). It is this Western
perception of childhood, as a prolonged period of dependence on the adult, which has lead
archaeologists to construct interpretations that reduce children to passive recipients rather
than effectors of change (ibid:1, Hastorf 1996:127). This is why children are rarely a focus
of attention in their own right. Instead they are used to understand the construction of an
‘adult’ society (ibid:8), with study focusing on them in terms of ‘what they are subsequently
going to be rather than what they presently are’ (Goodwin 1997:1 in Roveland 2000:35).
Yet personhood also extended to children (Meskell 1999:135).
Children were more than small versions of adults, maintaining their own world view,
sense of identity and social networks and initiated action by choice (Sofaer Derevenski

15
2000:1). They were social actors among their peers, in their families and in their
communities. The wealth of ethnographic evidence from many contemporary societies
documenting the participation of children in social and economic life at a very young age is
testimony to this (see Chapters 6 & 7). A great deal can be learned about society if children
were examined as children, rather than as adults for the next generation (Roveland
2000:35). Children refuse to accept the limitations placed on them by the fact that they are
not adults, they come across ideas and inventions through work and play (see Chapters 5, 6
& 7). We must dismiss our understanding that children passively absorb and internalizing
cultural norms and values from information provided by adults. More recently
anthropologists, particularly linguist anthropologists have assumed a more active role for
children in the socialisation process (ibid:36). In fact Louis Dumont has pointed out that
what makes values as values that are sought after and reproduced, is the very fact that they
are not automatically observed (Carrithers1985: 247-8).
We must, therefore, understand the social situation of children in the past through an
exploration of their social and individually constructed identities as children – identifying
the implications of what it meant to be a child – using the same forms of inference as we
might do when studying the social identity of other members of the community. This will
allow children to be treated as active agents and enable us to take more account of the
contexts in which artefacts appear (Sofaer Derevenski 2000:12) so as to identify the
children’s agency and avoid the ascribing of children’s material assemblages and artefacts to
the adult field, as is commonly done by the many archaeologists who are not aware of the
gap between the expectation and the reality of a child’s material culture.

Children and their material culture

We form our perceptions of the child through their relationship to the material
culture because childhood is constructed through material experience. Today, when we see
images of children with guns, our expectations regarding children and their material culture
are truly confronted (ibid:4). The gun appears to be the material culture of that particular
childhood. We must accept then, that there are many competing versions of childhood
experience and ideology, not simply defined by age but those that are very much
experiential; produced by the fact that children live their lives under a variety of conditions

16
(Qvortrup et al. 1994 in ibid:11); each as equally valid as the other (ibid:5).
Children are universal, culturally specific and individual all at once, which is why
their study is challenging and complex, but investigating the materiality of children will
help us comprehend this complexity (ibid:12).

Defining when childhood begins and ends at ÇatalHöyük

In order to investigate the experience of childhood at ÇatalHöyük, we need to define

when childhood began and ended within this society, with the understanding, however, that
we are not implementing, onto the past society, a definite biological span of childhood, but
rather searching for a pattern of treatment which indicates a cultural childhood span, since
we have come to realise within the beginnings of this chapter that a Western span of
childhood is not a universal concept.
While the Western culture views childhood as the period of physical and social
development from birth to maturity (Chamberlain 2000:207), in other societies individuals
may pass through rites of passage in the achievement of maturity (Sofaer Derevenski 1997:
198).
Our search for the span of childhood at ÇatalHöyük may in fact prove its non
existence, which will be a valuable finding in itself; however, in order to search for this span
we must focus our attentions on the age categories which are not inclusive in the ‘adult’
category which makes up the ‘adult’ bias within archaeology. This would imply that we
focus our attentions on the age categories that fall within the ‘childhood’ half of the
boundary separating childhood and adulthood. A boundary defined by the human bone
analysts working on the ÇatalHöyük human bone sample.
These specialists have turned to the discipline of biological anthropology2 as their
foundation in defining this boundary. The immature skeletons at ÇatalHöyük are categorised
into one of two classes: infants, comprising the newly born to about two years, while infants
who died at or soon after birth are classed as neonates or newborn; and juveniles,
comprising those over two years to around 18 years, (Molleson et Al. forthcomingb).

2
This discipline defines the criteria for relating bone maturity and dental development to age in years.

17
 Chapter 3
Child burials and the skeletal evidence

18
 ‘There is nothing more universal than death’ (Huntington & Metcalf 1979:1), and
there are no universal responses to it as the ideological and behavioural responses to death
are culturally embedded. Burial practices offer archaeologists one of the most direct means
of access into social constructions of children and their personal identity; therefore it is a
good place to begin investigating the child at ÇatalHöyük.

The practice of burial at ÇatalHöyük

At ÇatalHöyük, the deceased were buried beneath buildings, mainly under the
platforms slept on by the living, some in baskets or graves lined with mats. Most of the
buried human remains were of complete or parts of skeletons (Andrews et Al.
forthcominga).I will not be addressing the general reasons behind this form of burial as it
exceeds this chapter, other than mention that resting the dead beneath the living seems to be
a way to create a sacred space within the context of the living space (Moses 2004). Instead,
within this chapter, I will be focusing on the actual physical remains of the dead children
and the practices associated with them, because this will provide an important opportunity
for understanding fundamental social and cultural values and attitudes, evermore elucidating
expressed when acted against the background of death (Huntington & Metcalf 1979:1-2),
that the ÇatalHöyük people held towards children and their death. Within this study, the
potential of the burial data in exhibiting valuable information about the children of the past
will also be realised. Before we address the burial practices associated with children and
their possible meanings, let us identify the death assemblage at ÇatalHöyük.

Demography

What’s striking about the Çatalhöyük death assemblage is that the proportion of
children to adults is very high, with children compromising more than two thirds of the
sample (Molleson 1991 in Molleson et Al. forthcominga). A proportion that is very much
greater than expected for a pre-pottery site in which there is no evidence for the practice of
early weaning or infanticide (Molleson 1991, 1995 in ibid). Chisholm (1993 in ibid) posits
that this implied high mortality of children was a response to stress at a time of great

19
innovation and experimentation, tension and uncertainty, while Molleson et Al agree that
child deaths were mostly related to environmental causes or the children’s low resistance to
infectious diseases that were prevalent (ibid). They also ascribe to ÇatalHöyük a repeating
cycle of high mortality provoking early mating, which in turn produces large numbers of
children, who as a result have a high mortality rate…and so on (ibid).
However we do not yet know the actual mortality rate of the mound (Moses 2004:3),
since it has been claimed that the assumed population ratio and the burial samples for study
do not agree (Hodder & Cessford 2004 in ibid:3), despite the fact that the age at death
profiles do not indicate that any age sector of the population was excluded from burial
(ibid). Whether due to preservation or a yet undiscovered form of human disposal, not
knowing if the burials provide a representative cross section of the contributing population
(Buikstra 1981 in Rega 1997:235) means that any interpretations made are temporary and
most likely to change, perhaps dramatically, with the recovery of new data.

Burial practices for the children of ÇatalHöyük

For now we must use the data we have to learn as much as we can about the
ÇatalHöyük children, by enquiring whether a pattern relating to the way children are being
buried exists, and what this pattern may mean. Not forgetting, however, that individual
variation can also provide useful information.

Burial Types

At ÇatalHöyük there was one particular way to dispose of the deceased children but
concurrently no exclusive burial type or position. Although positioning is extremely
flexible, three distinguished types of burial have been recognised; primary, secondary and
disturbed (Andrews et Al. forthcominga). Specific age categories are related to burial type.
While primary burials reveal a typical pattern of natural deaths in a stable population (Odum
1983 in ibid) with the highest number of deaths as neonates and infants, then decreasing
until the ages of fifty and beyond, secondary burials only feature adolescents and adults
(ibid). Reasons for the association between adolescents and adults and secondary burial
have not yet been identified. The recovery of a larger human bone sample through future

20
excavations are hoped to reveal more information on this practice. Disturbed burials occur
for all age groups (ibid).

Locations of Burial

Excavations between the dates 1995-99 have yielded differences in the age
distribution of the human burials under house floors, although this is a tentative finding,
with Hamilton warning against defining a clear age segregation (Hamilton, forthcominga).
While adult burials never appear in the south (cooking/entrance) area of the house,
child burials predominate in this area (Molleson et Al. forthcominga). This choice may have
been governed by a cultural preference in the burial location of children (Hamilton,
forthcominga), perhaps relating to a strong concern to preserve the habituated memories in
the children’s use of this space within the house (Hodder, forthcoming) (see Chapters 5 &
6). Also, notably, burials of children were deliberately excluded from beneath the central-
east platforms (Hamilton, forthcominga). The generality of burial location in relation to age
can only be determined by future work.

The special location of neonate and infant burials

There is strong evidence for a special burial practice that segregates the neonatal and
very young burials. They are not interred in the normal locations for other burials, but
instead occur in the southern part of buildings, near fire installations (ibid) and at the
threshold to a room.

Burial at thresholds

In Building 1 there are three foundation burials of neonates, F.205, F.206 & F.208,
placed in a row, not necessarily at the same time at the threshold to the crawl between rooms
(Andrews et Al. forthcomingb). In Space 112, an infant grave F.265 appears in close
proximity to a fire installation (ibid), while in space 109, the neonate F.264 was buried in
correspondence to the location of the oven entrance (Mellaart 1963d in Cessford,
forthcoming). There is also evidence for the symbolic representation of children via their

21
handprints appearing periodically around thresholds (Matthews, forthcoming).

Burial near fire

In Space 112, in the South Area of the mound, a neonate, skeleton (2017), was
buried in the building fill before the occupation of the room, while a hearth was later built
over the body, charring the neonate’s bones through its use (Andrews et Al. forthcomingb).
Although Cessford points to cases where the neonates and infants are not so closely
related to fire installations, suggesting that perhaps their relationship stems from the fact
that they both appear in the same general part of a building (Cessford, forthcoming), there is
clear evidence that neonate burials even when interred outside buildings seem to be
associated with burning, as in Space 199 (Farid, forthcoming). Furthermore, Bell (1997: 97
in Andrews et Al. forthcominga) has suggested that the small empty pits dug close to ovens
and hearths, such as those in Building 1, may have been dug for the ritual burial of
perishable materials, like placenta or umbilical cords, as practiced in a range of societies. It
must be added that there appears to be no evidence for an obvious link between fire and the
burial of adults (ibid).
By situating the link between fire and neonatal and infant burials in the same
framework as the deliberate burning of buildings by the sites inhabitants, Cessford suggests
that fire may have played a role in marking the life cycles of individuals; birth, life and
death, because fire at ÇatalHöyük has apparent associations with transformation, cleansing
and rebirth since building burning relates to abandonment, cleansing and/or the construction
of subsequent buildings directly above (Cessford, forthcoming). There is certainly evidence
that many societies use the regularity and mystery of transitions like birth, growth and death
as metaphors for social transitions (Haaland & Haaland 1996:297), there are those that
particularly perceive the construction of a new building as a birth, where both public and
private foundation ceremonies are also noted (Carsten & Hugh Jones 1994 in Matthews,
forthcoming). At ÇatalHöyük the practice of placing disarculated adult craniums as both
foundation and as closure markers (such as in building Building 3, Level VII/VI and
Building 17, Level IX (Andrews et Al. forthcominga) in buildings certainly illustrates the
potency and significance of closure and rebirth of buildings at ÇatalHöyük.
Considering that the cooking area is considered the heart and life of the house in

22
many contemporary Anatolian villages, it is possible that the oven and hearth, for the
residents of ÇatalHöyük, would have been imbued with a similar value. Alternatively, fire
for the inhabitants at ÇatalHöyük, may have been highly valued and respected as a
regenerative, life giving, and powerful force as illustrated in the ethnographic record (Boyd
1999; Colomeda & Anne 1999; Wilkinson 1999 in Atalay, forthcoming).
It would then seem productive to consider the possibility that the new born were
buried in particular close proximity to oven/hearth areas to release power and beneficence
upon the items that were central to the functioning of the house (Moses 2004:5-6). This
argument will gather strength if we also consider the possibility that at ÇatalHöyük young
children were perceived as being closer to the supernatural world, as is believed in many
Native American societies, who use the bodies of the very young as vessels of
communication with the supernatural and thus bury them in areas that will bestow power
and blessing upon the living and future events (ibid:4). Cases have been observed of Native
American child burials as foundation deposits for specific applications to a new endeavour
such as the construction of a new structure or change in the use of a space (ibid:4-6). Could
the burial of Neolithic children at the threshold to rooms be intended for similar reasons?
Many of the houses at ÇatalHöyük have two rooms, the living space and the space for
storing food. Perhaps beneficence was intended on a regular supply of food for those living
in that house?
If fire at ÇatalHöyük is associated to rebirth, we may also take into consideration the
desire, of the ÇatalHöyük parents, for the soul of the child buried near the fire, to return to
them in the form of another child as was practised by the Ancient Greeks (Scott 1999:117 in
Meskell 1999:159). and Fourth Century AD Egyptians, who sometimes buried children
under house floors, to enable their soul to enter the next child born within the household, a
tradition that has been claimed to have survived into recent times among Egyptian women
who wish to encourage future births (Meskell 1999:159).This argument seems highly likely
because the high mortality rate at ÇatalHöyük would have made the survival of children and
mothers a communal concern, as seen in many traditional societies experiencing high child
mortality, because children are crucial to sustain the growth of the community by
reinforcing the labour force and assuring marriage partners (Mizoguchi 2000:148,
Chamberlain 2000:211). As death is a powerful experience that’ strikes at society in the very
principle of its life, in the faith it has in itself’ (Hertz 1960:78 in Pearson 1999:22), for the

23
ÇatalHöyük society, the child as a social category would have held a significant symbolic
meaning derived from communal aspirations (Mizoguchi 2000:148). However this would
imply that there had existed some form of social and cultural practice of child and maternal
care (Molleson et Al. forthcominga).

The care of children at ÇatalHöyük

At ÇatalHöyük there is a clear link between houses with high numbers of burials
(particularly child burials) and houses which have been replaced through many levels, such
as Building 1, 6 and 17, and buildings with an absence of burials that have not survived into
further levels, such as Building 2 (Hodder, forthcoming).
Within the burials of large numbers, there is a lack of evidence to prove that those
buried there lived there, or that they were related. In spaces 115 and Buildings 6, 17 and 23
in the South Area of the mound, Levels VIII and earlier have an infant mortality rate that is
disproportionate compared to the low juvenile rate as high neonate mortality is connected
with high juvenile mortality (Molleson 1991 in Molleson et Al. forthcominga). Not
portraying a natural death assemblage, it is possible that ill infants were taken here to
receive treatment (ibid).
This argument would also explain the disposal of three stillbirths in Building 1 and a
fourth neonate (2532) buried together with a mature female (2527) whose hands are
clenched in hypertension (eclampsia), which is a reaction seen in childbirth. This adult may
have died giving birth (Molleson et Al. forthcomingb). Although this associated burial may
point to the practice of women returning to their natal home to ensure a successful birth as
noted in some contemporary societies (Bloch 1994 in Matthews, forthcoming), the argument
for such buildings functioning as care centres will help explain the number of associated
child burials such as in grave F.40, where an infant and juvenile seem to have been buried
together in a single basket or binding with red paint present on the hands, foot, fibula, tibia
and clavicle of one of them. Grave F.44 also contained two skeletons, that of a five year old
child (1959), and a slightly younger child (1960), while the skeleton of an old female (1424)
and the skeleton of a 3-6 month infant (1450) were buried in the same grave F.30. Although
all associated skeletons appear to be buried at the same time, morphological evidence for
their relationship has not been identifiable (Andrews et Al. forthcomingb).

24
 Many of the infants in Buildings 6 and 17 bear signs of chronic systemic illnesses,
many probably born with anaemia that predisposed them to high levels of mortality
(Molleson et Al. forthcominga). Many had been treated with red pigment painted on the skin
(later becoming deposited on the underlying bone with the decay of the flesh due to its
insoluble nature) which has been interpreted as an attempt at medical treatment. A mixture
of realgar, a red sulphide of arsenic, and iron oxide has been identified in some of these red
pigments; ‘Arsensic has powerful anti-parasitic properties, (while) iron oxide may have
been used as a sympathetic medicine’ (ibid). Similarly of the seven skeletons with red ochre
that reached Angel (1971) in the 1960s, five had signs of porotic hyporostosis, caused by
thalassaemia (Hamilton, forthcominga). With only two cases of adults receiving red ochre
treatment (ibid), red ochre may have mainly been related to disease suffered by children or
to their cause of death. However, there have been several skeletons with signs of anaemia
that were not treated with red pigment. If in fact this pigment was not used for treatment or
to symbolise the cause of death, then perhaps we must turn to its association with blood and
life as found in the context of wall paintings, some surfaces on burial platforms and
thresholds (Matthews, forthcoming).
Both Mellaart’s data and the current excavations have revealed that red ochre burials
cluster in a few houses, while only occurring sporadically in others (Hamilton,
forthcominga). While this could imply social distinction or a case of family members who
had inherited the disease receiving burial in family or lineage houses (ibid), with the lack of
evidence for such relations, the houses clustered with ill and treated children could easily
point to care centres for them. The energy expended on the children at the time of death and
in burial leads me to believe that they held a great value for the inhabitants of ÇatalHöyük
and their loss was a deep concern. This is also expressed in the grave goods associated with
child burials.

The grave goods of children

Grave goods are not traditionally placed in burials at ÇatalHöyük, those that are,

25
mainly occur in child burials. Necklaces, occasionally strung with hundreds of beads,
anklets and bracelets have been found clustered around the body of the many child burials
(figure 2). Made from a variety of materials, although more frequently from those hard to
come by such as deer teeth or shells from the Mediterranean which indicate long distance
trade or travel (ibid). As there appears to be no prescribed set of grave goods that should
accompany the dead at ÇatalHöyük based on age, sex or other status, these are more likely
to have been gifts (ibid). Being highly variable and individual in their disposition with
many of the adornments appearing to be unused and therefore created (some very time
consuming) specifically to accompany the dead child (ibid), these grave goods were
obviously deposited with powerful meaning and represent the value attached to the dead
child.

Figure 2. (Below) Adornments recovered from ÇatalHöyük burials during the 1960s
excavations.

Although ethnographic examples have proven that 1) mortuary practices idealize the
experienced social relation and sentimental linkages between the society and the child, and
2) that the artefacts found within the child and adult graves are not necessarily

26
representative of the entire assemblage destined for the deceased (Chapman & Randsborg
1981:12-3, Ucko 1969:267,Pearson 1999:11), in a society in which high infant mortality
was at a concerning rate, with possibly more than half the children born dying before the
age of two (Molleson et Al. forthcominga), and where burial practices contrast strongly with
modern countries of high child mortality where parents develop strategies of lower
emotional involvement in the children as individuals (Heer 1968:454 in Meskell 1999:131)
as a child’s death is perceived as inevitable and morning lasts a few days (Young and
Papadotu:1997:197), at ÇatalHöyük the emotional outlay on children was significant as the
time expenditure on making some of these adornments, some with thousands of beads made
of stone, shows that children in death became an important focus and the loss of a child was
felt not just for the child but the individual embodiment of that child as expressed by the
personal identities that can be recognised in the variability of the adornments (Hodder,
forthcoming), and particularly by those adornments linked to individual memories (ibid) by
signs of repair and curation (Russell & Meece, forthcoming).

Conclusion

An analysis of the burial data from ÇatalHöyük shows that children were recognized
as significant beings at a very young age with burial rites guided by attitudes clearly
distinguished from that of adults.
Binford states that a child’s death does not affect the large society, in contrast to the
death of an adult, since a child has minimal identity relationships outside of the immediate
family (1971:21-22 in Carr 1995:184). This may have been the case for very young children
at Çatalhöyük, as in many houses there is definite freedom in the family’s consistency with
the burial of children (Angel 1971:82) rather than community wide set of standards,
however patterns suggested by the placement of child burials and the clustering of gifts
around their bodies show that the burial of the child by the adult members of the community
mobilized the child as a symbol of communal well-being (Mizoguchi 2000:48) and concern
in the present and future. The new born, who received the most distinctive burial practices
(even the baskets that accompanied neonates were made of a distinctive wild grass (Rosen,
forthcoming), may have become a uniquely powerful symbol because they represented, as
in various traditional societies today, the unrealised potential and unfulfilled expectations of

27
parents and other adult members of the community (Mizoguchi 2000:149). In fact Matthews
speculates about the potential link between wall paintings, only visible for a short duration
before being painted over, with specific events in the life-time of the buildings and their
inhabitants such as ceremonies, for birth, coming of age, or death (Matthews, forthcoming),
while also speculating about a link between the spatial conventions of wall features and
children’s burials. In Building 1, for example, she points to the traces of destroyed sculpture
on the west wall in close proximity to the predominantly juvenile burials in the northwest
platform (ibid, Russell & Meece, forthcoming). This however remains a speculation as the
function and meaning of these wall features have not yet been fully realised.
We must now look to the coming chapters where we will thoroughly address what
the unrealised social place of the child was and why it was of such a meaningful concern for
the adults of ÇatalHöyük – which in turn will aid us in understanding the many social
dimensions and the particular ontological status of the ÇatalHöyük children.

Future directions

Diet, revealed by dental abrasion, can further portray the care children received at
ÇatalHöyük; however space has not permitted an analysis of this topic.
We may also portray the care given and value and identity of children in the social
milieu if we conduct ethnoarchaeological3 research focussing on the metaphorical
associations condensed in the size, colour, shape, material and bead combination variations
in the adornments so frequently found in the ÇatalHöyük child burials.
At ÇatalHöyük, as in many traditional societies today, children may have been
exposed to the physical facts and shared beliefs of death the same as adults, through being
close observers or active participants in the care for the dying and the funerary practices for
the deceased (Young & Papadatou 1997). It will be interesting to investigate death as
experienced by the witnessing children of ÇatalHöyük.

3
Ethnoarchaeological research investigates relationships between cultural and non-cultural
behaviours/processes and their associated material residues with a particular archaeological research question
in mind. Although ethnoarchaeology is practiced within the current excavations at ÇatalHöyük, research is
mainly focused on settlement patterns (Yalman, forthcoming), rather than the many aspects of daily life at
Neolithic ÇatalHöyük.

28
 Chapter 4
The children of ÇatalHöyük and their toys

Identifying an object as a purpose built toy is a complex task (Lillehammer 1989).

29
More complex is the identification of objects that have been recycled or reworked into toys,
and perhaps impossible is the identification of absolutely everything that could have been a
part of children’s play, since children can be ‘pleased with rattle, tickled with straw…’
(Pope 1732 in Daiken 1958:15).
At ÇatalHöyük, there exist artefacts that have been interpreted by some specialists as
children’s toys. These are: figurines, clay objects, knucklebones and reworked clay pieces.
This chapter will identify these artefacts, their contexts, their pattern of wear, the current
interpretations regarding these artefacts within the archaeological literature, and consider
ethnographic cases in interpreting their function, meaning and association with children.

Figurines

The 1995-1999 excavations at ÇatalHöyük have revealed approximately 526

figurines of stone and clay, none more than 30 cms in height. Of these 183 can be identified
broadly as human, schematic human or humanoid types4, 229 as animals (all basic
representations of quadrupeds) (figure 3), with animal horns making up 78% of this
assemblage, and the remainder are unidentifiable parts that cannot be assigned to any
category (Hamilton, forthcomingb). The figurines are not stylistically uniform and vary in
size and production.

The context of the figurines

These figurines appear in a wide range of contexts although mainly in secondary

depositional contexts lending little information to their original context of use (Tables 1 &
2).

4
These portray selective representations of human attributes.

30
Figure 3. (Above) Examples of figurine types from the 1960s excavations at ÇatalHöyük
East Mound; 544, 545: animals, 532; human, 498; humanoid, 527,513; schematic human
(reproduced at 75% of original size) (Hamilton 1996:216:figure 12.1)

Number of human /schematic Number of animal

human/humanoid figurines found figurines found
Spaces between buildings 21 13
Midden-like fill of 23 8

31
abandoned houses
Open areas 29 65
Within buildings 57 55

Table 1. (Above) The number of figurines found in different areas at ÇatalHöyük

during the 1995-99 excavations (excluding figurines from the BACH & Summit Areas
(data from Hamilton, forthcomingb).

Number of human/schematic Number of animal

human/humanoid figurines found figurines found
Walls 3 6
Deliberate room fill deposits 20 17
Construction/ make-up 3 0
Foundation cut 1 1
Fill of pits 2 2
The fill of a bin 1 1
Basin 1 1
Post-holes 2 2
Oven floor 1 2
Occupation deposits on floors 8 17
Burial fills 0 2
Niche 0 1
Moulding 0 1
Floor make-up 0 2

Table. 2 (Above) The number of figurines found in different areas within buildings
at ÇatalHöyük during the 1995-99 excavations (excluding figurines from the BACH &
Summit Areas) (data from Hamilton, forthcomingb).

The majority of the figurines occur in buildings, mainly as domestic refuse or

building fill (Table 2), with enormous variability in the number of figurines found in each

32
building. Others have occurred in open areas generally found amongst deposits regarded as
rubbish (Hamilton, forthcomingb). Although some figurines appear within the same space,
in most cases no links can be found between the figurines

The wear patterns noted on the figurines

Almost all figurines found by the current and 1960’s excavations seem to have been
broken, some of which seem to have been done purposefully immediately prior to
deposition, while others have been engaged in use despite their damaged condition, as seen
by the wear identified on their surface which remains unrelated to post depositional wear
(Amber Creighton Pers.comm.).

Current interpretations regarding the function and meaning of the figurines

Images of the divine

The divided interpretations offered for the function and meaning of these figurines
suggests that more than one use and meaning may have been involved.
Where the human figurines are concerned, the traditional interpretation, initially
offered by Mellaart (Mellaart 1962:57, 1963:82-95, 1964:73-81) who focused on the
strongly sexed human figurines in the latest levels of the site5, is that they were either
objects of worship made for a Mother Goddess cult or that they represented a suite of
deities. Both concepts according to Mellaart emphasised, through idealisation, the attributes
of a natural mother. For the many who sided with Mellaart’s interpretation, the rounded and
plump image portrayed by these figurines appeared to represent pregnant females and thus
mirrored the power of women in community life.
However, we are dissuaded from these interpretations on the basis that the figurines
ichnographically appear as generic depictions of individuals (although recurrent forms have
been observed - these are a few in number), rather than duplicates of the image of one deity,
or traditional representations of different aspects of that deity, or even a set of deities.

5
After Level VI female figures made up at least half the figurine data set while male figures were no longer
made.

33
Furthermore, if we are to view these figurines as displaying a concern with human fertility
and birth, we are challenged by the paucity of images of babies and birth scenes. The
portrayal of children who have survived the critical first years of life would have equally
made suitable fertility symbols (Roveland 2000:34). Unless we have not yet recognised
children in artistic representations due to either inadequate studies on the use of scale, or
their symbolic rather than realistic portrayal (ibid:34). Nevertheless, we must not assume a
that these figurines represented a fertility concept based on figurine forms alone, especially
when we have evidence for children’s clay dolls shown with breasts, genitalia and huge
buttocks for the amusement of children among the Koranga of Brasil (Ucko 1968: 422). In
addition a fertility concept will not account for the animal figurines. We must then look for
clues within their context of recovery.

Vehicles of magic

The recovery of the majority of human/schematic human/humanoid figurines from

midden and external dumps as opposed to internal areas of buildings (Tables 1 & 2), while
further challenging the divine and sacred meaning attached to them by some, has lead others
to interpret their utilization, and that of the animal figurines, as personal protective images
or vehicles of sympathetic magic. For example, a sample of animal figurines that have been
stabbed during manufacture (figure 4) and discarded with arrow heads have been associated
with wish rituals, perhaps a desire to maintain the well-being of wild or domestic herds
(Voight 2000:267).

34
 Figure 4. (Above) Animal figurines bearing wounds, from Level VI (Mellaart
1967:138:66).

Hamilton, however, alternatively views these animal figurines as either props for
anecdotes or hunting trophies (Hamilton, forthcomingb). Yet accepting the ‘vehicles of
magic theory’ does offer an explanation to why the majority of the figurines were made of
clay. The malleability of clay and its abundance onsite offers practicality for eventually
putting an end to their magical action by destroyal and discard, destroyal that was through
deliberate breakage often not at the points of structural weakness, as noted by Voight
(2000:256).
The breaking and depositing of figurines, in the foundations of a house, has been
viewed by some as a symbolic destruction that ensures continuity to resonate from the
former building below into the subsequent building above; an interpretation that has also
been stated for the clay anthropomorphic figurines from Eneolithic north-west Bulgaria
(c.4400-3800 BC) (Tringham and Conkey 1998: 38). However, only a limited number of
figurines come from foundation levels, and destroyal before deposition is not a universal
practice required for wish vehicles.

Figurines representing ancestors

Another plausible interpretation for the figurines is their use as representing either
ancestors or totems of families, lineages or clans. An interpretation inspired by the

35
combination of the great diversity of the figurine forms and the occurrence of some
recurrent forms, particularly in Level VI (Hamilton, forthcomingb), which promote social
divisions by encouraging ancestral similarity among people of disparate identity.

Figurines as Toys

There exist however, those who have chosen to view these figurines as toys or
gaming pieces, a view that is the focus of our chapter. Distinguishing toys from other
objects is a problematic matter, as illustrated by the ethnographic case of Chucuito, Peru,
where miniature clay animals of identical form are produced together, yet begin their use
life as either toys or as vehicles for sympathetic magic (Tschopik 1950:208 in Sillar
1994:53). However, despite this difficulty, several of the figurines at ÇatalHöyük certainly
exhibit evidence of wear on their surfaces suggestive of use, perhaps through play, over a
period of time rather than immediate disposal after manufacture. Furthermore the scale and
portability of these figurines makes them ideal for children’s possession (Bailey 1996:291).
If we turn to the ethnographic literature, we are confronted by a vast number of examples,
like that of Chucuito, of clay figurines produced to function as toys (Ucko 1968).

Figurines as teaching aids

The interpretation of these figurines as teaching aids also links them to children.
Since we know that hildren can learn appropriate action through play (Sillar 1994::52), we
may suggest that the strongly sexed figurines portraying static females appearing after Level
VI, accompanied by the disappearance of the male images in clay and their exclusive
representation within hunting scenes in wall paintings (Hamilton, forthcomingb), symbolise
the altering ideology related to the gendering of roles. These figurines may have been
employed to augment the teaching of these gendered roles.
Similarly the predominant recovery of animal figurines within open areas, as
opposed to the higher number of human/schematic human/humanoid figurines within
buildings, could relate to play encouraging the learning of the cultural norms regarding the
living spaces of humans and animals.
However we must not forget that in the majority of cases these figurines appear in

36
their secondary context. Animal figurines, for example, mainly recovered in the form of
small horns, may have been swept outside with other domestic refuse. However, if we turn
to the ethnographic record we see many examples which support the theory of figurines
used as teaching aids.
In some societies dolls portraying children and babies are intended to inspire
childcare values and skills in children, while in Tanzania, a Makonde figurine portraying a
pregnant female, functions as a teaching aid in the initiation rites for the formation of male
identity. The Makonde figurine is a valuable modern ethnographic example of where, taken
out of its context, the focus on a figurines form alone could easily lead to its categorisation
as a ‘fertility goddess’, or a vehicle of magic used to wish for a birth (Haaland and Haaland
1996 in Goodison & Morris 1998: 16).

Geometric clay objects

Balls, Mini Balls, and Clay Objects are the three categories of geometric clay objects
that appear at ÇatalHöyük (Atalay, forthcoming). Let us familiarise ourselves with each
category.

Clay balls

These are ball shaped clays with diameters ranging steadily from 4.0 to 9.0cm, with
no standard size or weight (ibid). The balls were made using clays with large amounts of
mineral organic temper added to them (ibid); with variability in the mineral inclusions as
chosen by each crafter (ibid). On their surface, these balls have residues of plant or animal
foods that appear to have dripped in liquid form (ibid). They also have intentional surface
elaborations, predominantly finger and palm prints, indentations, basket and matting
impressions, perhaps marking ownership (ibid). Some balls, although not the majority, have
fire clouding in some areas, while the interiors have been oxidized completely through to
the core, indicating a high level of pyro-technology and firing knowledge, at least on the
part of some crafters (ibid).

37
 Clay objects

There are currently six object subtypes: rectangular, cubical, conical, cylindrical,
flat-based and convex-based rounded shapes (ibid). Within each subtype there are a variety
of sizes and weights (ibid). These objects have surface markings and residues similar to the
clay balls in type and amount.

Mini balls

These are tiny clay balls with diameters ranging from 0.9 to 2.6cm and a mean
diameter of 1.5cm (ibid). The mini balls were made from clay in its natural state (ibid). The
mini balls were not fired but most likely sun-dried (ibid). They have very little surface
elaboration (ibid).

The contexts of the geometric clay objects

The most notable primary contexts of the geometric clay objects are near ovens, bins
near ovens, while their secondary contexts are with food remains deposited in between-wall
contexts, or used within the building material of structures (ibid).

Current interpretations regarding the function and meaning of the geometric clay
Objects

Clay objects and balls as heat transferors

Atalay regards the primary context of the clay objects and balls as their use context
(ibid). Pointing to the evidence for breakage patterns that are consistent with interior cracks
and heat-stress breaks, Atalay argues that the clay objects and balls were most likely used in
conjunction with daily cooking, further proven by the residues of plant and animal food
remains on the clay surfaces, and/or heating activities (ibid). It is however worth noting that
the scanning electron microscope studies of the chewing surfaces of molar teeth in the
human bone sample have indicated that plant foods were not cooked at ÇatalHöyük

38
(Molleson et Al. 1996 in Molleson et Al. forthcominga). The inclusion of mineral temper
into the fabric of the clay objects and balls, however, certainly strengthens the heat transfer
theory. Although it may be argued that the close proximity of these clay objects and balls to
fire installations is indicative of their production environment rather than evidence of their
use in association with ovens/hearths, Atalay rejects this argument by pointing to the
variation in their heat treatment as evidence for their independent production and later
collection near the hearth/oven for use (Atalay, forthcoming).
The ethnographic record yields support for Atalay’s theory. There are ethnographic
cases from around the world including; North America, Canada, Mexico, Africa and Papau
New Guinea where the majority of the cooking is done using rounded cobbles (see ibid).
From a purely functional view, it is worth asking why the ÇatalHöyük inhabitants did not
simply resort to the use of stones as heat transfer devices, as in the ethnographic record,
rather than preparing these clay objects?

Geometric clay objects as counters

Based on the current data, the variation in size and surface treatment of the
geometric clay objects denies their use as standardised measurement or currency devices
intended for large scale interaction (ibid). The sample instead suggests a personal level of
production and use (ibid). Mellaart (1998: 40) has therefore, hypothesised that these
artefacts occupied a role as counting devices for personal record keeping. Atalay, however
only supports this hypothesis in regards to the mini balls (Atalay, forthcoming).

Geometric clay objects as toys or gaming pieces

Morales (1983:389), commenting on the similar clay balls that were retrieved from
the site of Jarmo interprets the use of these geometric clay objects as gaming pieces for
child and/or adult entertainment. However, Atalay, draws our attention to the lack of
chipping or contact scars on the surface of these artefacts that results from the impact
suffered by their use in ball games Atalay further argues against this theory, particularly
where the mini balls are concerned; on retrieval of an unusual mini ball feature holding over
800 mini balls that were placed when wet onto a wet plaster tray that held them, Atalay,

39
posits that we consider a more elaborate, perhaps ritualistic function for these artefacts
(Atalay, forthcoming). Yet, we could easily argue that these mini balls were placed on a tray
in the intention of being taken to a suitable location to dry; an intention that remained
unfulfilled.
It is worth noting that clay balls, particularly mini balls have now been found in
several burials, yet the sample is too small to invest interpretations on this contextual
evidence (Hamilton, forthcominga).

Reworked clay pieces

At Çatalhöyük, there is evidence for a number of pottery sherds being reworked into
new artefacts or rounded ‘potdiscs’ perhaps (Last, forthcoming, Atalay, forthcoming). Also
included within this interpretation is a sample of crudely manufactured clay beads (3021),
apparently thrown from a roof, which appear to have been made as transitory items, perhaps
gaming pieces in a child’s play (Hamilton, forthcomingc).

The contexts of these reworked clay pieces

These items come from a vast variety of contexts within and outside buildings.

Current interpretations regarding the meaning and function of these reworked

clay pieces

Although pottery sherds are often re-used as burnishers, these potdiscs do not show
the uneven abrasion we might expect on burnishers (Last, forthcoming). They are too small
to have been lids or stoppers for the much too large mouth diameters of vessels, and lack
perforation to be used as spindle whorls (Last, forthcoming). The most likely functional
interpretations of these potdiscs are their use as gaming pieces or perhaps counters and
tokens (Last, forthcoming).

Knucklebones

40
 Knucklebones, abraded astragali, taken from sheep and goat were found at
ÇatalHöyük.

The context of the knuckle bones

Mellaart (1967:63) has noted the presence of clay boxes filled with sheep and goat
knucklebones in some of the store rooms at ÇatalHöyük. The current excavations have also
revealed several knucklebones on a platform within Building 10 (Boz & Hager 2001).

Current interpretations for the function and meaning of the knuckle bones

Mellaart (1965:105), observing the appearance of knucklebones at the site of

Hacilar, had suggested that they attest the playing of games; a valid interpretation for their
appearance at ÇatalHöyük. In the Küçük Köy village near ÇatalHöyük, children today,
continue to play with knucklebones as had been played in the childhood of the older
generations (Locals from Küçük Köy village Pers.comm.).

Conclusion

In mainstream archaeology there is a pattern of associating children’s artefacts with

adults (see Chapter 2). This pattern of association is particularly illuminating where
artefacts liable to identification as toys are concerned, because claiming an artefact as a toy
is often regarded as demeaning its significance (Sofaer Derevenski 2000:7). However, the
‘toy’ interpretations placed on the artefacts considered within this chapter are equally as
valid as any other interpretation regarding their meaning and function. We must also
remember that even objects created to function as ttoys, like childhood itself, can mean
different things to different people (Daiken 1958:13).
The functions and meanings ascribed to an object are more ambiguous than fixed,
and are liable to change during the life cycle of the object according to its user and context
of use (Atalay, forthcoming). If we are to consider the reworked clay pieces as gaming
pieces, we come across the ÇatalHöyük children shaping their own material culture by
actively pursuing a universe of objects that were not created for their use, by modifying

41
their form and/or meaning and function.
Similarly, we may envision that the figurines are also imbued with multivocality,
speaking to secular needs as well as functioning as implements of a sacred world (Moses
2004:5). The recycling of magical vehicles as toys is certainly attested in the ethnographic
literature (Voight 2000:267).
However, as children are very likely to base their play and games around their
immediate social realities, the possibility that the ÇatalHöyük children incorporated into
their entertainment the productive roles that were expected of them, encourages us to
perceive the creation of these figurines as toys. For example the group of animal figurines
showing spear wounds that were found deposited in a pit along with weapons and
interpreted as objects of a hunting ritual, can be interpreted as a child’s play based on
anticipatory rehearsals of the hunting undertaken by the adults.
Some may argue against this interpretation on the basis that children could not have been
the users
of sharp weapons, yet among the Yamana in Tierra del Fuego, the manufacture of slate and
quartz arrowheads was learnt from the age of 3 onwards in the context of producing hunting
equipment (Daiken 1958:205).
Children frequently learn the limitations of the physical world through imitating
aspects of the adult world through play, thus ‘it is not surprising then that this play re-
emerges in adult life’ (Sillar 1994: 49, 53). Through these objects of play, we can understand
the children’s challenges, and adaptations to growing up. For example, we may interpret the
ÇatalHöyük children’s game of hunting as pointing to the social significance and thus
pressure placed on becoming a good hunter or provider etc. While we may relate the casual
discard of many of these figurines to the ease at which children were growing out of these
toys as they became incorporated into productive domestic tasks at a very early age (see
Chapter 6). On a further note, the encouraging of play related to (future) work may have
been the intent behind the production of some of these figurines.
Alternatively, at the risk of forcing a ritual significance onto what may be objects of
a profane character, we might consider viewing the ÇatalHöyük figurines in the light of
ethnographic evidence from the Andes where the ritual importance of figurines come from
their association with children and playing (ibid:55).
For the many Andean societies, because children are believed to derive from the

42
mountain of the deities, and are thus connected to them, through their play, they are seen as
powerful mediums for communicating with the supernatural, which culturally places them
into a central expression of state level ideology (ibid:51-59). This is an interesting
ethnographic food for thought for the ÇatalHöyük data, as we have seen, through the burial
data (Chapter 3), that children at ÇatalHöyük occupied a privileged position in
communicating with the supernatural.
Whether or not children’s play had ritual significance at ÇatalHöyük remains a trial
theory, for now we must realise that children must be considered as consumers for all
archaeological artefacts found within the archaeological record, and not only those that do
not function in the adult world, until strong contextual and ethnographic evidence
contradicts their consumption.
We must further realise the valuable insights that can be gained about a society from
an investigation of children’s play and games. As we have demonstrated (above), games and
play are part of the projective expressive system of a society, and thus very much a part of
the adult world which can influence the nature of play as part of a social strategy to
maintain cultural identity (Lillehammer 1989:94).

Future directions

The need for a focus on the ‘use-life’ of artefacts

For children, toys can be a medium for symbolic communication between adults and
children, and among their peers as they negotiate status and identity (Wilkie 2000:106).
Thus the attainment, maintenance, use and discard of toys by children can offer us the
opportunity to understand their dialogue and experience in daily life. Since a child’s toy
assemblage can incorporate artefacts that were not produced in destination for their
consumption, identifying and so accessing the toys of the ÇatalHöyük children will require
an investigation focused on the ‘use - life’ of artefacts suspected as toys. This implies that
‘secondary contexts’ must not be considered as having less value in interpreting these
artefacts. In addition, ethnoarchaeological work will also be very productive in the
identification of artefacts that had functioned as toys.

43
 The need for ethnoarchaeological work

In archaeology, often formation and disturbance studies ignore the possible

perturbation of artefact distribution by children’s play (Hammond & Hammond 1981: 636),
particularly when children’s play involves easily disposable materials, like the pebbles used
to play the outdoor games Beştaş, Loğ and Kaleyιkmaca by the many modern children in
the southeastern rural villages of Anatolia, or organic materials like conkers on a string used
in games by the modern children of Britain (personal observation). In order to capture the
evidence for children’s play, when reconstructing behaviour patterns based on depositional
history, we must always bear children in mind, particularly when we have experimental data
showing us how easy it is to interpret unstructured “child’s play” as structured “ritual”
behaviour (Hammond & Hammond 1981). Ethnoarchaeological observations based on
children’s play and its material residues within societies of similar environments and
technologies as those at ÇatalHöyük may be performed to help us recognise the material
assemblages formed by children’s play at ÇatalHöyük.

Chapter 5
The art and craftwork at ÇatalHöyük and the search for the children’s input

At ÇatalHöyük, we know more about the artefacts that the people used than about

44
the technology of their manufacturing process (Mellaart 1967:211). Only a few direct
micromorphological traces of art and craft production have been found at the site. Mainly
occurring within buildings, those found point to a domestic level of production. The
evidence for art and craftwork so far include weaving, leather working, stone working,
basketry, bead making, flint knapping, bone working, clay crafting and wall paintings and
reliefs.
Without any definite evidence for an adult orientated production, we can just as
easily associate the manufacture of these art and craft artefacts with the work of children
either as independent crafters or as apprentices.
This chapter will individually search for the child’s contribution in weaving, bead
making, flint knapping, clay moulding and wall paintings and reliefs at ÇatalHöyük6. The
search will be conducted with reference to archaeological evidence both from ÇatalHöyük
as well as from other Neolithic sites, in the form of task related markers on the skeletal data,
task related activity areas and clues within the craft artefacts themselves, as well as referring
to ethnographic data relating to these craft activities.

Children and basketry

Evidence for basketry at ÇatalHöyük confronts us in the form of baskets and mats
preserved within the burial assemblage (see Chapter 3), or as imprints of matting on the
surface of geometric clay objects (see Chapter 5). Unfortunately a manufacture assemblage
for basketry has not preserved at ÇatalHöyük. Therefore we must turn to the evidence of
task related wear patterns on human bones to gain an insight into whom the basket and mat
crafters were.
Although it has been reported that there is a lack of task related wear on the human
bones at ÇatalHöyük, which contrasts highly with the evidence for basket making seen at
the Neolithic site of Abu Hureyra (Molleson 1994 in Molleson et Al. forthcominga), at
ÇatalHöyük, wear and extensive chipping identified in the teeth of three individuals, an old
female (2115), a young adult male (2886), and an adolescent (1467), can be observed as

6
Although the identification and analysis of children’s productive work in bone working, stone working,
weaving and leather working were also intended for this chapter, unfortunately, our word limit would not
allow its incorporation. Therefore, we can do no more than recommend their future analysis through a child
centred approach.

45
resulting from the practice of basketry, where abrasive plant materials are placed between
the upper teeth and the tongue and pulled across the teeth (ibid). Although this is a very
small sample, representing a dental condition that has not yet been identified for pre-
adolescent ages, the ethnographic literature is bursting with examples of children as young
as 6 years old beginning to actively take part in basketry for domestic use and/or trade
(Silvestre 1994).
In the ethnographic examples, initially, children are responsible for the gathering of
plant materials for the baskets and mats, later they begin to produce smaller versions of the
adult products through imitation, often using left-over pieces of material. Children, become
independent producers at around the age 10, as seen in the rural villages of south central
Anatolia, where children, mainly male, accompany men in the manufacture of bread baskets
(personal observation). At ÇatalHöyük, we have much reason to envision children taking
part in basketry, as seen in the ethnographic record.
Clay containers are not common at ÇatalHöyük (Mellaart 1967:210,216), therefore
for cooking, storage and transport of dry and wet goods; finely coiled baskets would have
been the primary choice for containers (Wendrich, forthcoming). Considering that a present
day basket maker will take approximately one week full time (80 hours) to finish a finely
coiled basket and lid (ibid), we can seriously consider the that the extra labour of children,
who represented a large proportion of the population (see Chapter 3), was demanded to
produce the many domestic and burial baskets and mats at ÇatalHöyük, especially if we
bear in mind the many other labour intensive and time consuming tasks that adults would be
engaged in on a daily basis (see Chapter 7).

Children and the chipped stone technology

Throughout the span of the settlement the chipped stone assemblages of Çatalhöyük
appear to have used multiple technologies and a variety of raw materials, including ‘local’
and ‘foreign’ components (Carter, forthcoming), yet much of the dominant mode of
obsidian working was executed locally and represents the mainstay mode of production
(ibid). Although each household seems to have enjoyed a comparative equality of access to

46
both obsidian and flint7(Conolly 1999b in ibid), the presence of in situ knapping deposits,
comprising much of the same material components, have only been recovered within a
small number of structures, appearing in the south area of these structures repetitively,
building-by-building, level-by-level, within Buildings 23 (4987), (4989) & (4990), (4134) in
Building 2, Building 17 (5021) and Building 6 (Space 173) (ibid). Within the ÇatalHöyük
reports, the age character of the chipped stone crafters within these buildings (above) has
not been claimed, understandably, because this identification is a difficult one to make.
There have been archaeological studies that have claimed to identify children as
novices in the lithic record through the recovery of several stages of apprenticeship in the
form of small sized and the crudely worked cores that appear to have been worked for their
own sake rather than to any utilitarian character (Pigeot 1990, Finlay 1997, Roveland 2000,
Fischer 1990).
Although no study of such has been carried out for the lithic assemblage at
ÇatalHöyük, mainly due to the very small quantity of diagnostic production debris, if future
excavations offer an opportunity for such a study, although we may discover the learning
process of stone knapping, we cannot associate this learning with children unless we have
evidence that identifying knapping novices at ÇatalHöyük equate with identifying children,
since one does not necessarily have to be child to be a novice (Finlay 1997:205).
When we turn to the ethnographic record, however, where we are presented by
examples of children learning to knap at a very young age, the age of three onwards among
the Yamana (Finlay 1997: 208), we are advised to analyse the napped stone studies at
ÇatalHöyük and other sites in general in a way that accommodates the child knapper.
The search for the child knapper at ÇatalHöyük is further demanded by the presence
of some intricately modified flint projectile points placed deliberately into postholes, or lain
on floors in the process of abandoning the buildings, and their hoarding beside fire
installations in the main rooms as seen in Level X’s Building 9 (4210), Level IX’s Building
2 (4138) and from Level VII-VI’s Building 1 (1461) (Carter et Al. forthcoming), which are
practices pointing to a possible link between projectiles and fire installations/ abandonment
and thus child burials (Chapter 3).

7
At ÇatalHöyük the ‘obsidian’ assemblage may incorporate more than one raw material, while the ‘flint’ often
consists of a variety of resources (see Carter et Al. forthcoming)

47
 This link gains further inspiration as we consider Carter et Al’s observation of some
element of exclusivity in the consumption of these projectiles, most likely along lines of age
and/or gender, as only a small number are known from each of the structures investigated
between 1996-99 (Carter et A., forthcoming). However, this evidence will only prove useful
in detecting children’s productive work in the craft of stone knapping if production can be
linked to consumption by future studies.

Children and clay crafting

Clay pots, figurines, geometric clay objects were the products of clay crafting at
ÇatalHöyük. To date, the ÇatalHöyük clay sample has not received a child centred study
focusing on the child’s contribution to this craft. No age range has been posited for the
production sphere of this craft.
Although production debris relating to clay crafting have been scarce at ÇatalHöyük,
through studies on the final products we do know that a high degree of pyro-technological
skill and clay crafting knowledge were present; as seen by the high degree of surface
evenness in the texture and colour of the majority of geometric clay objects, their firing
without allowing for cracking from heat pressure and also the strong fundamental
knowledge for locating and extracting the necessary raw material for this craft (Atalay,
forthcoming). From the archaeological data alone, we are not able to detect the ages of
access to this knowledge and its practice. Therefore we must turn to analogies in the
ethnographic present to aid us in this detection.
In Peru and Bolivia, Sillar (1994:51) has observed that children from the age of 4 are
actively involved, through instruction, in the preparing of clay, and later, through imitation,
in making pots. This learning curb can often be seen by the poorly worked clay objects. At
ÇatalHöyük, however, the works of child apprentices have not been recovered. The
identification of apprenticeship in clay moulding is particularly difficult to identify,
considering that imperfect products may not be fired and therefore not preserve (ibid: 49) or
they may be reworked into traditional forms by the more experienced crafters.
We can, however, still hypothesise the involvement of children in clay crafting. If we
look to the production of geometric clay objects (se Chapter 4), while it seems that the clay
balls and objects may have been quite large for a child’s hand to manipulate, the mini balls

48
are likely to have been moulded by young crafters, perhaps made in imitation of the larger
geometric objects produced by the more experienced crafters. The fact that these mini balls
have not undergone the same surface or heat treatment as the larger objects can also be
explained as children managing pieces of clay in its raw form, before its mixing with
mineral temper (Atalay, forthcoming). Atalay, however, prefers to argue against this idea,
claiming that children would have also benefited from learning the effects of heat on their
products and thus more of the mini balls would have ended up fired (ibid). Yet, it is very
possible that this same treatment was deemed unnecessary since the effects of firing would
have been demonstrated to children by the firing of the larger geometric clay object.
Even if we take on Atalay’s objection and dismiss these mini balls as products of
learning, we may still consider the idea that children may simply have produced these mini
balls for their own entertainment. Children in the Andes certainly model clay for their own
amusement; often these models take the form of miniature animal figurines (Sillar 1994:51).
At ÇatalHöyük children’s involvement in the creation of clay figurines can certainly
be hypothesised, especially if we are to regard these as toys (see Chapter 4).
For the Jarmo figurines, Morales (1983:370), pointing to the casual method of
production of the figurines, posits that children may have produced some of these models,
perhaps through imitating of those created by the adults.
The fact that no temporal division between crude and slipshod clay figurines and the
relatively realistic types, existed at ÇatalHöyük as at Jarmo, with both careful and careless
work appearing side by side in the same house (Mellaart 1997:179), we can imagine that the
makers themselves were numerous and variously skilled (ibid:180) and that the production
level was household rather than specialised (Hamilton, forthcomingb). Thus we have room
to envision children moulding some of these figurines alongside the more experienced
moulders in their household.
However, although it is difficult for an archaeologist to determine the measure of
skill used in the making of artefacts of a past society, we must not fall into the trap of
equating the crudely made figurines with the children and the more sophisticated forms with
the adults, which is why the term ‘more experienced’ moulder is preferred here. The ‘more
experienced’ clay crafters may have also been children. Taking into account the
sophisticated forms of clay figurines produced by the primary school children who paid an

49
educational visit to ÇatalHöyük during the 2004 field season8, and the early age at which
children are introduced to clay moulding in the ethnographic record, and their reach of peak
skill shortly after they beginning the craft while still within their childhood (Cain 1977:219),
we can certainly hypothesise a link between children’s production of clay figurines, with the
added possibility of the more experienced children producing the more sophisticated
figurine forms.

Children and bead making

There appears to be a very strong link between bodily adornments made mainly of
stone beads and children as beaded adornments commonly decorated child burials (see
Chapter 3).
The appearance of use wear on several of these adornments implies that they may
well have been widely used by the living as well as the dead, although perhaps not surviving
in a recognisable form. We cannot, however, take the burial evidence as directly reflecting
the predominant consumption of these adornments by the living children, even if such a link
was provided we cannot associate consumption with production. What evidence do we have
for the involvement of children and bead making? Let us consider the level of bead
manufacture at ÇatalHöyük.
The presence of diagnostic bead production debitage in ashy occupation deposits
around the hearths and/or ovens in ÇatalHöyük buildings have pointed to a modest scale of
production, most likely associated with routine domestic level of manufacture (Hamilton,
forthcomingc). The archeological data has not, however, yielded enough information as to
whether all or only a few households specialised in this craft (ibid), and as to who was
involved in its production.
When we turn to the ethnographic record we notice that in most household levels of
craft production, especially those where the time required for production is formidable, like
it is in stone bead making using traditional techniques (Kenoyer et Al. 1991:50-9), are often
likely to exploit the labour of children, particularly in societies where the numbers of
children are very high, as at ÇatalHöyük.
8
I am not claiming that the capabilities of these modern children directly match those of the Neolithic,
however this is a relevant example particularly because the modern children who produced these sophisticated
forms had either no or very little previous experience in clay moulding.

50
 The ethnographic record, however, also shows that it is often adults that shape the
beads from the raw stone as this requires highly specialized knowledge, while the children
are responsible for the stringing of the finished beads in their spare time (Francis 1991:30).
Although the contribution of the ÇatalHöyük children in the various tasks of bead
making is difficult to discern, the likelihood of children’s contribution in bead making in
some form is particularly highlighted by the work of Wright and Garrard (2003: 277-8).
These two archaeologists have argued that sedentism and the living in close
proximity during the Neolithic period brought about new concerns regarding social
identification. With this observation in mind, considering that children’s identities are
constantly being negotiated since they develop at such a fast rate, and that children may
have been the consumers of these beaded adornments of diverse bead combinations, in life
as they were in death, we could postulate that children took part in the production of bead
making as a way to express their social identity at a time when this was becoming a need.

Children and art

Australian aboriginal children play an active part in the creation of artistic imagery
and show considerable skill (Ucko & Rosenfeld 1967:225 in Roveland 2000:33). With this
ethnographic correlation in mind, a few archaeologists have proposed that some Palaeolithic
art may have been compiled by children (Russell 1989, Consens 1988, & Turner 1988 in
ibid:33). Could we theorise a similar case for the wall paintings and reliefs at ÇatalHöyük?
Children’s hand prints appear in some of the wall paintings and reliefs at
ÇatalHöyük (Mellaart 1967: 83, 164-5 Matthews, forthcoming). Although these can be
argued as representations of children rather than as generations of their labour, they can also
be envisioned as children joining in the production of ‘art’(Bahn & Vertut 1988:163 in
Roveland 2000:34) (ibid:34). Either way, the firm evidence for a relationship between
children and wall art is enough to conjure future studies in understanding this relationship.

Conclusion

51
 It is not difficult to imagine the Neolithic children taking part in the production of
arts and crafts at ÇatalHöyük, to either help contribute to the household, or simply to
occupy themselves.
Although the current archaeological data my not lend us clues about the specific
ages when access to certain types of knowledge and practice concerning arts and crafts were
taken up, the ethnographic record presents us with numerous cases from non industrial
societies where children are socialised, from a very early age, through a process of informal
education or apprenticeship to produce cultural artefacts (Greenfield 2000:73).
A learning scenario of imitation rather than formal learning by instruction, as seen in
these ethnographic cases also seems to be a more appropriate observation for ÇatalHöyük,
as the use of the terminology such as master and pupil perpetuates the modern education
practice where the stress is on the acquisition of skill alone rather than addressing learning
as a medium for the transformation of the individual (Finlay 1997: 208).

Future directions

All the suggestions made within this chapter are deserving of our attention,
especially as the ethnographic record alerts us that craft production, its teaching in particular
is remarkably responsive to societal changes. A study of the domain of weaving
apprenticeship in a Zinacantec Maya community in Chiapas, Mexico (Greenfield 2000:73),
has shown that innovative cognitive change was concentrated in the younger generation
(ibid:81), with child weavers adopting tools not mastered by the older generation and
mastering weaving through peer teaching, where tradition is transferred from child to child
without any adult mediator, following the movement from an agricultural subsistence to an
entrepreneurial cash economy (ibid:84). This ethnographic example emphasises the need for
an theoretical approach which accommodates the child’s role in craft production, and all
other forms of production within the society, because an insight into children’s productive
work can give us valuable insights into changes within the many aspects of a society as well
as identifying the true innovators of some of these changes: the children, rather than lending
all the credit to adults alone.
At ÇatalHöyük, as in all archaeological sites in general, the child’s role in art and
craft production will best be accommodated through ethnoarchaeological studies which not

52
only tackle the cultural and economic meanings of the child’s role in art and craft
production but also the meanings that these activities held for the child.

Chapter 6
The domestic space and chores for the ÇatalHöyük children

53
 Archaeologically pinpointing the contributions of any member of the overall
household in any past society is difficult, however if we are to exclude children from the
equation, we will not capture the dynamics of relationships and roles of the individuals
within households (Wilkie 2000:108), because daily routines are central to life and the
household is the primary location for the production of social beings (Picazo 1997 in
Hastorf 1996:127). This is particularly highlighted by the ethnographic data from rural areas
where the labour of children is vital to the economic survival of families, with serious
purposeful activity beginning at a very young age.
Because we in the west tend to equate childhood with an absence of productive work
(see Chapter 2), we underplay the fact that the presence of children can significantly affect
the organisation of adult tasks (Roveland 2000:31), while forgetting that the environment
and maintenance systems are important aspects in a child’s learning (Lillehammer 1989:93).
As seen in many rural areas, children, while living as subordinate members of their
parent’s household, can reduce the economic demands on the family through a variety of
direct contributions, such as helping towards the physical capital formation of the
household, and indirect ones, such as caring for younger children or contributing to the tasks
necessary for the maintenance and upkeep of the household, which will then free other
household members to engage in labour necessary for generating income or in other forms
of productive work requiring labour too intensive to be carried out by children. The
ethnographic record, along with the discovery that the many aspects of daily life at
ÇatalHöyük, were largely organized at the domestic scale (Hodder, forthcoming),
encourages us to envision children as active contributors within ÇatalHöyük households.
Further evidence for children’s domestic work has been retrieved in the form of
childhood stresses, that remain impressed on the developing teeth as hypoplastic pits or
lines, which indicate that children at ÇatalHöyük were exposed to physiological stresses
between the ages of 1.5 and 5 years and between 10 and 13 (Molleson et Al. forthcominga).
We may consider these physiological stresses, often related to the introduction of physical
stress, as evidence for the ages of entry into physically demanding activities, with
introduction to work beginning between the ages 2-5 and the introduction into more
challenging tasks, such as for example adult activities around adolescence.

54
 Our aims for this chapter

In this chapter, we will first attempt to gain valuable insights into the household-
contribution based activities attributable to the children of ÇatalHöyük through an analysis
of task related wear on the human bone sample and task related assemblages in the
archaeological data. Later, using these insights as well as the burial data, the spatial
distribution of task related assemblages and the organisation of built-in features within the
buildings at ÇatalHöyük we will try to understand how the children occupied the space
within their households. Throughout these investigations, ethnographic data will be
addressed in the areas where the archaeology alone is sufficient for achieving our aims.
This chapter however, does not aim to assess the direct economic contribution that
the ÇatalHöyük children made towards their household; simply because, at ÇatalHöyük the
evidence for income generating activities and the principal sources of income is very
tentative and reassessing this evidence is well outside the scope this chapter.
Before we begin to identify the productive work of children, in order to better
understand its contribution to the household, it is important that we establish the family size
and structure and the building size of the typical ÇatalHöyük household.

The ÇatalHöyük household

The current ÇatalHöyük data reveals that all buildings at ÇatalHöyük have some
form of evidence for domestic use. Most individual houses comprise large room 2.5-5 meter
squares, with entrance from the roof by ladder, mainly in the south area of the room, and
one or two smaller side-rooms 1-2m wide, often used for the storage of grain foods (figure
5).
Recent estimates based on floor area and platforms, with the number of platforms
within buildings varying from 1-5 (Mellaart 1967:60), suggest that each house could
comfortably sleep a maximum of eight people (Cessford, forthcoming). The age patterns of
babies, children, young and old adults in every level gives the impression of extended or
several families using a building throughout its life, yet it is hard to imagine that all lived in
such a small interior at one time (Hamilton, forthcominga).

55
 Figure 5. (Below) Diagrammatic view of a typical main room at ÇatalHöyük, showing
platforms, bench, hearth, oven & ladder (Mellaart 1967:61:figure 11)

Children’s productive contributions at ÇatalHöyük

Productive housework

Within the archaeological findings at ÇatalHöyük, there is no direct evidence linking

specific house-hold productive work with children, therefore we must turn to the
ethnographic record to understand what tasks they may have performed.
Cain’s (1977) 1970s research on children’s productive work in the rural village of
Char Gopalpur, Bangladesh provides a good basis for analysing the work contribution made
by the ÇatalHöyük children to their parent’s household. This is because the environment and
technologies at Char Gopalpur are similar to that of ÇatalHöyük, furthermore, as at
ÇatalHöyük, at Char Gopalpur there also was a high population of children9.

9
At Char Gopalpur almost 50 percent of the villagers were less than 15 years old (Cain 1977:201).

56
 Table 3. (Below). The economic activities of children aged 4 and older residing in their
parents’ household (after Cain 1977:219:table 2)

Cain’s (1977) data shows that children, along with women, were largely involved in
household maintenance tasks such as food preparation, caring for the young, cleaning,
washing clothes and utensils, collecting food and water, and countless other small chores

57
(table 3). Children’s contribution in maintaining the household through these tasks, which
were very time consuming, permitted the other adults of the house to engage in direct
income producing work (Cain 1977:201-3).
As we see in Table 3, the children at Char Gopalpur began to engage in household
maintenance tasks at a very young age. We see this scenario in various ethnographic
examples, in the communities of Cuzco, Peru and Potosi and Cochabamba, Bolivia children
also make a substantial contribution to the household’s labour force at a very young age
(table 4). The evidence for physiological stresses detected in children of 2-5 years at
ÇatalHöyük may also reflect their early introduction into physically demanding activities.

Table 4. (Above) Children’s activities in Cuzco, Peru and Potosi and Cochabamba,
Bolivia according to age (Sillar 1994:50)

The ÇatalHöyük child’s role in food preparation, household maintenance and

caring for the young

58
 Preparing food

Contextual evidence has revealed that food preparation at ÇatalHöyük was house-
hold based (Baysal & Wright, forthcoming), therefore there is a great possibility that
younger children at ÇatalHöyük were inevitably drawn into the preparation of food and
similarly to other household tasks such as cleaning and caring for their younger siblings so
as the older children and adults could engage in physically more strenuous activities vital to
the household, such as hunting or agricultural work (below).

Cleaning tasks

The act of cleaning bestows a sense of order and ownership in a house (Matthews,
forthcoming). This sense of order and ownership was obviously prized by the ÇatalHöyük
residents as their ‘houses were kept scrupulously clean…’ on a regular basis up to an
including the process of abandoning the structure (Mellaart 1967:62). Considering that
children’s primary knowledge is developed within the household they grow up in, we can
imagine that adults at ÇatalHöyük imbued order/ownership into their children by
encouraging their contribution in the regular task of cleaning.

Caring for the young

In terms of caring for the younger children, the large population of children of all
ages at ÇatalHöyük (see Chapter 4) means that we can roughly place more than 2 - 3
children for each household. In order to free the parents from the care of infants, so as they
can be involved in more physically demanding tasks, older children are likely to have
helped in the caring for the very young. If we look to the ethnographic record we see that
children as young as 5 years old are responsible for the care of their infant siblings in rural
villages of contemporary Anatolia (personal observation), and in the Andes (table 4)
(Female locals at KüçükKöy Village Pers.comm).

Domestic activities outside the home

59
 If we analyse Tables 3 and 4 we notice that physical constraints limit the age at
which children can take on additional responsibilities outside the home, yet as children
become older, they are drawn into more physically strenuous tasks, often outside the home,
that are equally as important to the maintenance of the household. At ÇatalHöyük, caring for
domestic animals, agricultural work, hunting and the collection of resources were the main
sets of productive work that were carried out outside the home on a regular basis. What was
the children’s contribution to these three areas of productive work?

Caring for the domestic animals

Dung, appearing in animal pens and as a foremost source of fuel supply of a

settlement as large as ÇatalHöyük, implies the existence of considerable animal
management, and penning, at least seasonably, within the settlement (Matthews,
forthcoming, Mellaart 1965:82). As we have no archaeological evidence for an age
character responsible for the tending of livestock at ÇatalHöyük, we must turn to the
ethnographic record.
In the rural villages of contemporary Anatolia, while children of age 5 are given the
responsibility of caring for the new born animals during the birthing seasons, the
responsibility of livestock can be shared between all members of the household (personal
observation), including children as young as 8 years old in Anatolia and in India (Cain
1977:212), and 10 years old in the Andes (table 4). In all three locations, younger siblings
are encouraged to assist the animal tending, for training purposes (Cain 1977:21, Sillar
1994: 50).
In reference to the ethnographic evidence, it is very likely that children assumed
responsibility in animal husbandry at ÇatalHöyük. If the theory of animal figurines, which
predominantly portray the domesticated animals at ÇatalHöyük, as toys, is anything to go
by (see Chapter 4), then we may assume that the ÇatalHöyük children had considerable
anticipatory experience with domestic animals.

Agricultural work

We know from the archaeological data that the ÇatalHöyük community was

60
exploiting fully domesticated cereals and pulses. The detection of plant foods within the
ÇatalHöyük diet have further suggested that plant foods commonly entered the household in
forms that required considerable processing before consumption, like planting, cultivating,
harvesting, de-husking, grinding, sieving and storing of food products (Richards & Pearson,
forthcoming).
As sustained long-term success in yields depends on the congregation and control of
labour (Bailey 1996:295), and as the technology employed in ÇatalHöyük food processing
is very simple and production is correspondingly labour intensive and time consuming
(Baysal & Wright, forthcoming), we can imagine that a considerable number of people
within a household were involved in agricultural tasks, including the older children. The
recording of a well developed teres major muscle on the lateral border of the scapula of a 15
year old (4394), a development associated with medial rotation of the arm, has certainly
been related to a repeated task like the grinding of grains (Molleson et Al. forthcominga).
Similarly, the ethnographic record is full of examples of children’s participation is
food processing and other agricultural work around the adolescence: by age 9-11 in Char
Gopalpur (Cain 1977:214), age 14 in the Andes (Table. 4) and age 9-12 in the rural areas of
Anatolia (personal observation).
For further evidence of the ÇatalHöyük children’s contribution to agricultural tasks,
we may consider Hamilton’s (1996) interpretation of the clay human figurines of plump
females at ÇatalHöyük, appearing after Level VI. Hamilton (ibid: 225-6) suggests that these
figurines emphasise a concept of “femaleness”, a concept, incorporating birth and
motherhood, that symbolises the increasing value of both female and child as potential
labourers in a more fully agricultural subsistence system.
If we are to view these figurines as clues to identifying the roles of ÇatalHöyük
women, then what are we to say of the hunting or teasing scenes in wall paintings from
Level VI onwards (figure 6), frequently depicting men with bows in motion, in contrast to
the mostly static depiction of figurines, in which male images declined and female images
dominated (Hamilton 1996:225-6)? Considering that the communication role of art is
perhaps enhanced in non-literate than in literate societies (A Campo 1994:12), we may
promote these figurines and wall paintings to a position of authority by suggesting that they
were actively engaged in the influence of the child’s behavioural incorporation into
gendered tasks (Hodder: 1982a in ibid: 12). Was adult work sexually divided at

61
ÇatalHöyük, whether before, after Level VI, or throughout, and when were children
introduced into these roles?

Figure 6. (Above) Monochrome red painting of a deer hunt from the south wall of
‘shrine’
A.III.i. at ÇatalHöyük (Mellaart 1967:40:figure 54)

The gendered divisions of work

If we look for sexual dimorphisms related to repeated activities in the adult bones,
we find that they suggest, if only slightly, different activities for the men and women of
ÇatalHöyük10 Although the gendered division of productive work may extend to children in
many societies, as men and women separately invest in the children’s future labour in order
to reproduce themselves socially (Siskind 1978: 864 in Sofaer Derevenski 1997:198), at
ÇatalHöyük there is, at present, very little evidence that gendering of tasks began at an early

10
The adult human bone sample at ÇatalHöyük (1995-99 data) shows that the females, having less robusticity of the femur,
performed less strenuous tasks, while the males, showing greater robusticity, had a more physically active lifestyle and
performed heavier labour (Molleson et Al. forthcomingb).

62
age. All we do know is that children of both sexes took part in heavy duties at a very young
age, as recorded by the detached neural arch of a lumbar vertebra (spondylolysis), a
conditioned developed by the carrying of heavy loads at an early age, as seen in both female
and male skeletal evidence (1483), (2529) and (2889) (Molleson et Al. forthcominga).
However, if we consider the evidence for physiological stresses, developing around
adolescence (above), we may imagine this age period to be the time for the children’s
introduction into largely adult tasks, tasks that were gendered perhaps. The division of roles
are likely to occur in order to maintain greater efficiency and productivity. Therefore while
the females and largely female children were mainly engaged agricultural work, the men
and perhaps the adolescent boys would consequently have been engaged in hunting and
collecting resources. ‘Men’, depicted in smaller scale within the wall paintings of hunting
scenes could certainly be images of adolescent boys accompanying the adults (figure 6).
Others have pondered the possibility of these paintings referring to men engaged in
ceremonial rites, such as initiation into male adulthood, or simply the position of hunters, as
has been suggested for many Palaeolithic cave paintings (Haaland & Haaland 1996:298,
Hamilton, forthcomingb). It is difficult to detect a ritual step into adulthood at ÇatalHöyük.
This initiation may not be archaeologically visible, like the first ritual haircut that takes
place to mark the social entrance of Andean children into the human world (Sillar 1994:51).
At present we can only assume that children become adults through changing their
productive role in the household.
Although productive roles will naturally be embedded in wider cultural principals
such as gender roles (Sillar 1994:51), because our theories regarding the gendered division
of productive work at ÇatalHöyük are based on a small skeletal sample, and on the
reflective readings of artistic depictions as reality, we must not write out the possibility of
males and females both engaging in the same tasks until this is proven otherwise by future
work.

Children’s space within the domestic space

Before we delve into a search for the children’s space within the ÇatalHöyük
buildings, it is important to briefly visit the typical structural divisions within the domestic
space in an attempt to discover possible links between these divisions and the

63
accommodation of children within this space.

The division of the domestic space

The ÇatalHöyük buildings tend to follow clear spatial boundaries. Successive

accumulations of food preparation and cooking residues and the situation of inbuilt hearths
and ovens show that domestic activities, particularly those associated with ovens and food
preparation, as well as craft activities like stone knapping and bead working were generally
concentrated in this half of the building, incorporating up to a third of the room, remaining
completely undecorated as well as holding the ladder entry from the roof. By contrast, traces
of occupation residues in the northern part of the buildings interior are minimal.
In each area within the buildings there appear to be a segregation of areas by built-in
furniture (like platforms, benches, and ovens), ridges on floors and changes in surface
textures on walls and possibly ceilings (Matthews, forthcoming). These findings indicate a
general consistency in uses and concepts of space within the ÇatalHöyük buildings (ibid),
that were obviously structured by and served to help structure and maintain more broad
social attitudes of how things should be (Carter et Al. forthcoming)
The current excavations have also found evidence for the utilization of the roof of
buildings for many domestic activities, most probably during the warmer months, as seen in
Anatolian villages today. Hamilton has suggested the plausibility of figurines and geometric
clay balls, retrieved in-between spaces of buildings, as being discarded from the roofs of the
surrounding buildings (Hamilton, forthcomingb). In this case, the ‘toy theory’ attributed to
these artefacts (see Chapter 4) encourages us to envision the playing of children’s games on
ÇatalHöyük rooftops. We certainly have evidence for multiple fractures sustained in a single
event such as a fall from the skeletal evidence of a child (3368) (Molleson et Al.
forthcominga).
For children, the roof top was one of the many hazardous areas within the Neolithic
buildings. The high mortality of infants at ÇatalHöyük and the presence of healed fractures
in children, such as the large cyst removed from the cranial cavity of an infant (2125) who
suffered cephalohematoma most likely following a head injury, evidently claims the living
environment as hazardous (ibid).Other than rooftops, what were the other hazardous areas
within the ÇatalHöyük buildings and how were the children accommodated into these

64
areas?

Hazardous spaces

Dangers for children lurked in the interiors of buildings at ÇatalHöyük. These were:
ladders, ovens, hearths, ashy areas, low open doorways to storage areas, rooms,
platforms/benches, interior decorations such as pointy animal parts fixed on the lower end
of posts and walls and modelled/actual horns set into platforms/benches (figure 7) (ibid:101,
Mellaart 1965:94, Russell & Meece, forthcoming). How were children accommodated
amongst these dangers?

Figure 7. (Above) Horn cores set into a platform in ‘Shrine’ VI.6i. at ÇatalHöyük
(Mellaart 1967:42: figure 16).

The hearths and ovens

Hearths and ovens were always raised and provided with a curb to prevent the
spilling of ashes and glowing embers which may have inflicted damage on children
(Mellaart 1997:58).
There is a recurrent association between chipped stone and bead debitage and fire

65
installations, perhaps an occurrence of the convenience of practicality with preferential
access to natural light coming from the ladder hole and the fire installations situated in the
south area. Bearing in mind our theory that children were expected to be involved in the
preparing of food, its cooking etc (above), and in handicraft production, we may suggest
that children very much occupied the oven/heath areas in the south area structures.
In terms of the safety of infants however, as it is unusual to find more than one
hearth/oven in a room, the presence of adults or older children working within the heat
installation areas would have acted as barriers to wondering infants. We can further suggest
that the common practice of burying cores and rough outs of workable stone hoards near the
hearth (Carter et Al. forthcoming), may not only have related to its placement in its area of
use, but its actual burial, may relate to a concern in preventing its handling by small
children.

Platforms/Benches

The platforms and benches in most ÇatalHöyük buildings are raised in the shape of
an L along the walls. Up to five platforms/benches can occur in buildings (Mellaart
1997:58). Some of these platforms/benches that served for sitting, working and sleeping are
reported to have rounded kerbs (ibid:60). This aspect of the platforms/benches may have
been designed as buffering in the anticipation of children bashing into them. Matthews
suggests that these platforms may have been further softened by their enveloping in animal
skins or textiles (Matthews, forthcoming).
Other specialists have suggested the possibility of large baskets functioning as play
pens in order to keep small children away from potential hazards like platforms and benches
(Shahina Farid Pers.comm). The use of strips of unidentified plant material with a width
ranging from 10-20mm (Wendrich, forthcoming) for large floor mats at ÇatalHöyük
certainly allows us room to speculate about the production of large play pens, or even large
baskets to carry children in, perhaps similar to those they were buried in (see Chapter 3).
However a more practical way of preventing hazards involving children and the
potentially hazardous features within the ÇatalHöyük buildings would have been to create
and maintain safe spaces specific to children.

66
 Creating spaces specific to children

At ÇatalHöyük, the inhabitants’ common practice of cleaning before abandoning a

building has meant that only a few archaeological remains indicating the use of space have
been found within buildings (Matthews, forthcoming). These finds are not sufficient to
identify any form of age characteristic in accordance to the use of domestic space.
However, if we turn to the ethnographic evidence from the many Anatolian villages
today, we learn that within buildings, there are no areas specific to adults or children other
than where sleeping arrangements are concerned (personal observation). In these villages
the smaller children are always in the company of an adult or an older child, rather than in
the company of peer children exclusively. By ‘older child’ we are referring to children of
age 5 and older, who have adapted, through little direct instruction and more pronounced
imitation of whoever they are in contact with, into their domestic responsibilities expected
of them by adults and behaviour expected of them by their environment.
A similar scenario concerning children’s space may be reflected onto the
ÇatalHöyük data as an extension of the theory that children at ÇatalHöyük are introduced
into domestic tasks at an early age (see above). The practice of children’s early
incorporation into productive work may have deemed it unnecessary for setting specific
spaces for children within the domestic structures. In fact the lack of specific spaces for
children may have even been a deliberate utilisation of architecture to actively conform the
child’s behaviour into a quick social and economic incorporation into the adult world
(Bourdieu 1977, Giddens 1984, Moore 1986, Parker-Pearson & Richards 1994 in Matthews,
forthcoming).

Conclusion

In terms of children’s productive work at ÇatalHöyük, considering that a greater

number of working members would have been in a better position to diversify and exploit
multiple sources of household-production, we may strongly conclude that children, who
made up a large proportion of the population, worked long hours from an early age.
The Char Gopalpur data shows that children aged 4-6 years worked almost one fifth
as long as adults, one half of an adults workday by ages 7-9, three quarters by ages 10-12

67
and reached adult equivalency or went beyond at age 13 (Cain 1977:217). Although we
cannot directly reflect this data onto the ÇatalHöyük children’s workday, what we can
reflect from this ethnographic example onto the ÇatalHöyük data, is that there was an abrupt
transition in the children’s status from completely dependent recipients of parental care to
subordinate responsible, productive actors (ibid:209, 211), which explains the lack spaces
within ÇatalHöyük buildings restricted by age distinctions.
For the parents at ÇatalHöyük, as for the parents at Char Gopalpur, high fertility and
large numbers of surviving children were productively rational propositions since they did
not require specially designed spaces within their homes, and more importantly since
children of both sexes put in relatively long hours of work at a relatively young age while
the parents had direct control, presumably for a substantial period, over these children’s
productive lives. A societal concern with fertility and surviving children at ÇatalHöyük is
certainly demonstrated by the burial data (see Chapter 3).
In conclusion we have revealed that a child’s period of socialisation at ÇatalHöyük
commenced throughout with productive work, of vital significance to the maintenance of
the household, through which they actively learned to adapt to their close environment.

Future directions

Although estimating the direct economic contributions of children’s productive work

is a difficult area of research at ÇatalHöyük (above), it is worth considering Roveland’s
(2000:32) method which employs a comparison of the resource availability and reliability,
and fertility rates of ethnographic cases from various contexts as a model to generate such
estimates. While research into the economic cost of rearing a child in comparison to the
economic contribution of one, will also produce valuable results regarding the economic
value of children within the Neolithic society at ÇatalHöyük.
Research focusing on the age of transition into specific activities will also help infer
the economic value of children at ÇatalHöyük, because this transition is influenced by the
physical maturity and strength of the child, the skill required in performing the activity and
the culturally prescribed division of labour (Cain 1977:212), all of which influence the rate
at which a child’s productivity levels increase. Although the division of labour at
ÇatalHöyük may require other methods of inference, through experimental archaeology

68
using the technologies and materials of the Neolithic and focusing on the physical
capabilities of children of various ages and their time expenditure in performing specific
tasks, we will discover valuable insights regarding the age of transition into the various
productive tasks.
Lastly, age as axes of social differentiation can also be investigated in contexts
beyond the household so as to find children acting outside their homes as social agents and
creating social networks and obligations independent of their parents and family, as
demonstrated by ethnographic examples (Wilkie 2000:107, Sillar 1994)

Chapter 7
Conclusion

Throughout this research study we have explored the world of the Neolithic children
at ÇatalHöyük; accomplishing all the aims that we set out at the beginning of our study
(Chapter 1).
After establishing the adult bias within mainstream archaeology in Chapter 2, we
began our exploration in Chapter 3, where we identified the children of ÇatalHöyük through

69
direct, skeletal, evidence, realising that they represented a very large sector of the
population and were subject to high levels of infant mortality. We then used indirect
archaeological evidence to access and explore the materiality of the ÇatalHöyük children in
(Chapters 4 & 5). Throughout the study, we investigated the implications of what it meant
to be a child at ÇatalHöyük by revealing:
1) the social attitudes towards children in Chapter 3, where we not only discovered
a sustained concern, on the part of the community members, with individual differentiation
from the moment of birth onwards expressed in bodily adornments, but also a societal
concern with the welfare of children, as they received care in life, particularly during illness,
and in death, with dead children receiving burial in distinguished locations. A burial
practice which also revealed the childrens’ privileged position as negotiators with the
supernatural.
2) the productive roles and contributions of children in Chapters 5 & 6, where we
realised the children’s role in craft and art production and in productive work and thus their
socio-economic importance for the other members of the society.
3) the areas that children occupied within the household in Chapters 3 & 6, where
we discovered that children were allowed to occupy all areas of the house so as to quickly
adapt to their environment and just as quickly mature into their productive domestic work.
However, the common location of child burials in the foundations of houses and their
possible associations with shifts within the life-cycle and -course of buildings at
Çatalhöyük, has demonstrated children’s integral part in the perpetuation of tradition and
identity for the houses, while their burial locations taken in context with architectural and
spatial uses in daily life demonstrated a significant link between the south (domestic and
craft production) areas of buildings, most probably to commemorate the children’s
productive occupancy of this space.
4) the leisure activities of children in Chapter 4, where we identified artefacts and
contexts linked to children’s play and games; games that reflected the social role expected
of children by the society.
5) the adaptation and acculturation process of children (Chapters 5 & 6), where we
realised that the existence of a stereotyped house plan and strong conservatism as seen in
the frequent rebuilding of structures on the same plan with minor changes in the
architectural layout, not only reflected an ordered society, but also demonstrated that this

70
order begins, and is maintained within the household. Children were socialised into their
place within society within the domestic space through a brief engagement with objects of
play and games, often relating to their future work, immediately after, or perhaps during,
through their introduction into craft and art production and domestic work, all of which
claim that the ability to complete tasks was the most prominent determinant of age, rather
than chronological age.
Throughout the chapters, our explorations were both inspired and supported by
comparing relevant analogies from the ethnographic present with our archaeological
material. However, all of the interpretations that we have generated are probationary
explanations that may act as points of departure for future research.
At the end of our journey of exploration into the childhood at ÇatalHöyük, we have
demonstrated that the archaeological finds are not the barrier to approaching the subject of
children, but that children are made invisible in archaeological presentations. The
archaeological child is most certainly there, awaiting recovery and interpretation, just as
he/she is there at ÇatalHöyük. As long as the approach to the archaeological record is
receptive to the presence and active participant role of children in past societies all we need
to do is bring these people into discussion by increasing our questioned asked on behalf of
the material record, so as to allow us to generate questions anew.

71
 Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr Roger Matthews (University College London) who offered
invaluable discussion and direction on earlier versions of my work, Dr Katherine Wright
and Dr Andrew Garrard (University College London), for their helpful comments, Prof. Ian
Hodder (Stanford University) for allowing me access into the forthcoming ÇataHöyük
specialist reports and finally Shahina Farrid (MacDonald Institute of Archaeology at
Cambridge) for providing these reports. For myself I reserve any mistakes made in
interpreting the archaeological and ethnographical data.

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