CATAL HAYUK
Catal Hoyuk's houses with their wall paintings,
bulls' heads and statues clearly indicate that the
local people had obvious beliefs and acts of
worship. Despite profuse religious motifs, there
does not appear to be any signs of offerings or
sacrifices. Unlike the remnants of Beyce Sultan
during the First Bronze Age, there is no indication
of any sacrificial altar. There are no suggestions
that any animals were sacrificed or any pits were
made for the storing of sacrificial blood. The only
pointers to any form of offerings lies in the houses
where in some rooms tools and materials have
been left; for example, jewellery, weapons , seals
and vessels.
Çatal Hüyük was a Neolithic settlement in Anatolia which
some date to as early as the 8th millennia B.C.E.
Excavations by Stanford archeologist Ian Hodder continue
today. Çatal Hüyük is located on the Konya plain, the later
birthplace of the famous Persian mystic poet, Rumi.
Çatal Hüyük was a city of honeycombed rooms and
courtyards, a self-contained unit with interconnecting
walls.  There were no doors between dwellings. With the
use of ladders, the people of Çatal Hüyük entered their
homes through the roof.  The city housed as many as
7,000—10,000 residents.
With basic square shaped dwellings and flat roofs, Catal Hoyuk's architectural. The entrances to the attached
buildings were via the ceilings. This style of architecture can still be found in the eastern provinces of Turkey.
Despite being very close in proximity to one another, the houses display separate walls with a small gap
between them. The walls were built with sun-dried mud bricks supported by wooden beams. This technique is
called "himis" and is still utilised in certain areas of Anatolia. The small doorways in the houses are thought to
have been for small domestic animals to get in and out. inhabitants of Catal Hoyuk used the flat roof tops as
a means of getting from one dwelling to another. The roofs were made from clay, wood and reeds and
measured approximately 60 centimetres in width. The roof tops were a convenient place to carry out daily
activities as the interiors of the houses had poor light and ventilation.
Catal Hoyuk's architectural structure allowed Mellaart to make use of the square shaped buildings when
excavating by using the walls as a guide to designating parcels for research. This was made easier for the
researchers as the walls were easily visible after slighty sweeping the surface of the roofs and because the
excavations continued house by house the entire process was made less difficult.
However, because the plans and sizes of the buildings are all similar it is difficult to ascertain whether any of
them are ordinary dwellings or sacred places. The dwellings have a main rectangular room with two side rooms
used for storage. For means of heating a round or rectangle shaped stove was used. Furthermore, horseshoe
shaped ovens were found. Each house also had a raised bank of earth or stone which was used as a table,
divan and bed. These raised banks were also used for the burial of the dead and were covered with woven
mattings thought to be earliest forms of kilims. After death, corpses were thrown to vultures and then the
skeletons were cleansed and wrapped in soft cloth while the skulls were painted and decorated and buried in
the homes. These scenes are depicted in paintings found on the walls of the dwellings. It has also been found
that gifts were left in the graves. According to status, the gifts in the graves vary; for example, in the graves of
women, obsidian mirrors and jewellery were found while in the graves of men, flintstone
and spear heads made from the obsidion stone appear.
In nearly all of the houses, items of charm and religion in the shape of statues, reliefs and paintings can
be found. The paintings adorned the mud-brick walls, which were often painted over again by using a
thin layer of plaster to cover former drawings. It is estimated that during the period of use, the walls of
the dwellings were painted at least thirty times. Some houses are known to have two hundred layers of
thin painted plaster. As suggested by Mellaart, if the houses were painted once every year then it can
be calculated for how long the dwellings were in use. However, this situation creates a new problem for
the researchers who wish to study each layer separately, as maintaining the paintings as a whole at
present is difficult. To develop new techniques, work in the laboratories is continuing at a rapid pace. At
present, fiber-optic cables are passed through the layers to examine the methods and styles used in the
paintings. This is an extremely time consuming and costly exercise.
Of the discovered paintings, most display religious concerns. In all the homes the religious paintings and
statues have the heads of animals with horns. Some houses have peculiar differences to them; for
example, small areas found are considered to be areas of worship. According to current thinking, when
an important member of a house died, the house was emptied and closed. When the house was opened
at a later date it was done so with a sacred intention. An entrance to these interior graves supports this
theory. Apart from using the dwellings as a place of shelter, the fact that they were used as places of
worship suggests that the people of Catal Hoyuk were on their way to developing other sites for worship
and evolving through a stage of worship oriented religions.