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History of
Çatalhöyük city
TECHNICAL COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
ENGINEERING OF CITY PLANNING DEPARTMENT
QUALITY ASSURANCE
2023 – 2024
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Outlines

 The birth of a Village

 The birth of a City
 Origins of Settled Life - Çatalhöyük
The birth of a village 3

•Tribes started to gather for

protection and compose villages.

•Built on sites where there is a

natural defensive measures
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The birth of towns
 Increase of the size of the village and at the same time change of life style.

 Emergence of new professions like trade, investors, religious, and other urban
elements.

 The need of a central religious and political center.

 Used to be surrounded by a fence and had three authorities : Citadel (political),

Temple (religious) , and warehouses (economic)

 Its planning integrated with the requirements of war.

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Çatalhöyük
Çatalhöyük - Location 6

 Çatalhöyük is a Neolithic mound located on the

Konya Plain in central Turkey. and it is often
considered one of the earliest examples of
urbanization.
 Settlement at Çatalhöyük began approximately 9,400
years ago during the Neolithic Age.
 The site was first excavated by British archaeologist
James Mellaart in the 1960s, and later research has
been conducted by various teams
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 The site was occupied for
around 2,000 years.
 Covering 34 acres with a
population of 3,000-8,000
 Its dense concentration of ‘art’
in the form of

 wall paintings,

 wall reliefs, sculptures

 and installations
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The Çatalhöyük settlement on map

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Catalhoyuk-Turkey
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Architecture 11

 The Çatalhöyük settlement was composed of mudbrick houses densely

packed together.
 Allwalls are constructed of unbaked mud-brick, usually of large
dimensions (up to and over 1 m in length).
 There are almost no true right angles and the feeling is of an organic,
cellular cluster of buildings over time rather than a unified planned
layout.
 As houses were only separated by centimeters, there was no ground level
access point and no streets or alleyways between the houses. Access was
through a hole in the roof and a ladder.
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Model of the neolithic settlement ( 7300 BC ) of CatalHöyük

Architecture 13
People moved around at roof level, which was at differing heights and traversed by a series of
ladders.
Activities took place inside of the buildings as well, despite the apparent poor light and
ventilation owing to the absence of window openings.
 Roofs were made of oak and
juniper cross beams that supported
clay and reed surfaces.
 The house contained oven and
hearth, art, ritual, and burial
spaces, where people slept, ate,
and made food and tools.
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Architecture 17

 No evidence of public buildings, industrial areas (except lime

burning off the edge of the site), cemeteries (burial occurs within
houses), ceremonial centers and so on.
 Social life, which centered on a set of values associated with
hunting, feasting, and ancestry, allowed or encouraged sedentism
and agglomeration.
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Economy 20

 Çatalhöyük has strong evidence of an egalitarian society, as no houses with

distinctive features.
 The people of Çatalhöyük were gaining skills in agriculture and the
domestication of animals.
 Bins were used for storing cereals, such as wheat and barley.
 Hunting continued to be a major source of food for the community.
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Burials 22

 One of the most striking characteristics of Çatalhöyük is that portions of

the dead from the settlement were buried below floors and platforms inside
the houses.
 The number of on-mound, beneath house floor burials matches the
population estimated for Çatalhöyük and it seems that the entire
population was buried at the site.
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