The Goddess and the Bull: Çatalhöyük: An Archaeological Journey to the Dawn of Civilization

  • Michael Balter
Free Press: 2005. 416 pp. $27, £18.99 0743243609 | ISBN: 0-743-24360-9

This book is about neither a goddess nor a bull, unless Michael Balter is using a metaphor too subtle for me to appreciate. Indeed, The Goddess and the Bull is not really about the archaeological site of Çatalhöyük either. After much thought, I believe this is actually a post-processual book about archaeology.

Post-processualism is a concept developed by Ian Hodder, a Cambridge-trained archaeologist who now works at Çatalhöyük in Turkey. In its early formulation, Hodder suggested that the best way to approach archaeology is “characterized by debate and uncertainty about fundamental issues that may have been rarely questioned before”. He added that archaeologists “move backwards and forwards between theory and data, trying to fit or accommodate one to the other in a clear and rigorous fashion, on the one hand being sensitive to the particularity of the data and on the other hand being critical about assumptions and theories.” Post-processual archaeology is a dialogue, not a diatribe.

The horns of a dilemma: what is the meaning of this painting of a red bull found at Çatalhöyük? Credit: J. & A. MELLAART

So too is this book, which provides a great deal of information: about archaeological theory, methodology and traditional interpretations of Çatalhöyük, one of the famous (or infamous) sites that inspired the concept of the Neolithic revolution. There have been decades of excavation by the original site director, James Mellaart, and by more than 100 specialists under Hodder's modern (or post-modern) direction. The most recent excavation, which began in 1993, is Hodder's brave attempt to integrate his theoretical stance with field practice. The new methodology includes ongoing and constantly changing “interpretation at the trowel's edge”, with computer diaries written by the excavators, video recording of discussions about interpretation and methodology carried out in the trenches, and constant interactions among scientists, locals, politicians, goddess-worshippers, carpet scholars and other groups who claim some ‘ownership’ of Çatalhöyük's past. It is fair to say that Hodder's task has been difficult and complex.

Balter raises many compelling questions about the differing and changing interpretations of Çatalhöyük and its remarkable finds, but does not answer them. He explains the significance of Çatalhöyük as the earliest known site with domesticated cattle (a conclusion contradicted by recent zooarchaeological analyses). Although Çatalhöyük was an unusually dense settlement with bull's horns embedded in some walls, and some female figurines, no credible hypothesis is ever offered for the meaning of these odd features. In fact, the reader never learns much about the life of those who lived there, despite the astonishing number of human skeletons buried under the floors of houses. All this extraordinary evidence begs for an explanation.

There are also myriad questions about Mellaart. In the bizarre ‘Dorak affair’, Mellaart was purportedly shown a treasure trove of looted artefacts from northern Turkey by a mysterious woman who subsequently disappeared. Only Mellaart's drawings and descriptions of the artefacts remained. An inquiry conducted by the British Institute at Ankara exonerated Mellaart from any involvement in looting, but even so, Mellaart's excavation was shut down in 1965.

In 1989, Mellaart, together with carpet specialists Belkis Balpinar and Udo Hirsch, published The Goddess from Anatolia (Eskenazi), which included stunning reconstructions of 44 wall paintings from Çatalhöyük. Why had there been no word of such glorious art before? Blatant discrepancies between the book's claims and Mellaart's earlier pronouncements cast doubt on the paintings' very existence. Early reports described only red and black paint, not the striking blue in the new reconstructions. Rooms identified in the book as having magnificent wall paintings had been earlier declared by Mellaart to have no paintings. No excavator remembered seeing the fragments upon which Mellaart's reconstructions were based. All corroborative evidence had been destroyed by fire in 1967, Mellaart told Balter. As Carl Lamberg-Karlovsky remarked: “Bluntly put, there is no objective reason to believe that these ‘new’ wall paintings exist.” Further, Mellaart proposed that the paintings were linked to patterns found on Turkish kilims today, but the Çatalhöyük patterns cannot be made into rugs using the weaving technology preserved at the site.

The book details much debate but few conclusions. The result is a good read that bespeaks the importance of this enigmatic and iconic site and highlights Balter's considerable journalistic skills. The book is both accessible and fascinating. Balter tries, with moderate success, to show us how personality, nationality and the training of the scientists involved influences their scientific ideas.

Yet the book left me distinctly dissatisfied: I learned more about the childhoods of the excavation team members than about ancient Çatalhöyük. This is an intelligent, provocative book by a distinguished science writer who visited the site every field season for six years, interviewed the excavators, and read their publications, which are referenced in extensive notes and a lengthy bibliography. The scholars who have worked at Çatalhöyük are impressive, the duration of excavations far in excess of normal expectations. Why then is so much about Çatalhöyük so unclear?

Perhaps the reason is Balter's adherence to a Hodder-like reluctance to settle on a single interpretation for a site that means so much to so many. What are we to think, then, of Çatalhöyük and its evidence, excavators, myths? That remains the post-processual question.