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On-site restoration of a typical interior
The earliest excavations of the site
Deep trenches in the site
Animation showing a reconstruction of Çatalhöyük
Çatalhöyük was composed entirely of domestic buildings with no obvious public buildings. While some of the larger rooms have rather ornate murals, the purpose of others remains unclear.
Initial estimates suggested an average population of between 5,000 and 7,000. However, more recent work using revised ideas of the distribution of residential buildings, and employing archaeological and ethnographic data exploring building use, suggests that between 600 and 800 people would have lived at Çatalhöyük East during an average year during the Middle phase (6700–6500 BC). Genetic studies published during 2025 indicate that the social organisation began with a culture organised along matrilocality and matrilineality and that the households passed from mother to daughter.
The sites were set up as large numbers of buildings clustered together. Households looked to their neighbours for help, trade, and possible marriage for their children. The inhabitants lived in mudbrick houses that were crammed together in an aggregate structure. No footpaths or streets were used between the dwellings, which were clustered in a honeycomb-like maze. Most were accessed by holes in the ceiling and doors on the side of the houses, with doors reached by ladders and stairs. The rooftops were effectively streets. The ceiling openings also served as the only source of ventilation, allowing smoke from the houses' open hearths and ovens to escape.
Houses had plaster interiors accessed by squared-off timber ladders or steep stairs. These were usually on the south wall of the room, as were cooking hearths and ovens. The main rooms contained raised platforms that may have been used for a range of domestic activities. Typical houses contained two rooms for everyday activity, such as cooking and crafting. All interior walls and platforms were plastered to a smooth finish. Ancillary rooms were used as storage, and were accessed through low openings from main rooms.
All rooms were kept scrupulously clean. Archaeologists identified very little rubbish in the buildings, finding middens outside the ruins, with sewage and food waste, as well as significant amounts of ash from burning wood, reeds, and animal dung. In good weather, many daily activities may also have taken place on the rooftops, which may have formed a plaza. In later periods, large communal ovens appear to have been built on these rooftops. Over time, houses were renewed by partial demolition and rebuilding on a foundation of rubble, which was how the mound was gradually built up. As many as eighteen levels of settlement have been uncovered.
As a part of ritual life, the people of Çatalhöyük buried their dead within the village. Human remains have been found in pits beneath the floors and especially beneath hearths, the platforms within the main rooms, and beds. Early burials feature closely related families, but burials later in the site's history feature more unrelated individuals, suggesting a change over time in the structure of households. Bodies were tightly flexed before burial and were often placed in baskets or wound and wrapped in reed mats. Disarticulated bones in some graves suggest that bodies may have been exposed in the open air for a time before the bones were gathered and buried. In some cases, graves were disturbed, and the individual's head removed from the skeleton. These heads may have been used in rituals, as some were found in other areas of the community. In a woman's grave, spinning whorls were recovered and in a man's grave, stone axes. Some skulls were plastered and painted with ochre to recreate faces, a custom more characteristic of Neolithic sites in Syria and Jericho than of sites closer by. A sex-based divide was apparent in burial painting. Male bodies were decorated with cinnabar, and female bodies were associated with azurite and malachite pigment.
Detail of the mural showing the hind part of the aurochs, a deer and hunters
Vivid murals and figurines are found throughout the settlement on interior and exterior walls. Distinctive clay figurines of women, notably the Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük, have been found in the upper levels of the site. Although no identifiable temples have been found, the graves, murals, and figurines suggest that the people of Çatalhöyük had a religion rich in symbols. Rooms with concentrations of these items may have been shrines or public meeting areas. Predominant images include men with erect phalluses, hunting scenes, red images of the now extinct aurochs (wild cattle) and stags, and vultures swooping down on headless figures. Relief figures are carved on walls, such as of lionesses facing one another.
Heads of animals, especially of cattle, were mounted on walls. A painting of the village, with the twin mountain peaks of Hasan Dağ in the background, is frequently cited as the world's oldest map, and the first landscape painting. However, some archaeologists question this interpretation. Stephanie Meece, for example, argues that it is more likely a painting of a leopard skin instead of a volcano, and a decorative geometric design instead of a map.
