30.08.2025 18:17
Excavations at Çatalhöyük, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, are investigating the reasons for migration from east to west. The excavation leader, Prof. Dr. Arkadiusz Marciniak, stated that one of the most significant discoveries is the "House of the Dead," where skeletal remains of 20 individuals were buried in its floor.
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In the Konya Plain, new excavation works at Çatalhöyük, which has a history of 9,000 years of human agricultural life transitioning to urban living, continue under the Ministry of Culture and Tourism's 'Heritage for the Future Project.'
RESEARCHING THE REASONS FOR MIGRATION In the excavation led by Associate Professor Dr. Ali Ozan from Pamukkale University’s Department of Archaeology, the reasons for migration from east Çatalhöyük to west Çatalhöyük are being investigated. Associate Professor Dr. Ali Ozan stated that the excavations, conducted simultaneously in two areas, are continuing their research on why Neolithic people migrated. "We are finding graves dated to the Byzantine Period in west Çatalhöyük. Although the graves are not directly related to the prehistoric periods of Çatalhöyük, they can be considered extremely interesting in terms of the diversity they exhibit. We see that room-shaped graves made of adobe and flat stones, as well as numerous graves made of bricks with various patterns, are found together in the same area. We are investigating why people chose this area as a settlement after east Çatalhöyük and why they moved here. Many hypotheses can be put forward regarding this. One of them is that we are obtaining findings indicating that the social structure is gradually changing. While the architecture shows a crowded and contiguous arrangement in the lower layers, we are reaching archaeological findings that suggest the architecture has gradually begun to differentiate towards the upper layers over time. Generally, since the development, change, and design of architecture are associated with the structure of human society, archaeologists or experts interested in this subject consider the differentiation and change in the social structure as an indication of such a process," he said.
THE MOST IMPORTANT DISCOVERY The excavation supervisor of the Polish team working in east Çatalhöyük, Professor Dr. Arkadiusz Marciniak from the University of Poznań's Institute of Prehistory, stated in a statement regarding the work, "We have discovered groups of structures arranged around a courtyard, many of which did not serve daily functional purposes. One of the most important discoveries here was a 'Spiritual house,' or 'House of the Dead,' where we found pieces of 20 human skeletons placed at the base of the structure. We believe these people died elsewhere, and their remains were brought here for burial. We also found a large ritual structure with walls painted with various patterns containing 14 platforms. We plan to excavate this structure next year. This year, we also excavated a small structure that had no daily functional use, which was well plastered and had been inhabited for a long time. We are working on one of the oldest structures of the settlement, which has three human burials under the platforms in the eastern area. However, since we do not yet have definitive dates obtained through carbon-14 methods, we cannot currently state the exact date of this ancient structure," he said.
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