Με τίτλο «Η πολιτική υλικών για
τις οικίες στο Çatalhöyük, 7000 – 6300 π.Χ.», εκυκλοφόρησε η Διδακτορική διατριβή
του Kevin Kay, 2020, (Advisors: Robb, John), εκδ. University of Cambridge.
ΠΕΡΙΣΣΟΤΕΡΑ για το Çatalhöyük, ΕΔΩ.
Kay, K. (2020). The material politics of houses at Çatalhöyük, 7000–6300 BCE (Doctoral thesis). DOI.
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| Η οικία με τα βουκράνια! Τα “μινωικά βουκράνια” στα βάθη της Ανατολίας, μαρτυρούν επιρροή από Κρήτες… ΠΕΡΙΣΣΟΤΕΡΑ για τα ΒΟΥΚΡΑΝΙΑ, ΕΔΩ. |
Επιτομή
Archaeologists often treat past houses and households as social units—as
places of stability within larger political dynamics. Houses are rendered as
conservative objects, not places of profound change. This thesis adopts a
material political approach to houses, considering the way they were assembled
through time as a working-out of social alternatives. By approaching
prehistoric houses, not as units but as processes of space-making extending
through time, it shows the great extent to which past societies’ politics were
navigated and transformed through intimate communities and intimate places.
Using fine analysis of the internal stratigraphy of houses, I show how much
more variable and consequential domestic communities were at a turning point in
human history (the beginning of the Neolithic expansion) where many
conventional ‘prime movers’ of more recent histories (nations, armies,
corporations, elites of various sorts) simply did not exist to drive change. In
so doing, The material politics of houses at Çatalhöyük opens avenues for
perceiving the full political weight of small houses and everyday relationships
elsewhere and at other times—even in the present. The focus of this thesis is
space-making in domestic contexts at the 7th millennium site of Çatalhöyük in
central Turkey. Çatalhöyük spanned two worlds, both geographically and
chronologically: one where settled farming life developed, piecemeal and
dispersedly, over many millennia following the last glacial maximum within the
confines of the Middle East, and one where settled farming life seemed
inexorably spread across the world map in a matter of 2,000 years. It thus
represents a window into a turning point in the social dynamics of vital
technologies and human lifeways writ large. The site itself, pristinely
preserved and meticulously excavated, is the result of a unique way of living
that packed small mudbrick houses, wall-against-wall with very few gaps, onto
an exceptionally dense mound of old dismantled architecture. No ‘temples’,
‘palaces’ or ‘public buildings’ have been discovered to date, and instead all
aspects of social life—from grain processing and cooking to art and human
burial—were integrated into houses at Çatalhöyük. The thesis asks, what can the
houses at Çatalhöyük tell us about the material politics that articulated
lives, houses, and practices in the 7th millennium? Houses’ interiors at
Çatalhöyük were plastered hundreds of times over the course of their use-lives.
This creates unparalleled stratigraphy for investigating change through time
inside of them. The backbone of the research presented herein is the creation
of high-resolution stratigraphic timelines of changes in 11 Çatalhöyük houses’
interiors, each capturing hundreds of space-making moments that transformed the
house’s interior over several decades. These are supplemented by broader
investigations of houses’ biographies and contextual analyses of key moments
(e.g. construction, burial) in the broader site. From this basis, the thesis
investigates four questions:
1. How did people at Çatalhöyük make and reshape
domestic space as a part of the work of making communities and meeting life
needs?
2. How did their particular way of shaping material space fit into
broader political dynamics in the Neolithic town?
3. What changed in the way
communities formed and intersected through houses over the course of the 7th
millennium?
4. How did politics ‘spill out’ of houses at Çatalhöyük and feed
larger-scale changes in the site, region, and in the dynamics of the Neolithic
phenomenon more broadly?
I establish that each house at Çatalhöyük was a
political multiple object—engaged in the work and knowledge of a variety of
communities that were more or less stable, rather than relating to a singular
stable household with clear-cut social qualities. From this understanding, I
illuminate social dynamics that worked through and cross-cut houses in one 66th
century neighbourhood. Although every house seems self-sufficient in
time-compressed overview, a close stratigraphic reading reveals a surprising
frequency of moments where houses were unequipped for vital tasks like cooking,
storage or burial of the dead, suggesting that it was not autonomy but rather
creative and dynamic dependency that situated houses in lives, and lives in
houses. I also trace a tension between ways of politicizing space through
knowledge of its depths (the generations of built-up walls, bodies, deposits
and other salient details invisibly sealed below people’s feet) and knowledge
of its surfaces (displays of plaster and paint, sculpture and persistent
boundaries). Finally, the thesis turns to a diachronic examination of community
through time at Çatalhöyük, considering the waxing and waning of different
political dimensions through the biographies of earlier and later 7th millennium
houses. In particular, I show how a political dynamic of friction—where
difference was accommodated and elaborated without dividing people or spaces
into discrete, bounded units—gave way to one of integrity, where houses and
communities were fitted to a more unitary ‘mould’ (something like a household)
but also became less flexible and more brittle in the process. I relate this to
architecture in other later 7th millennium sites in Turkey, speculatively
relating the dynamics of communities in houses and landscapes to the
transformed spatial dynamics of the Neolithic at regional scales in this
period. This thesis shows how dramatic transformations of human lifeways have
been sustained in intimate spaces, through the work of bodies, ovens, plasters and
gatherings. This bottom-up, materialist approach to politics and history,
focused on the details of communities and knowledge at one site, thus resonates
with central concerns in archaeology across larger scales.
ΔΙΑΒΑΣΤΕ το, ΚΑΤΕΒΑΣΤΕ το ΕΔΩ.
υλικα κατασκευης οικιων, 9.000 χρονια πριν, Çatalhöyük, Τουρκια, οικια, Catalhoyuk, 7000 πΧ, 6300 πΧ, 7η πΧ χιλιετια, μινωικη Κρητη, βουκρανια, βουκρανιο
