Çatalhöyük is a key Neolithic site located in south central Turkey. It is one of the largest and best studied early agricultural settlements in Southwest Asia, and it has also revealed a significant record of symbolic expression, such as wall paintings. Çatalhöyük, in fact, comprises two mounds, an East mound where most excavations have been focused and a smaller West mound of early Chalcolithic date. Çatalhöyük was originally excavated in the early 1960s by James Mellaart, but archaeological fieldwork subsequently stopped and recommenced only in 1993 under the overall direction of Ian Hodder – see Hodder (2006) for a summary.
Çatalhöyük is located on a gently sloping alluvial fan delta of the Çarşamba river, which has prograded across the bed of a large former lake that covered the Konya basin during the late Pleistocene (Figure 1). The plain lies at an elevation of ∼1,000 m asl and lacks any surface outlet. Its climate is semiarid continental Mediterranean, in contrast to the...
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Roberts, N. (2017). Çatalhöyük. In: Gilbert, A.S. (eds) Encyclopedia of Geoarchaeology. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4409-0_74
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