The Birth of Civilisation - Cult of the Skull (8800 BC to 6500 BC)

Notes

Settlement Expansion and Structure

• Transition from Earlier to Later PPN shows no major disruption — steady expansion of existing sites (Jericho, Mureybet) plus new foundations
• Key sites: **Ain Ghazal** (Jordan Valley), Abu Hureyra (Syria), Tawas Wad (near Damascus), Çayönü, Nevali Çori, Aşıklı Höyük (SE Anatolia)
• Earlier PPN: circular dwellings with open space between buildings
• Later PPN shift: **rectangular houses**, tightly packed, sometimes sharing walls
• Levant: mud-brick with small antechamber → single-room interior
• SE Anatolia (Çayönü, Nevali Çori): narrow rock-and-mud substructure used for storage, supporting raised floor
• Çatalhöyük: mud-brick directly on ground, no ground-level entrances — accessed via roof hatches or window openings
• Floors and walls increasingly coated in **white lime plaster**, refreshed regularly, building up many layers

Agricultural Revolution

• Shift from broad exploitation of wild plants to selective focus on fewer, more productive species
• Key domesticated crops from ~8500 BC: **einkorn wheat, emmer wheat, barley, flax, chickpeas, lentils, beans**
• Domestic grain: seeds stay attached to ear rather than dropping off, requiring threshing — allows efficient harvest
• Increase in sickle usage coincides with this change
• Animal domestication: gradual process focused on **sheep, goats, cattle, pigs**
• Early stage: selective culling of juvenile males from herded wild animals
• Later: animals penned, fed fodder, isolated from wild populations, reproductive choices manipulated
• Signs of domestication: reduced brain/body size, smaller horns/tusks, increased docility
• By 7500 BC: most communities fully switched to **mixed farming economies**
• Large sheep/goat flocks = backbone of many sites; domesticated cattle and pigs appear in N. Syria and SE Turkey

Why Did Agriculture Emerge? (Competing Theories)

• **Common assumption:** farming is easier than hunting — contradicted by studies since the 1960s showing early farming was *more* labour-intensive
• **Climate-change theory:** dramatic shifts (e.g., Younger Dryas) forced adoption — now seen as too simplistic
• **Binford's sedentism theory:** year-round settlements → population growth → resource pressure → full agriculture required
• Critique (Chris Scarre): simply shifts the question to "why sedentism?"
• **Social feasting theory:** farming enabled surpluses used for feasts, which powerful individuals exploited to enhance social status
• **Conclusion:** No single theory fully explains agricultural adoption

Ritual Buildings and Iconography

• Earlier PPN: centralised ritual at Göbekli Tepe (large enclosures, colossal T-shaped pillars, wild animal carvings)
• Later PPN: shift toward **dedicated ritual buildings within settlements**
• **Nevali Çori:** rectangular stone building with fired lime floor, two central T-shaped pillars + wall-embedded pillars; human-like features (arms, hands, loincloths) carved on pillars
• **Çayönü:** complex of three rectangular buildings; one contains three stone monoliths; skull repository in substructure (cells containing heaped skulls drenched in non-human blood)
• **Ain Ghazal:** rectangular building with standing stones, half-floor altar, two pits containing ~30+ ancestor statues
• **Göbekli Tepe (later phase):** large circular enclosures replaced by smaller enclosures and rectangular buildings; pillars smaller, fewer wild animal carvings; evidence of large-scale grain processing → site eventually buried and abandoned
• Decline of Göbekli Tepe interpreted as linked to transition away from hunting toward agriculture
• Wild animal figurines (aurochs, goats, gazelle) continue to be produced even after domestication — hunting retains **ritual significance**

Çatalhöyük — Urban Life in Detail

• Established ~7100 BC on the Konya plain (dried lake bed); covers ~13 hectares; peak population ~8,000
• 18 successive archaeological layers; buildings collapsed inward when abandoned, new ones built directly over, preserving contents
• **House layout:** stereotyped rectangular main room with white plaster floors/walls
• Roof hatch → ladder → clay oven and hearth below for ventilation
• Food prep areas on same side as hearth; side rooms for grain storage
• Far side: low platforms with elaborate **shrines**
• Shrines contain:
• Sculpted bull and goat heads modelled around actual animal bones
• Full-size leopard reliefs
• Enigmatic human-like figures with upturned limbs and circular abdominal markings (now thought to represent **bears**, confirmed by a seal stamp)
• **Wall paintings** in red ochre: aurochs, red deer, vultures, humans hunting
• Most iconic: large aurochs surrounded by human archers
• Notably **no images of domesticated animals** despite sheep being the primary meat source
• Famous figurine: **"Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük"** — corpulent woman giving birth, hands resting on two large felines (leopards/lions) — "Master of Animals" symbol
• Evidence of feasting centred on wild red deer, possibly timed to building renovations
• **No centralised ritual buildings** — ritual fully integrated into domestic space

Çatalhöyük — Economy and Trade

• Agriculture: relied on **einkorn and emmer wheat** grown on fertile alluvial fan of the Çarşamba River
• Supplemented by fish, nesting birds, reeds, woodland resources (wild cattle, deer)
• Trade hub: obsidian sourced from Cappadocia (~170 km away), crafted into blades and early **polished mirrors**
• Imported: Mediterranean shells and baskets, timber from Taurus Mountains
• Obsidian from Anatolia found in the southern Levant and SW Iran; malachite beads from southern Jordan circulated throughout the Near East
• **Stone seal stamps** appear in later layers — suggest emerging concepts of ownership/identity

Cult of the Skull

• Skull veneration dates back to the Natufian period (~14,900 BC) — graves reopened to retrieve skulls for secondary burial
• Intensifies in Later PPN with new practices: **replica facial features modelled in plaster**, painted red and black
• Multiple plaster layers applied to the same skull over time — used for prolonged periods
• Found at: **Jericho, Ain Ghazal** (Levant), Tel Assad (N. Syria), **Çayönü, Çatalhöyük, Köşk Höyük** (Anatolia)
• At Çayönü: substructure of one building used as skull repository; non-human blood poured over heaped skulls
• At Göbekli Tepe: skull fragments with cut marks and carved lines found in fill material; headless human figure carved on a pillar next to a vulture
• Headless figures also appear in wall paintings at Çatalhöyük
• **Why these individuals?** Unknown — possible explanations: elite status, special significance in life, favourable facial traits for decoration. No consensus.

Burial Practices

• Bodies increasingly placed **beneath floors** of domestic and ritual buildings, often in crouched/foetal position (tightly wrapped in mats)
• At Çatalhöyük: majority of burials under ritual platforms on far side of dwellings; children sometimes near ovens
• Larger houses attract more burials — either the building or its occupants held special significance
• Many bodies still disposed of in middens or off-site — floor burial was not universal
• Interpretation: living above the dead was likely seen as maintaining **continuity and memory**, not as grim

Decline of the Mega-Sites

• Population collapse begins in the 7th millennium BC
• Ain Ghazal: rapid depopulation after 7000 BC
• Abu Hureyra (N. Syria): population collapses again
• Çayönü (E. Anatolia): abandoned
• Çatalhöyük persists, reaching peak ~6500 BC, then also changes: houses become more spread out, wild aurochs hunting replaced by domestic cattle herding, ritual installations in homes cease; site eventually relocated west in early 6th millennium BC
• **Proposed causes:**
• Result: mega-sites replaced by many smaller, dispersed settlements — beginning of the **Pottery Neolithic**

Transition to the Pottery Neolithic

• Fired clay pottery appears in the Near East from the mid-7th millennium BC
• Preceded by stone and unfired clay storage containers
• Note: pottery is much older elsewhere — China (hunter-gatherer period), southern Sahara (~10th millennium BC)
• In the Near East, pottery appears *after* farming adoption, on varying timescales by site
• At Çatalhöyük: pottery sherds appear in the uppermost layers
• Pottery functions: storage, cooking, transporting goods; later acquires **decorative elements** useful for tracking cultural development
• The mega-sites did not represent true civilisation — no specialist labour, no ruling class, no writing, minimal social stratification
• Next phase: large-scale centres re-emerge in Syria and the Levant; complex farming settlements in the Zagros; eventually agriculture spreads to the **alluvial plain of southern Iraq** (Mesopotamia) from the mid-6th millennium BC → irrigation-based settlements → social hierarchies → earliest known writing

Quotes Worth Keeping

All this answer ultimately does is shift the debate from why farming to why sedentism — and as we have seen, sedentary societies can still revert to being nomadic.

Every indication is that the people of this time would have seen nothing unusual about living and sleeping above these burials. Instead they were likely seen as another important part of the long-running themes of continuity and memory around which many of these communities were organised.

It is here on this largely featureless plain that we see the appearance of settlements reliant on complex systems of irrigation that unlocks the potential of the alluvial soil... it is here that we will see the emergence of what may be the earliest known system of writing.