Remembering Çatalhöyük

Changes at ÇatalhöyükCourtesy Ziggurat
When I try to recall how long I have been blogging here at Science Buzz, I do a search for my post about Çatalhöyük. Soon after I first started volunteering in 2000, SMM had an exhibit about Çatalhöyük. To develop the exhibit and website several members of the Science Museum staff visited the dig site in Turkey. The 25 year project, now about 75% done, is going to see some changes..

Time for new blood at Çatalhöyük

Head archaeologist, Ian Hodder, in an e-mail notifying staff of their dismissal stated

the project “needs new energy—that is, new questions, new theoretical perspectives, ... new methods.”
“It has been a really remarkable team,” Hodder says. But, “I have felt over recent years that the project was getting comfortable with itself and so not challenging each other or me or the assumptions that we were all taking for granted.” Science Insider

Hodder says he plans to recruit new lab leaders for the next phase of excavations, planned for 2012–18, although he has not yet spelled out what new questions he intends to pursue.

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Çatalhöyük links and resources