Crop Domestication and Gender j 4747 47
Neolithic. Thus, once again we find a correlation between the ascendance of a plant- based,
female- led industry (agriculture) and an upsurge in female iconography. The predominance
of female dancers during this period suggests that women were playing a leading role in the
social and spiritual spheres of their communities.^38Cryptic Agricultural Symbols at Çatalhüyük
Çatalhüyük is located at the southern edge of the Anatolian plateau some 20 miles south-
east of the Turkish town of Konya. Çatalhüyük (pronounced CHAH- tahl- HOO- yook)
literally means “forked mound,” a name suggested by a path that divides into three trails at
the foot of the site (Hodder 2006). Çatalhüyük actually consists of two tells,^39 referred to
as the East and West Mounds. The tells were originally situated on opposite banks of the
Çarşamba River, which flowed northward from the Taurus Mountains and emptied into
the Konya Plain, before being converted into an irrigation canal in the early 1900s. The
Neolithic East Mound was settled around 7400 bce, some 2,000 years after the first crops
were planted in the region. Thus, the earliest inhabitants of Çatalhüyük were agricultural-
ists from the start, although it is clear, based on the remains of fauna and flora found at the
site, that hunting and gathering still played an important role in their overall diet.
The houses of Çatalhüyük were multilevel structures packed tightly together, like the
pueblo- style Native American communities of the Southeastern United States, except that
there were no doors or windows. The interiors were accessed through rooftop openings via
ladders and stairs. All interior walls were plastered to a smooth, white finish, and in some
cases they were decorated with striking polychrome images. Indeed, what sets the houses
of Çatalhüyük apart from all other known Neolithic dwellings is the startling impact of
their interior artwork, which, in the case of the most elaborate examples, combine enig-
matic polychrome murals and monumental relief sculptures of felines and other animals
with rows of breast- like protuberances, each containing the skull, teeth, or jawbone of an
animal— all set into walls and benches bristling with the plastered skulls and horn cores
of aurochs. Little wonder that James Mellaart, the first excavator of the site, initially des-
ignated the most complex of these rooms as “shrines” to distinguish them from the less
ornately decorated rooms.
The murals of Çatalhüyük have often been compared in their beauty and power to the
Upper Paleolithic cave paintings of France and Spain. In both cases, images of wild animals
predominate, but an important shift has taken place since the Upper Paleolithic. The wild
animals depicted at Çatalhüyük are more isolated from their fellows and more completely
dominated by humans than their Franco- Cantabrian counterparts, which are rarely shown
with humans. In the dynamic murals at Çatalhüyük, enormous wild animals, such as stags
and wild boars, are shown as the targets of relatively diminutive, but highly energetic people
who are either hunting or baiting them. Such a contrast in the power relations between
animals and humans is in keeping with the shift in emphasis from hunting and gathering
to agriculture.
The dearth of images depicting agriculture in the wall art of Çatalhüyük is puzzling.
All evidence from the site indicates that domesticated plants and animals constituted the
core, year- round diet of the settlement, yet the wall paintings, relief sculptures, and even
many figurines and statuettes continued to emphasize wild animals. Not until the art of