# Çatalhöyük: houses, kinship, ritual and power in a Neolithic society without a documented state

Few archaeological landscapes expose the contradiction between social complexity and institutional centralization as sharply as Çatalhöyük. In central Anatolia, generations built densely clustered mudbrick houses, maintained roofs as passages between buildings, processed grain and animal products inside domestic spaces, buried relatives and nonrelatives beneath floors, exchanged materials over considerable distances and repeatedly rebuilt on the foundations of previous dwellings. The place was neither an undifferentiated hamlet nor an attested capital of a state. Its archaeological record, unusually thick and meticulously studied, makes it possible to ask how economic coordination, social belonging and authority worked without assuming palaces, a tax treasury, a professional army or hereditary kings. [1][5][6]

The site is not evidence for a universal prehistoric egalitarian paradise. A 2024 synthesis detected differences in access to desirable non-staple goods and some episodes of elevated inequality, even though it found no coherent long-run increase in disparities and no evidence for a lasting institutionalized hierarchy in the indicators examined. In 2025, genetic analysis of 131 ancient individuals added a different dimension: relationships within buried house groups often passed through maternal lines, while the biological composition of those groups changed across the settlement's life. Material comparison and paleogenetics thus produce a more difficult, more useful question: how could households sustain distinctive identities, labor investments and ritual privileges while preventing, failing to produce, or simply leaving archaeologically invisible a permanently dominant political class? [3][4]

The question has comparative importance beyond Anatolia. Agricultural intensity, population concentration, inherited relationships and elaborate symbolism are often treated as stepping stones to city-states. Çatalhöyük demonstrates the need to test those steps separately. The material record can reveal where food was stored and where the dead were placed; it cannot, without further evidence, tell us that a specific household owned all nearby fields or collected rent from its neighbors.

## 1. Location, chronologies and the meaning of a large settlement

Çatalhöyük lies on the Konya plain of present-day Türkiye. UNESCO identifies two mounds within a protected property of approximately **37 hectares**: an eastern Neolithic mound with **18 occupation levels** dated in its heritage chronology to approximately **7400–6200 BCE**, and a western mound associated predominantly with the Chalcolithic between **6200 and 5200 BCE**. These are site-level heritage dates, not necessarily the dates assigned to every excavated house or to every individual buried there. [1]

A detailed 2019 bioarchaeological synthesis organizes the excavated East Mound sequence into an **Early Period, 7100–6700 cal BCE; Middle Period, 6700–6500 cal BCE; and Late Period, 6500–5950 cal BCE**. The 2025 genetic study and a review of 25 years of Polish fieldwork also use a research range approximately **7100–5950 BCE**. [13] These finer-grained analytical ranges are not a contradiction to be erased by selecting one “correct” date: they reflect different stratigraphic selections, chronological models, boundaries and inclusion criteria. A study of the West Mound likewise shows why the change between mounds cannot be inferred from a simple line drawn at 6200 BCE. [2][4][14]

```chart
type: bar
title: Approximate duration of the three analytical East Mound periods (Larsen et al. 2019)
unit: years calculated from published phase boundaries; chronological bin widths, not counts of houses or population
Early (7100–6700 BCE) | 400
Middle (6700–6500 BCE) | 200
Late (6500–5950 BCE) | 550
```

This is a chronological orientation chart, not a claim that all three periods were equally excavated or represent continuous populations of identical composition. A settlement of many hectares can contain unoccupied spaces, structures belonging to different moments and areas that changed function. Treating all mapped houses as contemporaneous would overstate simultaneous housing, food demand and the scale of collective decision-making. A 2024 inequality study explicitly excluded houses whose chronology or excavation coverage prevented valid comparison. [3]

## 2. Rooftop movement and the political economy of built space

The most recognizable characteristic of Çatalhöyük is its dense arrangement of houses, generally without conventional ground-level streets separating them. Doorways or entry openings from the roof, reached by ladders, meant that roofs were important elements of circulation. Mudbrick walls, timber, reeds and repeated plastering combined into buildings whose life required continual labor. The built environment was neither an accidental heap of huts nor evidence of a central urban planner with powers comparable to those of a later monarch. [1][6][10]

Roof-based movement altered the relationship between the domestic interior and the shared landscape. Passages over buildings depended on maintenance of roofs and access points. A household might have considerable authority within the house yet still rely on neighboring households to preserve routes or cooperate during repairs. Narrow exterior spaces and midden areas required rules of dumping, cleaning and use. Such practical coordination is political even in the absence of municipal officials: disputes over access, waste, smoke, drainage or building height can arise whenever a population occupies adjacent structures.

The durable economic cost is easy to underestimate. Mudbrick must be obtained, formed, dried, carried and repaired. Plaster wears; fire installations must be cleaned; roofs must support use; reed and timber inputs have to be replenished. Maintaining the settlement was a repeated claim on labor rather than a one-time capital investment. Archaeological analysis of wall surfaces and a detailed study of **11 houses** document repeated interventions and remodeling over decades. A building can be both a productive asset and a repository of family or community memory. [10][11]

## 3. The household was an institution, not merely a family-sized room

The typical house had a larger central area and smaller ancillary spaces used for storage or processing. Cooking installations, wall paintings, horn installations, platforms and human burials were often physically integrated. This arrangement makes it impossible to classify the residence as solely a private dwelling analogous to a modern nuclear-family house. A unit of architecture, a group sharing labor, a group sharing biological ancestry and a group claiming a ritual history need not be identical. [5][6][9]

A house could coordinate food preparation, care of dependents, craft tasks, ritual occasions and the management of inherited objects. Some houses were rebuilt over earlier footprints; histories of rebuilding may have made particular places important beyond the people currently using them. That continuity creates possible claims: the right to occupy the house, to bury certain individuals there, to use a symbolic installation, or to access associated stored food. Yet the archaeological fact that generations built at one location does not establish a transferable deed or fee-simple private title.

New work on smaller built spaces published in 2025 questions the assumption that all socially meaningful units were standard autonomous houses. Annexes and small structures may have supported activities distributed among several buildings or groups. Their interpretation depends on context, contents, use-wear and spatial relationships, not on square footage alone. A political economy based only on a map of equally sized houses risks missing economic interdependence and uneven access to specialized facilities. [12]

## 4. Fields, grains and the household production system

Plant remains recovered at the site document domesticated cereals and pulses, with wheat varieties, barley and legumes contributing to production and consumption. Archaeological research also identifies collecting and using wild plants and other landscape resources. A farmed diet was therefore not a complete withdrawal from an environment of reeds, marshes, seasonal watercourses and wild food opportunities. Intensive subsistence could combine production near the settlement with trips beyond the visible mound. [2][3]

The economic ledger includes planting, tending fields, harvest, transport, sorting, grinding, baking, fuel collection, cleaning and preservation. These tasks varied by season and by access to land and labor. Grain stores could smooth shortages, but grinding stones and hearths reveal substantial time spent transforming harvested calories into edible meals. Workload depends on distance to fields, yield, technology, household membership and obligations to others; none of these can be recovered from a single seed concentration alone.

A significant distinction concerns **output** versus **control over output**. A pile of cereal grains in an ancillary room demonstrates storage; it does not identify whether the grain belonged to a couple, an extended group, visitors, a ritual fund or a wider neighborhood. Independent domestic processing suggests considerable household agency, but common access to staple foods reported by the 2024 study shows that unequal access to every economic good was not an inevitable feature of this system. [3]

## 5. Sheep, goats and the cost of feeding a dense community

Sheep and goats were major livestock resources; animal bones also document wild cattle and other hunted species. Herding and hunting generated different costs and forms of social coordination. Sheep and goats required daily feeding and management, decisions about the slaughter age of animals and access to grazing grounds that might lie increasingly far from the settlement. Wild cattle could supply meat and horned installations at feasts or other occasions, but their presence in ritual decoration does not establish the rank of the host. [2][3]

Large, dense communities can face a spatial paradox. The settlement itself concentrates consumers and useful shared arrangements, while plant plots, grazing and fuel procurement must reach into a larger landscape. Increasing trips to obtain resources impose costs on bodies and schedules. The 2019 skeletal analysis interprets some changes in mobility and workload as responses to this extended resource catchment. This is not direct measurement of the number of kilometers walked or hours of labor, and it does not show that all households traveled equally. [2]

A herd can represent stored reproductive value, but there is no archaeological accounting ledger assigning livestock to named households at Çatalhöyük. One household may have tended animals belonging to a wider social group; another may have contributed grain or labor in exchange for meat. The existence of animal husbandry does not by itself define the contract, inheritance rule or degree of inequality under which it operated.

## 6. Household storage as a political technology

Food storage changes the timing of consumption and the possibilities of obligation. A household can produce today for a child months later; it can host visitors in a lean season or contribute to a feast. The same capacity can create dependency when one group determines who receives supplies. Çatalhöyük's combination of house-scale production, ancillary rooms and uneven access to particular artifacts provides a context for investigating these divergent mechanisms. [3][5]

No centralized taxation should be inferred merely because a town had stores. A defensible claim that a neighborhood leader extracted grain would require a pattern of enforceable transfer, the location of centralized accumulations, distributional control or explicit administrative media. At Çatalhöyük, a state treasury, extensive public granary bureaucracy and documented royal taxation are not established. Domestic structures, repeated ritual and exchange are better-attested forms of organization. [1][5]

```flow
Fields, grazing and gathering → households and task groups → cereals, meat, fuel and craft materials
House-scale processing and storage → deferred consumption and hospitality → alternative support and obligations across houses
Access to scarce materials or ritual places → possible household distinction → political authority only if others recognize and enforce lasting claims
Rebuilding, burials and repeated plastering → accumulated house history → possible continuity of rights or obligations across generations
```

This model identifies channels rather than proven legal rules. A right to host ritual activity could produce prestige without becoming a right to command labor permanently. A storehouse could sustain reciprocal help without implying general economic equality. It is precisely the absence of a simple equation between resource concentration and authority that makes the settlement historically instructive.

## 7. Maintenance, waste and environmental externalities

Sedentary density creates a shared environmental budget. Hearth smoke, animal dung, human waste, decomposing residues and crowded exterior disposal areas can affect health beyond the household that produces them. Microstratigraphic work finds animal and human fecal matter near residential contexts, and research has identified parasite eggs in relevant soil samples. The fact that interior floors were often kept relatively clean is compatible with concentrated refuse immediately outside or near occupied spaces. [2]

Maintaining plastered walls and floors consumed labor and materials. Human care of surfaces helped produce order, but this did not remove the need for landscape-scale systems of fuel and waste disposal. The more households share close spaces, the more an activity that is individually practical can impose costs on neighbors. A fire used for food processing can improve nutrition while increasing smoke exposure; penning animals nearby can improve access to milk, meat or dung while increasing parasitic risks.

These are collective-action problems, not direct proof of a municipal council. Coordinated routines can be customary, negotiated, repeated through interhousehold ties or enforced by respected individuals. Archaeology reveals outcomes and some material arrangements; determining the precise governance mechanism remains a further step.

## 8. Population concentration: growth does not imply a census

The settlement developed through phases of expansion, high density and contraction. The 2019 researchers distinguish Early, Middle and Late periods partly to connect changes in bodies and behavior with changing numbers and crowding. Estimates of the peak population vary widely according to how much of the mound was active at once, how household occupancy is modeled and which parts of the site have been sampled. A single number presented without uncertainty would become false precision. [2]

Demographic growth also affects bargaining. New dwellings may be built next to established houses, altering traffic and shared access. Families may face pressure over crops, fuel or grazing. But expansion does not prove administrative hierarchy, and the presence of some richly embellished houses does not prove that they controlled the whole community. Crowding may intensify cooperation over upkeep and conflict over resources at the same time.

The relevant economic quantity is not hypothetical gross output for an invented population. It is the changing balance among consumers, cultivators, caring labor, productive land, distance, storage, and rules for sharing scarce inputs. A settlement can be spatially dense while its political relationships remain relatively decentralized.

## 9. Health costs: the counterexample to a simple density–disease law

A 2019 bioarchaeological synthesis found a declining prevalence of **subperiosteal skeletal reactions**, often consistent with localized infection, from **33% in the Early Period** to **26% in the Middle Period** and **19% in the Late Period**. The result is particularly important because the Early Period had fewer residents than the Middle Period. A mechanism in which greater density *alone* necessarily raises measured infection cannot explain those values. [2]

```chart
type: bar
title: Çatalhöyük skeletal subperiosteal reactions by occupational period
unit: % prevalence in the studied skeletal samples; diagnostic proxy, not population infection incidence; source: Larsen et al., PNAS 2019
Early | 33
Middle | 26
Late | 19
```

The authors discuss poor conditions, refuse, proximity to animal enclosures, changing population size and the reduced crowding of later phases as possible components of this pattern. A bone lesion is an indicator of physiological history, not a direct map of a particular named pathogen. The research also did not identify characteristic evidence for certain density-dependent mycobacterial diseases such as tuberculosis or leprosy. Absence in the excavated skeletal sample does not establish that no one ever contracted a relevant infection.

The important political-economic issue is who bears the burden of poor environmental management. Households cannot fully control shared waste or grazing arrangements individually. Denser occupation can create returns to coordinating public health even without a formal state; it can also expose the cost of failing to build collectively enforced sanitation rules.

## 10. Food security versus dental disease

Reliance on cereal carbohydrates generated calories and permitted a certain degree of predictability; it also influenced oral health. In the 2019 synthesis, reported dental caries prevalences among adult females were **10.5%, 12.9% and 10.4%** in Early, Middle and Late phases. Corresponding adult male values were **9.7%, 10.0% and 11.0%**. These are empirical figures for the skeletal material examined, not the proportions of all inhabitants who had a dental disease or the share of calories derived from grain. [2]

```chart
type: bar
title: Reported adult dental caries prevalence at Çatalhöyük, by period and sex
unit: % in osteological dental observations reported by Larsen et al., PNAS 2019; sample groups differ by period
Early female | 10.5
Early male | 9.7
Middle female | 12.9
Middle male | 10.0
Late female | 10.4
Late male | 11.0
```

Sex differences in these data should not be translated into a claim that women and men held particular legal positions or that women universally ate more grain. Food preparation, access to particular foods, age structure, dental wear, survival and preservation all complicate causal analysis. The study interprets the pattern as consistent with persistent reliance on agricultural carbohydrates.

The broader result is a distributional tension. A grain-based economy can permit more people to live together and withstand certain seasonal failures while creating chronic workloads and health exposures. Agricultural sufficiency, individual biological outcomes and the allocation of benefits are different dimensions of welfare.

## 11. Interpersonal conflict: archaeological violence is not an army

Among **93 crania** analyzed in the 2019 study, **25 individuals** showed healed depressed cranial fractures; **12 of the 93** had evidence of **two to five injuries**, indicating recurrent trauma. These are counts from a selected archaeological sample, not a measured homicide rate, combat casualty rate or share of all residents exposed to violence. The recurrently injured are included within the broader set of injured individuals; the counts cannot be added. [2]

The authors discuss blows from hard rounded objects and the possible relevance of clay balls, including sling projectiles, found at the site. Such a proposal connects injury morphology to material culture but does not establish who struck whom, whether violence was domestic, ritual, factional, criminal or related to intercommunity hostilities. Some of the highest repeated-injury burdens were observed among women, a warning against idealizing social relations merely because no palace has been excavated.

```chart
type: bar
title: Cranial trauma observations in one archaeological sample
unit: number of individuals out of 93 crania; recurrent injuries are a subset of injured, bars not additive; source: Larsen et al. 2019
At least one healed depressed fracture | 25
Two to five cranial injuries | 12
```

The political significance is not that a state must have existed to organize violence. Coercion can occur in households, rival networks or informal coalitions. Likewise, absence of an excavated army does not imply that everyone possessed the same capacity to leave, protest or seek protection. A robust account of early social organization must examine power exercised below the level of formal government.

## 12. The 2025 genetic finding: houses changed biological composition

The 2025 *Science* study combined **131 paleogenomes** with archaeological and bioarchaeological evidence from the East Mound. In earlier phases, people buried in the same building were relatively often close genetic relatives; in later phases, the same burial setting frequently included people without close detectable genetic connections, despite broadly similar dietary indications. Genetic links within buildings were predominantly through maternal rather than paternal lines. Burial offerings were also more frequent for female than male children. [4]

These results do not erase the house as a social institution. They strengthen the possibility that the house was sustained through relationships that could include fostering, adoption-like practices, alliances or other forms of membership beyond close biological parentage. The observation that unrelated people received similar diets is relevant because it weakens an explanation in which only genetic children accessed a household's food. Still, similar isotopic signals are not proof of absolute equality of daily portions or rights.

The research reported no clear sex-biased migration into Çatalhöyük as a whole. That matters: predominantly maternal connections *inside houses* can coexist with broader community-level patterns lacking an unmistakable rule that women never migrated and men always moved. Household-level matrilineal ties, community-level mobility and legal authority operate at different scales; collapsing them would distort the result. [4][15]

## 13. Women, kinship and the difference between maternal lines and matriarchy

The genetic evidence has been described as suggesting female-centered kinship practices, a significant finding for debates on early agricultural societies. It does not by itself identify the sex of people who controlled fields, enforced rules, initiated violence, assigned ritual roles or made collective decisions. **Matrilineality**, **matrilocal residence**, **female preference in burial gifts** and **matriarchy** are four distinct propositions. They cannot be treated as equivalent. [4][15]

Matrilineal connections describe ancestry or socially relevant descent through women. Matrilocality suggests a pattern of residence after union. A greater frequency of gifts in girls' burials reflects a specific treatment of deceased children; it is not a census of female-owned land or political offices. Matriarchy would require evidence of institutional dominance by women, which current burials and genetic samples cannot demonstrate on their own.

The result is more historically interesting than a simple role reversal. Agricultural households could organize belonging through women while preserving some collective or bilateral arrangements and allowing variable membership. The changing relatedness of co-burials across generations points to flexibility. It also means that theories of economic inequality must not assume that property passed through a fixed male line merely because the site cultivated grain and raised animals.

## 14. The dead beneath floors: ancestry as a form of lasting social presence

Human remains were frequently buried beneath interior floors and platforms, often while the house remained occupied. Archaeologists document primary and secondary burial contexts, including cases in which portions of human remains played roles in later remodeling or ritual activities. A 2025 analysis describes the biographies of houses and individuals as intertwined: construction, use, transformation, burial and abandonment could form connected sequences. [5]

A burial under a platform gives a house a historical depth visible to its occupants. That depth could support claims about belonging, memory or legitimacy, but it cannot simply be converted into a registered inheritance law. The presence of deceased individuals also does not establish that every person buried there was a biological ancestor of every later resident. The 2025 genetic evidence specifically weakens that assumption for some periods. [4][5]

Material memory can nevertheless affect political economy. A space where prior generations are remembered may be difficult to abandon, may attract guests or ceremonies, and may create obligations regarding care and access. Rebuilding on the same plot preserves the possibility that some places mattered more than their floor area would suggest. Such effects are plausible mechanisms, not automatically documented rights of taxation or leadership.

## 15. Ritual was embedded in domestic architecture

Wall paintings, reliefs, animal horns, figurines and selective burials have attracted attention since James Mellaart's excavations in the 1960s. Older presentations often distinguished houses from “shrines” and associated prominent female figurines with a generalized mother-goddess religion. More contextual research has challenged a neat division between domestic and sacred space, emphasizing that symbolism and daily activities frequently occurred inside the same buildings. [5][11][16]

The archaeological research project's review of the goddess debate explains why figurines cannot be assigned a single stable meaning simply by visual resemblance. A depiction interpreted as a female deity might be an image of a person, an animal, a protective being or another symbolic category, depending on context and scholarly hypothesis. Evidence of symbolic activity does not demonstrate a single religion shared identically by all residents, or the existence of a priestly bureaucracy. [11]

This is not a reduction of ritual to mere household decoration. Ritual may organize meals, legitimize group membership, store collective knowledge or help resolve disputes. These functions have economic consequences because they involve time, skilled crafts, food, animals and access to valued settings. Yet a lavish wall installation is not a fiscal document, and a ritual center of activity is not automatically the residence of a ruler.

## 16. History houses and inherited prestige without a proven aristocracy

Repeated rebuilding could turn certain places into durable nodes of social memory. The analytical notion of a “history house” draws attention to dwellings whose repeated architectural transformations and mortuary contents accumulated importance. Archaeological sequence research demonstrates the long duration of particular buildings' biographies, while network studies distinguish buildings that resembled or interacted with others from buildings that followed idiosyncratic paths. [6][9][10]

This creates a hypothesis of **uneven symbolic capital**: some houses may have had stronger claims to host events, to protect objects or to be remembered. But the ability to organize a ceremony is not equivalent to hereditary control of staple food or labor. Nor do decorated interiors prove institutional continuity of a single biological family, as the 2025 genetic study highlights. Prestige may be temporary, shared among groups or contested through changing associations.

A more discriminating test would examine whether highly decorated or frequently rebuilt houses also held systematically larger food stores, exclusive exchange goods, differential diets and access to more labor, and whether such inequalities persisted across phases. The 2024 multi-proxy research deliberately explored questions like these rather than declaring inequality from the presence of a striking house alone. [3]

## 17. What the 2024 inequality analysis actually measured

Twiss and collaborators assembled distinct archaeological indicators and compared **20 buildings** meeting a minimum of **75% excavation coverage** and chronological requirements. Their datasets addressed staples and nonessential goods, architecture, symbolic investments and related resources in different combinations. They used Gini-style metrics as tools for comparing variation, but warned that the underlying proxies are not measured monetary incomes. Houses represented in early excavation plans were not necessarily all contemporaneous, so the study prioritized more secure stratigraphic comparisons. The project's archaeological database makes the provenance and recovery contexts of many materials auditable. [3][17]

Its conclusions are neither “perfect equality” nor “hidden state.” Access to staples appeared broadly similar, while access to goods less tied to basic survival was more differentiated. The middle occupation exhibited elevated differences in some variables, but these did not all follow the same temporal path; some differentiation may have been deliberately reduced. The authors found **no evidence for institutionalized, long-lasting economic or social inequality** in their analyzed sample. That is an evidentiary conclusion about specified measures, not proof that no coercion or status difference existed anywhere at Çatalhöyük.

This finding challenges the inevitability of agricultural oligarchy. People could control distinct spaces and possessions without consolidating a permanent upper stratum, or the available indicators might fail to detect certain dimensions of power. A responsible account must hold both possibilities open and explain what future evidence would distinguish them.

## 18. A matrix of institutions that can and cannot be reconstructed

| Institution or social practice | Direct evidence available | Strongest defensible analysis | Unsupported leap |
|---|---|---|---|
| House continuity | Rebuilding, platforms, plaster layers, buried individuals | Some places retained social importance over generations | Written transferable title deeds and a universal inheritance code |
| Production | Crop remains, animals, ovens, processing installations | Agriculture and husbandry organized much daily labor | Exact farm yields, household wages or property boundaries |
| Storage | Containers, ancillary rooms, food residues | Consumption could be deferred; access had to be managed | Centralized taxation or royal granaries |
| Maternal connections | 131 genomes, co-burial patterns | Female-line ties mattered within some house groups | Demonstrated matriarchal state |
| Differentiation | Uneven prestige goods and 20-house comparisons | Some differences without established enduring elite class | Perfect equality or exact prehistoric income Gini |
| Shared movement | Roof-based entrances and close construction | Interhousehold access and upkeep required practical arrangements | Named urban council or police |
| Violence | 25 injured among 93 examined crania | Interpersonal coercion and recurrent injury occurred | Professional army, mortality rate or identifiable attackers |
| Long-distance exchange | Geochemically sourced obsidian, exotic materials | Connections extended beyond the Konya plain | Market prices, merchant guilds or controlled trade monopolies |

The matrix helps separate institutions whose outputs are visible in excavated materials from institutions that would require inscriptions, explicit administrative sequences or stronger convergence of material evidence. There is no need to describe the site as either a modern commune or an ancient monarchy.

## 19. Obsidian and the political economy of distant connections

Obsidian blades at Çatalhöyük demonstrate that dense agricultural residence did not imply local economic isolation. Geochemical study of **135 obsidian artifacts** assigned material to multiple Cappadocian volcanic sources, with changes in relative source use alongside technological development. A separate study found a small set of blades whose eastern Anatolian source lay **more than 600 kilometres** away, concentrated in a particular portion of the eastern mound and dating to the early ceramic Neolithic. [7][8]

Long-distance movement of raw materials raises concrete economic questions. Who could obtain valuable stone? Were the blades passed through chains of exchange, gifts, marriage ties, direct visits or migration? Did some houses receive rare objects more frequently? No source-to-site distance establishes a journey made by a specific trader, and geochemical provenance does not reveal whether transactions used barter, gifts or another obligation system.

The exotic material is especially important for evaluating hierarchy. If some buildings held unusual artifacts, differential access existed at least for those objects. But small quantities of rare stone do not demonstrate monopoly over staple foods, labor or violence. The political-economic mechanism requires linking provenance to durable control over production and reproduction, not simply observing that valuable things traveled far.

## 20. Comparison beyond the settlement: Çatalhöyük was not the prototype of every city

```map
title: Çatalhöyük and connected comparative contexts; modern regional labels, not prehistoric state borders
Konya Plain, central Türkiye | Çatalhöyük East Mound: dense houses, household ritual, agropastoral production and sampled genetic kinship | Main archaeological case; multiple date conventions
Çatalhöyük West Mound, central Türkiye | Later occupation and changed architectural and settlement arrangements | Does not justify a single instant of collapse around 6200 BCE
Boncuklu Höyük, Konya Plain | Earlier settlement environment in the same broad region | Useful local comparison, not identical organization
Aşıklı Höyük, central Anatolia | Earlier Neolithic village and animal management experiments | Different household and subsistence history
Cappadocia, central Anatolia | Göllü Dağ, Nenezi Dağ and Acıgöl West obsidian sources | Geochemical source attribution, not proven direct travel
Eastern Anatolia | Rare Çatalhöyük obsidian from sources over 600 km distant | Connection route and exchange mechanism remain uncertain
Southern Levant | Different pre-pottery settlement, storage and ritual arrangements | Non-identical path toward farming and dense occupation
```

The comparison is not a league table of “advanced civilizations.” Çatalhöyük's dense houses, domestic burials and lack of a documented centralized palace have no automatic analog in settlements elsewhere. Aşıklı Höyük and Boncuklu illuminate local sequences; southern Levantine sites reveal other combinations of storage, public ritual and household organization. Uruk, many millennia later, must be analyzed separately through its administrative media, institutions and urban ecology rather than being treated as Çatalhöyük with more inhabitants.

## 21. The western mound, transformation and the misleading language of collapse

The change in occupation from eastern to western mound cannot be understood as a precisely dated total disappearance. UNESCO's heritage presentation places the East Mound primarily in **7400–6200 BCE** and the western Chalcolithic occupation in **6200–5200 BCE**. More detailed research points to later evidence on the East Mound and complexities in establishing the West Mound's initial sequence. Evidence for transformation of residence, land use and building arrangements is not identical to proof of war, famine, climate catastrophe or the extinction of a community. [1][14]

Long-term settlement history entails several possible mechanisms. Changes in households and production may favor a different location; environmental conditions and watercourses may change; people may reorganize into less compact dwellings; ritual use may be relocated; communities may disperse to multiple settlements. Archaeology can test these propositions with dated deposits, field surveys, plant and faunal records and architectural continuity, but simple abandonment narratives should not replace that work.

Similarly, the absence of a long-lasting elite in sampled indicators does not imply a final historical victory of egalitarianism. Institutional arrangements change as membership, access to fields, population and external connections change. The relevant phenomenon is transformation of a social system through centuries, not the morality play of a settlement that “failed” to become a state.

## 22. Methodological limits and the next historical question

The data types have distinct strengths and biases. House plans preserve spatial investment but are vulnerable to uncertain contemporaneity; osteological lesions are physiological indicators filtered by survival and burial selection; ancient DNA identifies biological connections among sampled skeletons but not legal parentage, inheritance or officeholding; stable-isotope signals reflect averaged dietary histories rather than each meal; exotic obsidian identifies geology, not transaction prices. Decorative objects may survive selectively and cannot automatically be counted as wealth in a modern financial sense. [2][3][4][8]

Moreover, a lack of known monumental public buildings or royal inscriptions is informative but not a mathematical proof that no powerful individual ever existed. Interpersonal injury is clear evidence of violence; its institutional authors are unknown. The 2024 and 2025 findings should be read together: a household could have female-line social continuity and unequal ritual prominence without possessing a permanent right to tax others. Conversely, concealed coercion and informal status might leave weak material traces.

Çatalhöyük's principal contribution to comparative political economy is therefore conditional and falsifiable. Agricultural concentration and dense residence create opportunities for differentiated access, specialization, sanitation rules and coercion. But their realization depends on the durable institutions through which people allocate food, maintain houses, enter relationships, bury the dead, exercise force and sustain obligations. The evidence shows a society capable of considerable coordination without a documented state-level command apparatus; it also shows bodily costs, violence and episodic inequality. Neither complexity nor freedom can be inferred from the absence of a palace.

The next study in the historical series will compare **inequality before and after agriculture**, testing archaeological proxies, differences in accumulation, institutional inheritance and the limits of measures such as household-space Gini coefficients across distinct societies. Monumental ceremonial places such as Göbekli Tepe are relevant to that wider debate but cannot be treated as automatic evidence of a royal bureaucracy. Subsequent studies of documented urban-administrative systems such as Uruk will require a different explanation, grounded in records, institutions of extraction, specialist control and the changing authority of regional political structures.

## Sources

[1] UNESCO World Heritage Centre, “Neolithic Site of Çatalhöyük”: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1405/

[2] Larsen et al., “Bioarchaeology of Neolithic Çatalhöyük reveals fundamental transitions in health, mobility, and lifestyle in early farmers”, *PNAS* (2019): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6601267/

[3] Twiss et al., “But some were more equal than others: Exploring inequality at Neolithic Çatalhöyük”, *PLOS ONE* (2024): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11379307/

[4] Yüncü et al., “Female lineages and changing kinship patterns in Neolithic Çatalhöyük”, *Science* (2025): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40570118/

[5] Haddow, “Bodies in buildings: Human remains and the life histories of houses at Neolithic Çatalhöyük”, *Archaeological Research in Asia* (2025): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235222672500008X

[6] Mazzucato, “Socio-Material Archaeological Networks at Çatalhöyük: A Community Detection Approach”, *Frontiers in Digital Humanities* (2019): https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/digital-humanities/articles/10.3389/fdigh.2019.00008/full

[7] “A new programme of obsidian characterization at Çatalhöyük, Turkey”, *Journal of Archaeological Science* (2006): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0305440305002505

[8] “Eastern Anatolian obsidians at Çatalhöyük and the reconfiguration of regional interaction in the Early Ceramic Neolithic”, *Antiquity* (2014): https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/eastern-anatolian-obsidians-at-catalhoyuk-and-the-reconfiguration-of-regional-interaction-in-the-early-ceramic-neolithic/F43C84ED4CE5A0910FE5938905D06BC5

[9] “Material Geographies of House Societies: Reconsidering Neolithic Çatalhöyük, Turkey”, *Cambridge Archaeological Journal* (2018): https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-archaeological-journal/article/material-geographies-of-house-societies-reconsidering-neolithic-catalhoyuk-turkey/37275CACFF91D1D6FC6041A96EC452B8

[10] “The material politics of houses at Çatalhöyük, 7000–6300 BCE”, University of Cambridge doctoral research: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/items/db28ae7c-0133-4c9d-ac1b-536fba76fdb0

[11] Çatalhöyük Research Project, “Was there a belief in the Mother Goddess at Çatalhöyük?”: https://www.catalhoyuk.com/node/736

[12] García-Suárez, “Home, annex or pied-à-terre? Assessing the socioeconomic dimension of small-sized built environments at Neolithic Çatalhöyük”, *Archaeological Research in Asia* (2025): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352226725000297

[13] “25 Years of Adam Mickiewicz University Research at Çatalhöyük (Türkiye)”, *Folia Praehistorica Posnaniensia* (2025): https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/fpp/article/view/47588

[14] “A tale of two tells: dating the Çatalhöyük West Mound”, *Antiquity* (2018): https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/tale-of-two-tells-dating-the-catalhoyuk-west-mound/01F804089ECB6CC4AA6E47D452E3B9D1

[15] “Exploring matrilocality in history: insights from ancient DNA”, review article (2026): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13112121/

[16] Smarthistory, “Çatalhöyük”, archaeological and art-historical educational overview: https://smarthistory.org/catalhoyuk/

[17] Çatalhöyük Research Project, archaeological records and research database: https://www.catalhoyuk.com/research/database/