Ritual Consumption? Exploring the Staging of Ritual Acts through the Deposition of Ground Stone Tools in Building 77 at Neolithic Çatalhöyük

Summary

The destruction of buildings by fire, either deliberately as a ritual act or accidentally, is among the most interesting elements of Neolithic Çatalhöyük, in central Anatolia, not least for the patterns of deposition of material culture at the time of destruction. Burnt Building 77, a well-preserved structure excavated by the current project, stands out in many respects, but one of its intriguing features is the large number of clustered grinding tools and other stone objects that seem to have been left or placed just before the abandonment and burning event. Particularities of this assemblage in terms of number, size, type of tools and preservation raise questions about what these clusters represent. In this paper I argue that the deposition of large quantities of often rare stone objects prior to the abandonment of the building should be seen as a deliberate act, a socio-ritual mechanism, which in tandem with other larger-scale ritualised acts was aimed at maintaining and reinforcing group cohesion and establishing social memory. The sheer quantity of material amassed in Building 77 seems to represent a powerful statement, an act of conspicuous consumption involving larger social groups beyond a single household.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Religion, history and place in the origins of settled life in the Middle East.

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