This Fall we had the chance to teach a class about serious games using Okapi island as a base and we had four research apprentices working to improve the island.  As a result, we had some pretty amazing progress on the place.  As you can see from the image above, we have our entrance relocated to where the visitors entrance to the site is, along with the gate, the cafe, and the signage that you see as you are entering the actual site.  We are still fixing up the guard house and the experimental house, but I think that giving visitors a better sense of arrival adds to the island.

One of our apprentices designed some Neolithic clothing and tattoos, based on designs from John Swogger, Kathryn Killackey, and her own imagination. They incorporate designs and materials that we have evidence for from the archaeological record and were useful when we filmed our machinima. You can pick up your own set at the entrance to the site.

We were also able to get the dig house exterior in place, though work on the interior continues. Building the dig house was interesting, as I had never really paid attention to how odd the architecture is, and how all of the walls and rooms fit together.  I was able to request some last-minute photos from Jason Quinlan to add textures to the exterior, but I’m having a hard time finding good interior shots–always people in the way!  Building in Second Life still shows me that we lack a lot of the documentation necessary for 3D reconstructions.

We also have been reconstructing B79 in the sandbox, and will hopefully finish in time to add it to the report on the building. It has been a collaborative building effort with Daniel Eddisford, and the discussions about architecture that we’ve had regarding the reconstruction have made us both reexamine our assumptions about mudbrick dwellings.

Our machinima should be finished in the next month, so watch out for that.  Later on in the Spring we will have our research apprentices continuing to work on the island, and hopefully have a “Grand Re-Opening” in May.

As always:

Okapi Island in Second Life

(added)

Oddly enough, we got some press coverage yesterday as well:

http://www.examiner.com/x-32230-Archaeology-News-Examiner~y2009m12d28-Cyber-archaeology

Hopping off a plane always has me itching to hop back on. I went to Texas last weekend and now I’ve got that pack-up-and-go urge again. So because I like to make lists, and I enjoy daydreaming, here are five random places I would like to visit someday, in no particular order:

Svalbard:

It’s a group of icy islands north of Norway. They don’t get sun  from Nov. 14 to Jan. 29, but you can go weasel watching. How  can anyone turn down weasel watching? And there’s an entire  week-long festival in March to celebrate the return of the sun.

Positano:

This small Italian city on the Costiera Amalfitana in Campania,  Italy is pretty much built up the side of the mountain lining the  coast. The sides of the buildings are painted in an array of  colors. The town doesn’t necessarily boast the widest range of  activities, but it seems like a good place to go for those adventurous, cultural types who don’t mind exploring nooks and crannies.

Fes:

Is there any reason not to go to a place called Fes?

Santorini:

The entirety of Greece is on my list of  places I want to go, but Santorini is a must. The set-up of the  town looks similar to Positano, but the pictures of the white  buildings with the blue rooftops set against the back drop of the bluer than blue Aegean is breathtaking. I can’t imagine how gorgeous it must be in person.

Çatalhöyük:

It’s not a place to visit so much as an archaeological site, but if I  ever got the chance to check it out, I would. It’s in Anatolia, a  region in Western Asia comprised mostly of Turkey. It’s the site  of on-going digging and research. I’ve always wanted to explore Turkey, and if I wasn’t pursuing journalism, I don’t think I’d be able to resist the siren song of field research.

Anywhere cool you want to visit?

Last week I was pushing pretty hard to get a paper and a powerpoint together for the UMAC conference that I mentioned briefly before. The paper was apparently controversial (though well received by the majority of my colleagues) and I had to take the photos and the blog for the Dilmun Bioarchaeology Project down for a time. We’ll hope that it will all come back soon, especially since I rather liked my powerpoint and would like to upload it.

So now I shifted over to editing the paper that James and I put together about the worked glass in Kalaupapa–the editor of the volume had a lot of great suggestions for the publication. It’s going to go into an edited volume titled Hybrid Material Culture: The Archaeology of Syncretism and Ethnogenesis, but I’m not sure when the book is coming out. One of the NPS archaeologists that works on Kalaupapa found some really nice glass “cores” recently that reinforce our research.

Finally, the abstract that I submitted for this year’s Visualisation in Archaeology conference in Southampton was accepted! Now I’ll just have to scrape together some money for airfare. I’m excited to see all the folks from Southampton again so soon after we all had such great chats at Çatalhöyük.

Here’s the abstract:

Title: DIY, Edupunk, and the Visual/Digital Archive: A two-tell perspective

Abstract: Frustrated by the limited capabilities of educational and professional software content management systems, Jim Groom coined the term “edupunk” in May 2008. As discussed on several archaeology blogs and mailing lists, the edupunk approach both incorporates and subverts social networking sites and other internet resources to build a distributed, interactive and flexible platform for teaching, research, and collaboration. Faced with limited funding for more traditional approaches of presenting information to the public, the DIY approach has been increasingly attractive for self-publishing and archaeological outreach. Blogging, Facebook, and photo and video-sharing websites such as Youtube, Flickr and Picasa offer non-traditional venues for interacting with an interested public but can be a methodologically impractical exercise in the field.  In this paper I will build on my analysis of the photographic and video archive from Çatalhöyük presented at the Visualisation in Archaeology conference in 2008 and offer an additional perspective from Tall Dhiban in Jordan. In both cases digital media and the resulting online archive have had distinct, yet contrasting effects on archaeological practice. Issues regarding multivocality, interpretive authority, and the emerging distributed archive will also be discussed.

Though I’d seen the term Edupunk previously, I’d be remiss in not linking to Kerim’s great post about it over on Open Access Anthropology. I’m still working out various places to host photo archives–Flickr is a bit too open and Picasa doesn’t have the flexibility and functionality of Flickr, so I’m a bit stuck.

Once again Spring has come to Çatalhöyük! We’ve removed all the snow and icicles and the tell is green and grassy. Work has started up again, and we’re lucky enough to have a class dedicated to “Serious Games” working on the site, as well as undergraduate research apprentices through Berkeley’s URAP program.

We have a number of great projects planned, including exploring some of the new ideas about architecture that came up during the 2009 field season with wooden floors and second (and third!) stories on the houses.

We have never had such a large group working on the island before, so we started to formalize some of our procedures. While we may elaborate on the document at a later time, here is our Archaeological Building Protocol for Second Life.

Building archaeological sites and objects in Second Life can be a powerful visualization tool for archaeological research. On OKAPI island we strive to further archaeological visualization while integrating a substantial public outreach component to our research.  In Second Life, as with all archaeological reconstructions, it is especially important to maintain interpretive transparency and authorship. Additionally, we work in a large and changing research team and need to maintain the ability to edit all objects on the island to preserve existing work as the team changes.

To this end, we have established building protocols for building on OKAPI island in Second Life. We believe that these protocols not only apply to our particular reconstruction, but should be applied more broadly for archaeological site construction using the Second Life toolkit. By applying these protocols a maximum of contextual information, authorship, and interpretive surety is maintained. Additionally, we believe that all objects should be copyable generally, and specifically repackaged for consumption and use off the island. In this way, our work and interpretations live beyond the relatively limited life of this particular reconstruction.

OBJECTS

Objects should have the following permissions set:

X = checked, 0 = not checked

X Share with group
0 Allow anyone to move
X Allow anyone to copy
X Show in Search
0 For Sale

Next Owner Can:

X Modify
X Copy
X Resell/Give Away

Objects should have the following fields filled out:

Name: Catalhoyuk _____________

Description: Short interpretive paragraph, followed by specific image or text citation.

TEXTURES

Textures should be uploaded with their Name and Description intact with the same citation information. After uploading, immediately enter your inventory, where the texture should be highlighted. Open the Inventory Item Properties and set:

X Share With Group
X Allow Anyone to Copy

Next owner can:

X Modify
X Copy
X Resell/Give Away

In other exciting news, the Archaeologies article is live! It is on Springer’s Online First section and it should be Open Access. Please let me know if you have any problems downloading the pdf.
(Re)Building Çatalhöyük: Changing Virtual Reality in Archaeology

Au fost realizate din piatra sau lut cu aproximativ 9000 de ani in urma, la inceputul inceputurilor civilizatiei. Iar acum arheologii spun ca aceste minunate statuete din Epoca de Piatra nu reprezinta, asa cum s-a crezut pana acum, simboluri ale fertilitati ci ar putea fi primele jucarii cu tenta educativa din lume.
Aproape 2000 de figurine au fost dezgropate la Catalhoyuk, in Turcia – cel mai vechi oras cunoscut – in ultimele decade. Cele mai recente au fost desco­perite in decursul saptamanii trecute. Sculptate de catre fermierii din Neolitic cu mii de ani inaintea aparitiei pirami­delor sau a monumentului de la Stonehenge, ele reprezinta bo­vine, ovine si omuleti minusculi. In anii ‘60, niste cercetatori au lansat o teorie conform careia figurinele cu aspect mai robust faceau parte dintr-o misterioasa categorie cu sani mari si burta proeminenta de “zeite-mame”. Expertii contemporani, insa, contrazic acea versiune, spunand ca posibilitatea ca “zeitele” sa fi fost niste obiecte ale idola­triei antice este foarte putin probabila. Majoritatea statuetelor despre care s-a spus atata timp ca ar fi exlusiv de sex feminin ar putea fi, la fel de bine, barbati. Arheologa Lynn Meskell, profesoara la Universitatea Stanford din Statele Unite ale Americii a declarat: “Cele mai multe dintre ele reprezinta bovine, oi si capre. Erau probabil animalele cu care aveau oamenii din acea vreme de a face in viata de zi cu zi – si, totodata, ar putea fi, in termenii de astazi, materiale didactice auxiliare. Toate au fost gasite alaturi de resturi, si nu puse in anumite adaposturi sau in locuri de inmormantare, cum ar fi fost normal in cazul in care ele ar fi avut vreo semnificatie religioasa”.
Societate egalitara
Din cele 2000 de figurine dezgropate din respectivul sit arheologic din Turcia, mai putin de cinci procente sunt femei, potrivit profesoarei. “Sunt pur si simplu niste obiecte realizate si folosite in viata cotidiana”, a continuat Meskell. “Nu aveau o importanta anume pentru oamenii din perioada neolitica”. Catalhoyuk este unul dintre cele mai prolifice si valoroase situri arheologice din lume. Infiintat in anul 7000 i.Hr, a fost caminul a peste 5000 de suflete care locuiau in bordeie ridicate din caramizi de lut si mortar. Casele acestora erau atat de aproape una de cealalta incat locatarii se catarau pe acoperisuri si patrundeau in case cu ajutorul unor scari. Locuitorii erau majoritatea fermieri care aveau ca ocupatie cultivarea anumitor plante si care tineau in preajma casei vitele salbatice pentru lapte si carne. Coarnele vitelor erau practic incorporate in peretii caselor, ca metoda de priponire. In Catalhoyuk au fost gasite, de asemenea, cele mai vechi picturi murale. Contrar oraselor de mai tarziu, pe atunci nu exista o ierarhie evidenta – nu erau case speciale pentru preotii si eventualii lideri ai comunitatii, nu existau temple sau spatii publice. Mortii erau in­gro­pati in terenul aflat dedesub­tul caselor, si nu in cimitire. Unii experti in domeniu tind sa creada intr-o societate egalitara. Orasul Catalhoyuk a supravietuit pentru aproximativ 2000 de ani.

Sursa: Ziua

As I’d previously mentioned, I was digging a lovely burned building at Çatalhöyük before I left. Happily, several interesting discoveries were made in that short time. We uncovered a seated stone figurine with a beard that was painted (sadly, I don’t have any photos, but I’m sure it will make the official Çatalhöyük press release), an interior wall with plaster on both sides, a red-painted niche, part of a collapsed roof, and plaster “caps” on the pillars. We had originally planned to excavate the building down to the occupation surface (some 1.8m below the collapse!) but the building was halfway in the large “Mellaart” section, where there was ongoing work to understand the phasing of the tell, keying off the 1960s excavation. It was decided that though the building had great finds and a good chance of answering some broader questions about life at Çatalhöyük, we were unable to dig it properly and so excavation will cease–it will be conserved and backfilled carefully, waiting until the entire building can be exposed. I deeply respect that decision–though it was a bit disappointing at the time, I completely understood.

Anyway, the plaster “caps” were a great find; the caps were illustrated in the original Mellaart reconstructions, but there weren’t any particular notes or photographs of them, so we weren’t sure if they were an elaboration of the building or an actual find.  We found two, and while the easternmost cap was unlikely to be disturbed, the westernmost cap (they were both on the north wall) had fallen off the pillar during the building’s collapse and cracked in half. The directors decided to lift the cap to preserve it, and possibly to investigate how it was constructed.

It was well photographed in situ and drawn from several perspectives by the site artist, Kathryn Killackey. We planned it, recorded it fully, and then it was ready to go. Shahina also mentioned that she might like a quick photoshop of it, “put back in place.” I took a few of my own photographs after we had lifted the cap, to get more exposure of the pillar:

Sadly, my camera’s light sensor is broken–which only became obvious after I downloaded these photos and the pillar cap was already gone. So I had to merge Jason Quinlan’s photo above with my own, like so:

I also did a semi-crazy full repair job. Fans of bad photoshop jobs, rejoice!

I then decided that I didn’t like the angle of the original job and tilted it some, erasing the part of cap where it had broken in half and tilted upwards in the back.

So, not perfect by any means, but about an hour’s worth of fun. The best part was moving around the cap and seeing exactly where it had fallen off–like two puzzle pieces that fit together perfectly.

Cross-posted from the Dhiban Excavation and Development Project Blog:

As the sun sets on Tell Dhiban, the colors become deeper, pink-tinged, and the limestone blocks look stunning against the blue sky. The wadi turns golden and a small wind picks up, cooling off the air. It’s really the best time to work up on the tell, and I saw several sunsets from the edge of my trench in the last week of the excavation. Everyone was working furiously on their trench reports and Harris Matrices. I was staying a couple of days later than most people, so I was up on the tell, drawing and photographing mostly alone.  It was nice, a break from the busy work days with so many people in the trench all the time.

In the last few days, I had tea with Zaid and Abu Jamal up on the tell. The teapot is a symbol of hospitality in Jordan, and the sugary sage tea they served was lovely.  I sat with them, chatted a bit in our patois of English and Arabic and realized that I would miss Jordan in the year to come.

Thanks to Dhiban for the hospitality and we will see you next year!

And written a couple of weeks ago:

The transition from Dhiban to Catalhoyuk was a bit strange—it was like starting the summer over again. I ended up having a day in Istanbul to soften the blow, where I got a haircut, bought new socks, and drank with the Damascus city planner and his friend at a table in the Beyoglu. Istanbul is my favorite city in the world and I still hope to live there at some point.

Finishing up at Dhiban was a bit of a whirlwind with all of the drawing, photography, and reports to write. Then it was off to a 3:30AM flight from Amman after another 18 hour work day.  Catalhoyuk seems relaxing after such an intense excavation (mudbricks being a bit lighter than ashlars) but it has its own stresses and I was happy to meet with the Southampton visualization team and spend my days drawing mudbrick elevations.

The elevations are from Building 49—the lovely little 5×5m building that I excavated last year with Dan and Lou. At the end of the season we thought we were close to the end of the building sequence and into construction levels, but the building kept producing floors and burials and kept a few of the excavators here in Turkey for longer than they’d planned. This tradition continued this year when I notice a bit of a skull coming out of the bottom of the original cut in the building—another child burial! This was a 4-5 year old that was buried with a shell with red pigment, hiding at the very bottom of the NW platform sequence.

Now I’m working in a lovely burned building in the south area, the location of Mellaart’s 1960s excavations. The building seems fairly elaborate (Neolithic column capitals! Red paint! Second story!) but I can’t get too attached because I’m headed back to Berkeley in a week. Hopefully we’ll have most of the collapse out of the building by then because we’re only digging a small strip of it—the rest goes into the section and the only reason we’re digging it is to step the large trench out for safety reasons. Still, I should have some pretty photos from the week to come.

I was having a coffee in Martha’s and suddenly figured out what was worrying me about the mindmap I posted this morning. It was the Interpretation branch not the Project Events branch that was in the wrong place. In fact, I realised that Interpretation (Recontextualization, Remix, Publication, Presentation, Performance) should not be a branch at all, since these are all forms of narratives (unless they are the narrative itself ie as an event). So I moved them to be with Interfaces, Narratives and Outerfaces:

Here is a larger version of this chart

Let me know what you think

To try to express this idea of the three layers in the path from database to narrative, I have re-drawn yet again our figure 6 of VAST 2009.

For a larger version of this chart

After the chat that Michael and I had on Monday and because I need to make a figure about LHotH for my Household Archaeology paper , I have worked on another mind-map of how we are configuring LHotH as Dastabase Narrtative in Manovich’s sense.

From my Household Archaeology article: “Manovich pointed out that the opposition of database and narrative is a symbiotic one. Databases have a data structure which contrasts to the algorithmic structure of a narrative. Endless narrative interfaces  can be drawn from the same database, as we are doing with the Last House on the Hill. The potential of the database narrative concept is the creation of a complex, fluid – even ephemeral – web of alternating interfaces/narratives, as Manovich himself created in his SoftCinema…….The archaeological project (BACH)  itself is considered the central node, the original event that brought together people, places, things and media, and gave origin to the complex network of information about the project. …..The narratives are drawn out of the database through the filter of the alternating perspectives or standpoints of people, places, things, and media, which enable the re-contextualizing and remixing of the content in the database.

To put the narratives that are drawn from the data into an interface (or more elegantly – “outerface”)  framework that is appropriate to the multiscalar study of social practice in Neolithic households and neighborhoods for which the BACH project itself was designed, groups of events have been identified at the core of the structure of the opus: the events in archaeological (Neolithic) time and the subsequent formation of the archaeological record, and the recent events linked to the BACH excavation project. Out of this structure an endless configuration of people, places and things can be created as vignettes or narratives, seen as juxtapositions of image and text or video montage or text alone.”

I really need you feedback on whether I have got this right, asap if poss since I have to send in the figures as of yesterday!

The next task is to create a figure – actually a set of  four figures, masquerading as one, thats show a narrative using the same data (F.634) created through each of the filter: people, places, things, and media.

I am rationalizing to myself that I am killing a number of birds with oine stone since – in addition to the Household Archaeology article – this has to be done for CIA and VAST as well as the projects as a whole.

I submitted the final version of my Archaeologies journal article today, through their digital editorial manager.  It is a reworked version of a paper I wrote for the World Archaeological Congress last year in Dublin and it will be my first official publication.  Many thanks to Krysta Ryzewski, the editor of the volume, for organizing the session and accepting my paper!  Also thanks to Ms. Lei-Leen Choo who lended her exacting eye to proofreading it and asking all the right questions about the content.

Already I can see the many ways in which the article is lacking and it feels dated even after only a year.  Heck, even the images that I included…the reconstruction houses on Okapi island don’t even look like that anymore!  It is probably good to be able to fix scholarship in time, but that doesn’t make it much more comfortable.  I hope Michael Shanks is kind in his introductory comments–fingers crossed. I am a bit uncomfortable with some of the traditional forms of publishing, but I was delighted to see Springer’s copyright policy:

Archaeologies: Journal of the World Archaeological Congress The copyright to this article is transferred to Springer (respective to owner if other than Springer and for U.S. government employees: to the extent transferable) effective if and when the article is accepted for publication. The copyright transfer covers the exclusive right to reproduce and distribute the article, including reprints, translations, photographic reproductions, microform, electronic form (offline, online) or any other reproductions of similar nature. An author may self-archive an author-created version of his/her article on his/her own website and his/her institution’s repository, including his/her final version; however he/ she may not use the publisher’s PDF version which is posted on www.springerlink.com. Furthermore, the author may only post his/her version provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer’s website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: “The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com”. Please use the appropriate DOI for the article (go to the Linking Options in the article, then to OpenURL and use the link with the DOI). Articles disseminated via www.springerlink.com are indexed, abstracted, and referenced by many abstracting and information services, bibliographic networks, subscription agencies, library networks, and consortia. The author warrants that this contribution is original and that he/she has full power to make this grant. The author signs for and accepts responsibility for releasing this material on behalf of any and all co-authors. After submission of this agreement signed by the corresponding author, changes of authorship or in the order of the authors listed will not be accepted by Springer.

The original publication (will be) available at www.springerlink.com.  Barring something horrible, it will be published in the December 2009 edition of Archaeologies.  Here’s a link to the self-archived author version, sans images:

(Re)Building Catalhoyuk: Changing Virtual Reality in Archaeology

I would love to get any and all feedback y’all had to offer on it.

I am cooking up a much more in-depth article, so watch this space!

I uploaded the above test clip for the longer machinima that I posted about a little while ago.  It took an immense amount of work to get this far, and this is only a tiny clip of a somewhat awkward avatar doing a single animation.  I used Jing for the video capture and downloaded Soundflower for the system audio redirect.

I think I’ve complained before about having a hard time finding a variety of avatars on Second Life.  Well, this lady is definitely in a different  mode than my usual avatar.  “Wearing” an identity like this one is deeply uncanny, and the reactions and perceptions of other people you meet in Second Life are absolutely different.  I decided to follow a fairly popular strain of visual interpretation at Çatalhöyük in dressing her as a goddess figurine in the bandeau that I made for a decidedly younger character.

Once again, the exercise of recreating this small scene raised more questions than it answered:

She’s weaving reeds, so it must be summer.  Were there cicadas?  Yes.  Why would she be doing this inside by firelight during the summer?  It would be excruciatingly hot and smoky.  What about her vision?  I’ve put her in a less than optimal situation for weaving, that’s for sure.   Why isn’t there anyone with her?  Could she hear other people?  Maybe sheep! We’ll add some sheep sounds. I think she’d be humming to herself.  But what sounds?

It’s a lot of interpretive responsibility, wearing these second skins.

Çatalhöyük in southern Turkey has been called the world’s oldest known city. The site consists of a town of many buildings that appears to have flourished between 8000 and 10000 years ago. Some of the buildings have surviving wall paintings, and it is one of these that is reproduced above. The orange, spotted object in the picture has since the 1960s been widely seen as the oldest surviving artistic representation of an erupting volcano.

The painting was uncovered by the British archaeologist James Mellaart, who discovered and excavated Çatalhöyük between 1958 and 1964. Mellaart interpreted the lower part of the picture as the close-packed buildings of the town of Çatalhöyük itself, and the orange shape in the upper part as the twin-peaked volcano Hasan Dagi, with an eruption in progress at the higher of its two cones. Hasan Dagi, a 3253m stratovolcano inactive since around 7500BC, lies about 140km east of the town. ‘A clearer picture of a volcano in eruption’, wrote Mellaart in his A Neolithic Town in Anatolia (1967), ‘could hardly have been painted’ (p. 176). In his ‘Excavations at Çatal Hüyük, 1963, Third Preliminary Report’, published in Anatolian Studies in 1964, Mellaart goes into detail (p. 55) about the depiction of the volcano:

This brings one to the spots on the mountain, the objects spurting out of the right-hand top, the ‘cloud’ of dots and strokes above (and to the right) of it and the lines extending from the base of the mountain. All these can be interpreted as the usual phenomena of a volcanic eruption: the rain of glowing volcanic bombs and red-hot rocks; the cloud of glowing particles above it and perhaps tongues of lava welling up from vents near the base of the mountain. It is known that the Central Anatolian volcanoes were active until the second millennium B.C. An ‘eye-witness’ painting of an early seventh millennium eruption of Hasan Dag is therefore certainly a possibility and in view of its economic importance a highly relevant subject to be recorded in a shrine.

The reference to the ‘economic importance’ of Hasan Dagi is an allusion to its role as the source of the obsidian that was traded by the inhabitants of Çatalhöyük.

The interpretation of this wall painting as a map showing the town and the erupting volcano has proved irresistible to archaeologists, historians of cartography, art historians, scholars of urban history and, not least, volcanologists. The picture is ‘a remarkable Neolithic portrayal of an active volcano, the earliest known visual record of a volcanic eruption’ says archaeologist Stephen L. Harris in the Encyclopedia of Volcanoes (1999), where it is also noted that the volcano appears to be ‘exhibiting only mild Strombolian activity’ (p. 1308). In the same work, volcanologist Haraldur Sigurdsson writes (p. 1319) of the Çatalhöyük image as the ‘earliest visual representation of volcanic eruption … it is very likely that this ancient painting represents an eruption of Hasan Dag’. The picture has been cited in modern volcanological works as evidence for the volcanic prehistory of the region, as in A. Karakhian et al, ‘Holocene-historical volcanism and active faults as natural risk factors for Armenia and adjacent countries’, Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research (2002) and A. Umran Dogan et al, ‘An isobaric–isenthalpic magma mixing model for the Hasan Dagi volcano, Central Anatolia, Turkey’, Bulletin of Volcanology (2008), and as an example of the socio-cultural importance of volcanoes through human history, as in Michael H. Ort et al, ‘Variable effects of cinder-cone eruptions on prehistoric agrarian human populations in the American southwest’, Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research (2008).

However, it seems that the ‘map’ of Çatalhöyük is no map and the ‘volcano’ is no volcano, according to an article by Cambridge archaeologist Stephanie Meece, ‘A bird’s eye view – of a leopard’s spots: the Çatalhöyük “map” and the development of cartographic representation in prehistory’, published in Anatolian Studies in 2006 (and available in full text from this link). Meece argues that the spotted orange shape interpreted by Melaart as a volcano is in fact a leopard skin, and that the chequered pattern in which he saw a plan of the town is just a chequered pattern. Leopards and leopard skins are both common decorative motifs at Çatalhöyük and at other Anatolian Neolithic sites, as are chequered patterns of this type. John Krygier discusses Çatalhöyük and Meece’s article, with many illustrations and references, at the Making Maps blog. He suggests the history of the Çatalhöyük ‘map’ is an example of cartocacoethes, ‘a mania, uncontrollable urge, compulsion or itch to see maps everywhere’.

In the light of Meece’s arguments the ‘volcano’ does look rather more like a leopard skin than it looks like Hasan Dag, which does not resemble the shape shown in the painting when viewed from Çatalhöyük and which was not the source of the obsidian used at this site, or indeed any ancient site yet identified, anyway. Mellaart himself believed initially that the orange shape in the picture was a leopard skin, and it was only later that he became convinced that he was looking at the earliest known picture of an erupting volcano, vibrantly and accurately depicted by the inhabitants of Çatalhöyük as a means of honouring the powerful natural force that loomed over their town and gave them their wealth in the form of obsidian.

References
A. Karakhanian, R. Djrbashian, V. Trifonov, H. Philip, S. Arakelian, A. Avagian, ‘Holocene-historical volcanism and active faults as natural risk factors for Armenia and adjacent countries’, Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, vol. 113, nos 1-2 (2002), pp. 319-344.
Stephanie Meece, ‘A bird’s-eye view – of a leopard’s spots: the Çatalhöyük “map” and the development of cartographic representation in prehistory’, Anatolian Studies, vol. 56 (2006), pp. 1-16 (link to full text available here).
James Mellaart, ‘Excavations at Çatal Hüyük, third preliminary report’, Anatolian Studies,vol. 14 (1964), pp. 39-120.
James Mellaart, Çatal Hüyük:A Neolithic Town in Anatolia (London: Thames & Hudson, 1967).
Michael H. Ort, Mark D. Elson, Kirk C. Anderson, Wendell A. Duffield, Terry L. Samples, ‘Variable effects of cinder-cone eruptions on prehistoric agrarian human populations in the American southwest’, Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, vol. 176, no. 3 (2008), pp. 363-376.
Haraldur Sigurdsson, Bruce Houghton, Steven R. McNutt, Hazel Rymer, John Stix (eds.), Encyclopedia of Volcanoes (San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 1999).
A. Umran Dogan, Meral Dogan, Attila Kilinc, Darren Locke, ‘An isobaric–isenthalpic magma mixing model for the Hasan Dagi volcano, Central Anatolia, Turkey’, Bulletin of Volcanology, vol. 70, no. 7 (2008), pp. 797-804.

This summer I will be joining Benjamin Porter’s team at the site of Dhiban in Jordan, excavating and doing some of that lovely digital documentation that comprises my dissertation.  This is a pretty big change, as I’ve been digging at Catalhoyuk for the last three years, but it’s a very welcome change.  Catalhoyuk is such a large project, and has so much extant scholarship that it’s a little hard to get your ideas in edgewise there.  I will miss the people and the lovely archaeology and it isn’t like it will be completely gone–I still need to write up my various projects from the site and go through with this semester’s Second Life project.  And I might stop by this summer on my way to Jordan.  We’ll see.

I’m struggling a little bit with my dissertation, but this is a semi-perpetual state for graduate study.  It probably wouldn’t be much of a dissertation without frustration and set-backs.  But I’m looking forward to digging in Dhiban, even if the work day starts at 4:30 in the morning (!) and there is no drinking allowed during the week (!!).

In other news, I started a tumblr blog called Middle Savagery (lite).  It’s just a collection of miscellaneous media scraps that I come across during the day.  I’m not very good at keeping more than one blog (indeed this one stumbles a bit sometimes) so we’ll see what happens with it.  Tumblr is nice because it’s a more informal way of sharing than fully structured blog posts and doesn’t pester your friends as much as updating on Facebook all of the time.  Anyway, here it is:

http://middlesavagery.tumblr.com/

Çatalhöyük, Turkey’s most famous Neolithic site, is one the oldest known areas of human settlement, animal domestication and wheat cultivation.

The Culture and Tourism Ministry’s Cultural Assets and Museums general manager, Orhan Düzgün, announced that the roof’s construction, which began in June of this year, had now been finished.

 The roof is made of specially laminated wood and will protect the historical site and the archaeological work going on there from damage resulting from exposure to the elements.

     The roof was constructed with an eye for aesthetics as well, in a design beneficial to both tourists and the archaeologists working the site.

     Çatalhöyük is a major tourist attraction as well as an archeological site, and    recent excavation on the Neolithic site, under the leadership of British professor of archeology Ian Hodder, began in 1993 and has continued intermittently ever since.

Discoveries made so far at the 9,000-year-old site include wall paintings, seals, and cooking and eating utensils decorated with various painted and carved figures. Except for its southern area, the site did not have any protection against the harsh weather conditions characteristic of the Central Anatolia region.

Photos are by Dave Minty:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30825760@N05/2920881031/

I’m happy to report that the Burning Çatalhöyük was considered a success! We soldiered on despite considerable language and technology barriers, including a point where Karl Harrison was trying to speak about the buildings and was completely frozen.  We had a lot of visitors throughout the day, and about 30 for the main event, with numbers dropping off as it got later in the day in the rest of the world.  The exhibit will remain up at least through January, and you can still visit by downloading the Second Life software and loading this URL:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Okapi/128/128/0

The day of the event I managed to upload a video of Michael House and Karl Harrison discussing the burning of Building 77,  which you can view on the large screen in-world, but  can also view on vimeo, linked above.

I’m so happy that people took a bit of time out of their day to come check out the burn.  Kris Hirst from Archaeology@about.com had an insightful review:

http://archaeology.about.com/b/2008/12/12/second-life-and-public-archaeology-burning-catalhoyuk.htm

Declan over at the Moore Groups Blog also visited, in larger-than-life-size form!

http://mooregroup.wordpress.com/2008/12/11/catalhoyuk-in-second-life/

I would like to ask that if you participated in Burning Çatalhöyük, or if you have since viewed the reconstruction on Okapi island, that you take this poll:

http://polldaddy.com/survey.aspx?id=c5393d48b2124280

Finally, I would like to thank the following for their help with Burning Çatalhöyük.  I couldn’t have done it without you! In no particular order:

Noah Wittman
Karl Harrison
Michael House
Lizzy Ha
Ruth Tringham
Jason Quinlan
Michael Ashley
Niema Razavian
The DeCal Students!
Dan E.
Burcu Tung
Daniel Bracewell

Last nights burning of Çatalhöyük in Second Life (SL) was a great event. Although I initially found it a little difficult to manoeuvre I was flying around the Island by the end of the event, and even did a little dancing after the gig. There’s a lot to see at the site (OKAPI Island in SL – http://slurl.com/secondlife/Okapi/128/128/0 – you’ll need the Second Life browser – for more see Colleens post here) and the reconstruction work carried out by the Berkeley team is fantastic. I can’t really comment on the tours as I was a little lost (maybe I should have actually stayed around the Orientation Island to learn how to get about) and late getting to each section.

Çatalhöyük burning, while Fat Dec watches

Dance Fat Dec, Dance

]]> http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/2008/12/04/burning-catalhoyuk/ Fri, 05 Dec 2008 01:56:46 +0000 colleenmorgan http://middlesavagery.wordpress.com/2008/12/04/burning-catalhoyuk/

Burning Çatalhöyük: A Virtual Public Archaeology Event hosted by UC Berkeley Students and Faculty
2PM-4:30PM Pacific Standard Time (10PM-12:30AM GMT or Universal Time)
December 10, 2008
Location: Okapi Island
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Okapi/128/128/0
(You must have the free Second Life browser)

Join us for Burning Çatalhöyük, a project developed by OKAPI, the Berkeley Archaeologists at Çatalhöyük, and the UC Berkeley DeCal program. Çatalhöyük on OKAPI Island, in development since 2006, is an exploration of the past and present of a 9,000 year old site located in present-day Turkey.  In this demonstration we intend to burn the existing models down in order to better understand the use of fire in Neolithic settlements.  In consultation with fire experts Karl Harrison and Ruth Tringham, and architecture expert Burcu Tung, a team of undergraduate apprentices have replicated the burning sequence of Building 77, a structure excavated in the summer of 2008.  OKAPI island also hosts reproductions of modern developments present at the site, including a water tower, Sadrettin’s café, the Chicken Shed and the nightly bonfire.

Remixing Activities:

(2-2:15)
Guided Tour of OKAPI Island by Ruth Tringham, (Professor of Anthropology, UC Berkeley, and Principal Investigator of Berkeley Archaeologists at Çatalhöyük) and the Remixing Çatalhöyük team.
(2:15-2:30)
Niema Razavian will introduce the work that the Fall 2008 Decal class has done on the island, and how this fits in with a broader UC Berkeley education.
(2:30-2:45)
Roland Saekow will demonstrate his teleportation system, to guide new visitors around the island.
(2:45-3:00)
Kira O’Connor will show the site datum she has constructed, and talk about how datums are used at archaeological sites in general.
(3:00-3:15)
Clark-Rossi Flores-Beyer will demonstrate the skeleton model he has managed to manipulate into a crouch position, in accordance with how people were buried at Çatalhöyük.  He will briefly discuss burial practices in the settlement.
(3:15-3:45)
Garrett Wagner and Raechal Perez will discuss their own reproductions of the interiors at Çatalhöyük, and how they decided to configure the space on their own.
(3:45-4:00)
Colleen Morgan (UC Berkeley PhD Candidate, excavator at Çatalhöyük) will wrap-up the program with a discussion of why virtual reconstructions of archaeological sites are important, and what Second Life can do to increase our understanding of the past.

What is Second Life?
Second Life is a 3-D virtual world created entirely by its residents. Okapi Island is owned and build by the OKAPI team (that’s us below!) and the Berkeley Archaeologists at Catalhoyuk.

Getting Started
To visit Okapi Island, you will need to create a user account and download the client software–both free.

To create an account, visit www.secondlife.com, click on Join (in the upper right corner) and follow the instructions. Note: You do not need a premium account to use Second Life or visit Okapi Island.

Next, download and install the Second Life client for your computer:
http://secondlife.com/community/downloads.php

Launch the Second Life client and enter your password. You will likely begin in Orientation Island. To visit Okapi Island, click Map, enter “Okapi” in search field and click Search. Alternatively, you can click on the following slurl (second life url) in your browser, and you will be transported there:

SLURL:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Okapi/128/128/0

Mekanda görülecek dört şey var: Örnek ev, müze ve iki korugan.

- Örnek ev: O zamanın evleri örnek alınarak yapılmış bir yapı. Dönem hayatı hakkında ip uçları veriyor.

- Müze: Tarihi eser yok. Fotoğraflar ve yazılarla, Çatalhöyük hakkında bilgiler verilmiş.

- Koruganlar: Kazıların yapıldığı alanları dış etkenlerden korumak maksatlı inşaa edilmiş iki yapı.

Gezi Notları:

- Arkeolojik kanıtlar o dönemde hiç savaş olmadığını gösteriyormuş.

- Dönemin bir ticari hayatı olduğu, Akdeniz ve Kızıldenizden gelen deniz kabuklarından anlaşılıyormuş.

- Hiç dini amaçlı kullanılan yapı yahut kamu ilgili bir binaya rastlanmamış. Bu da ayrı ve ayrıcalıklı bir dini sınıf veya yönetici sınıfın olmadığının bir göstergesi olarak düşünülüyor.

Çatalhöyük Fotoğrafları İçin Tıkla

 NASIL GİDİLİR?

“Konya’dan Çatalhöyük’e gitmek için iki yol var. Ancak ikisinde de merkezden Çatalhöyük tabelası bulmayı ummayın. Biri uzun ve daha kolay bulabileceğiniz asfalt yol. Konya’dan Karaman’a giderken 30. km’de, İçeri Çumra’dan tabela Çatalhöyük diye yazar, sola sapınca 45. km’de Çumra ilçesine varılır. Buradan Çatalhöyük levhalarını takip ederek, 12 km sonra ören yerine varılır. 36 km’lik daha kısa olan diğer yol ise, yine asfalt ve bilenler genellikle bu yolu tercih ediyorlar. Saraçoğlu Mahallesi’nden devam ederek, Erler köyü ve Abditolu köyünden geçilir. Çatalhöyük’e en yakın köy olan Küçükköy’den sağa dönünce, 5 km. sonra kazı alanına varılır.

Valilikten Mevlana Müzesine doğru giderken, ilk ışıklardan sağa Aziziye Caddesine döndük. Daha sonra caddenin Garaj caddesi ile kesiştiğinde, sola dönülerek, Garaj caddesinden devam ettik. Garaj caddesi ikiye ayrıldığında soldan Büyükkum Köprü caddesine geçtik, belli bir müddet sonra cadde Saraçoğlu caddesine bağlanıyor.. Gürezgah değiştirmeden yol boyunca 30 km. kadar sonra Küçükköye ulaştık. Köy içinden ayrılan yoldan sağa dönülerek 3-4 kilometre gidildikten sonra Çatalhöyük’e vardık.

Yukardaki ilk paragrafı bir başka sayfadan aldım. Altındakini yola çıkmadan önce not almıştım. Biraz karışık gelebilir; ama bir kaç kere sorarak yolu bulabilirsiniz. Tamam tabela sıkıntısı var ama öyle “hiç tabela yok!” da denilemez. Konya’dan Çatalhöyük’e giden yol asvalf ve düzgün. Etraf haliyle bozkır. Yolda sonbaharın renklerini ancak Küçükköy’e girerken görebiliyorsunuz.

I’m slowly getting better with the building tools in Second Life.  The platform’s texture is actually from the wrong building, and the horns are “concrete” textured, but it’s a start.  I have to make the features of the building before I can burn them, right?  Here’s Jason Quinlan’s photo of the real thing:

I spent a lot of the weekend writing about Second Life; it was nice to be able to actually do some building.

In other news, me and two of my friends (and fellow Berkeley graduate students) started a photoblog:

http://ancoda.wordpress.com/

Holy crap!

What to do when one of the few iconic prehistoric maps isn’t a map?

The 6200 BC “map” of Çatalhöyük in Turkey, complete with erupting “volcano” in the background, prefaces many discussions of maps and mapping.  It is used to situate contemporary mapping as part of a long trajectory – “humans have always made maps.”

Alas, an important characteristic of any prehistoric “map” is that we can only speculate as to the intent of the creator. Yes we can look at some squiggly lines and say “hey, that looks like a map” but, of course, that depends on a modern sense of what a map is.  And, possibly, a tendency for us to see maps where there are none.

Indeed, many prehistoric “maps” may be the result of cartocacoethes – a mania, uncontrollable urge, compulsion or itch to see maps everywhere. Map simulacra like chipped paint: a stone China: a mud puddle Australia: and “geographic tongue:” - a medical condition that “looks like a map.”

See also the many prehistoric squiggles (below left) illustrated in Catherine Delano Smith’s “Cartography in the Prehistoric Period in the Old World” in Brian Harley and David Woodward’s The History of Cartography, Volume One (Chicago, 1987, pp. 54-101).

Part of me really wants these marks chipped in stone to be maps. But there does not seem to be much, if any, evidence that they are.

Why do we want mapping to stretch back into prehistory?  If maps didn’t exist in prehistory, and were scarce prior to 1500, does that somehow undermine the importance of contemporary maps and mapping? What drives this cartocacoethes?

The Çatalhöyük “map” provides a great case study of the perils of prehistoric map hunting.

The Çatalhöyük map was first brought to attention in a 1964 article entitled “Excavations at Çatal Hüyük, 1963, Third Preliminary Report” by James Mellaart (Anatolian Studies 14 (1964, pp. 39-119).

A map of the excavations (right) shows the area allegedly represented on the “map.”

Mellaart’s 1967 book Çatal Hüyük: A Neolithic Town in Anatolia claimed that the Neolithic Anatolians at Çatalhöyük created the World’s first map, and fame for the map followed.

“The oldest town plan in existence” says Jeremy Harwood in To the Ends of the Earth: 100 Maps that Changed the World. “The oldest authenticated map in the world” says J.B. Harley in the UNESCO Courier. Of maps, it is, says Catherine Delano Smith in Imago Mundi, “the oldest known.”  “The Catal Huyuk map … is perhaps 2000 years older than the oldest known writing system and 4000 or more years older than the oldest known alphabetical writing system…” says James Blaut in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. Heck, I even towed the party line in my introductory maps course lecture on the history of mapping.

Whoa, folks.

Archaeologist Stephanie Meece recently published an article in Anatolian Studies questioning the Çatalhöyük map’s status as a map.  The original “map” wall painting is shown below, in a photo from Mellaart’s 1964 article.  Most people have only seen the redrawing of the “map” with “volcano” (above) – not the original image.

In her article “A Bird’s Eye View – Of A Leopard’s Spots: The Çatalhöyük ‘Map’ and the Development of Cartographic Representation in Prehistory” (Anatolian Studies 56, 2006, pp. 1-16; full text here) Meece interrogates the claim that the particular wall painting found at Çatalhöyük is a map with erupting volcano in the background.  Meece writes (in an email exchange):

…one of the take-home messages of the article was to go beyond the tendency to identify the images in isolation, based on a personal recognition of similarity. I wanted to emphasise the need to understand the paintings in their contexts, as part of a generations-old, well developed cultural tradition; taking one image out of its context and pointing out its superficial resemblance to something else is a bane of archaeologists, and leads to von Daniken and his spaceships.

The “volcano” in the wall painting (below top; redrawing, bottom left) was originally interpreted by Mellaart as a leopard-skin costume, similar to other leopard skin images found at Çatalhöyük (bottom right). Meece writes:

In several later paintings, notably the large so-called hunting scenes, human figures are depicted wearing stiff ‘skirts’ and head coverings that are painted with simple dots. The skirts are conventionally depicted as two wide triangles connected at their base, with two sharp points.  They are twice as long as they are wide, and are filled in with dark-coloured dots, similar to the appearance of a stretched, prepared leopard skin.

The lower part of the wall painting, the “map,” does resemble the general layout of houses at Çatalhöyük, with storerooms surrounding a central room.  Nevertheless, claims Meece,

These geometric designs below the leopard skin are better understood as part of the very common (though their abundance is under-represented in the published discussions of the paintings at the site) tradition of painted panels, placed along the lower registers of house walls.  The ‘map’ pattern is entirely consistent with the standard range of motifs used in other buildings: a cell-like structure, repeated in horizontal lines, often with borders or frames enclosing each cell.

Meece examines an impressive array of evidence surrounding the painting and concludes

… looking closely at the wall painting, and situating it within the corpus of art objects at Çatalhöyük, it is clear that the original interpretation is much more likely to be the correct one.  The painting is unlikely to be a map of Çatalhöyük, but rather depicts a leopard skin in the upper register, and the lower section is one of the very typical geometric patterns commonly found at the site.

Oh well.

In a forthcoming article entitled “Maps” Denis Wood and I argue

… if prehistoric humans did make maps – which is doubtful – they were neither made often nor in very many places; they likely served broadly pictorial, religious, ritual, symbolic, and/or magical functions; and their production was discontinuous with the practice of mapmaking encountered in historic populations.

As previously mentioned, while I’m not writing, I’ve been working on OKAPI island in Second Life.  I wanted an area where we could package and give away textures from our upcoming events so that people could recreate any part of Çatalhöyük in their own Second Life reconstructions.  Naturally, I chose to recreate Sadrettin’s on-site cafe, where excavators (and brave lab people!) go for an ice cream during the break between excavation and paperwork.  Unfortunately I still haven’t been able to create an adequate ice cream freezer, and the plants are off, but…well, it’s Second Life.

If only the ocean were really that close to the site!  Here’s a shot of the cafe taken by Mia Ridge (of Open Objects fame) for comparison:

Come and check it out, if you’re so inclined:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Okapi/128/128/0

I’ve been working on the OKAPI island in Second Life pretty hard recently, with the addition of Sadrettin’s cafe, the water tower complete with little owl, and some cosmetic fixes that I’ve been meaning to do for a while now.  I’m also happy to report that Karl Harrison will be helping us BURN Çatalhöyük DOWN at the end of the semester.  Good stuff.

More to the point though, is that there needs to be Efes in Second Life, as it is an integral part of the Çatalhöyük experience (for better or worse!).  I was looking around for good photos of the beer labels and found these masterful constructions:

There’s a deep and obvious kinship here, one that hits me right at home:

Because Art is a cowboy hat, made out of a beer carton, according to the headline of the Austin American-Statesman, flagship newspaper of the capital of Texas.

(this image is downright stolen from my brilliant friend Joolie, who has much more to say on the topic)

Nie przyjechaliśmy tu na wypoczynek. Szkoda czasu w tak unikatowym miejscu. Oddajmy się zatem zwiedzaniu tego niezwykłego regionu Turcji. Zacznijmy od Catalhoyuk, który jest jednym z najstarszych miast na świecie. Niegdyś był to ważny ośrodek kulturowy w Turcji. Dziś ważne stanowisko archeologiczne przedstawiające osadę z czasów neolitu założoną między 7400 a 7300 r.p.n.e.
Po drodze Konya. Niegdysiejsza stolica Turcji, w której słynny XIII- wieczny turecki filozof Mevlana stworzył teorię o połączeniu człowieka z Bogiem za sprawą wirującego tańca derwiszów. Jest tu więc Zielony Grobowiec Mevlany, do którego przylega Muzeum Mevlany oraz Dom Derwiszów.
W końcu Kapadocja- niezwykłe i unikatowe miejsce na mapie nie tylko Turcji. Słynne tufowe kominy  a wewnątrz nich domy i kościoły dekorowane freskami. Formacje skalne tworzą przedziwne twory: zobaczyć można więc np. grzyba czy wielbłąda. To wszystko i wiele innych tworów składa się na księżycowy krajobraz miejsca. Zachęcam też do wizyty w skalnym mieście Uchisar. Warto zobaczyć bizantyjskie kościoły w Goreme będące częścią Parku Narodowego Goreme. Jest ich ponad 300. Kościoły wpisane zostały w 1985 roku na Listę Światowego Dziedzictwa UNESCO. A niedaleko stąd znajduje się karawanseraj seldżucki dla podróżujących karawan. Niegdyś przebiegał tędy słynny Jedwabny Szlak.

Niezwykłą atrakcją w Kapadocji jest przelot balonem. Przelot kosztuje około 600 PLN i trwa mniej więcej godzinę. Jest to niepowtarzalny spektakl o wschodzie słońca a widoki są naprawdę urzekające.

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