Unearthing the Burial Customs and Social Structure at Çatalhöyük

Clark Larsen, Distinguished Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Chair, Department of Anthropology, is part of an international team of archaeologists and other specialists, conducting research on social structures at an ancient settlement in central Turkey dating to 9000 years ago. Their findings, recently published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, suggest that the people living at the settlement were communal rather than kin or family-based.

The ancient settlement of Çatalhöyük is one of the world’s largest and oldest settlements, covering 26 acres. Its people — estimated to be as many as 10,000 — would have made a living by growing crops and herding domesticated animals.

When archaeologists first dug at the site in the 1950s and '60s, they found that inhabitants of Çatalhöyük buried their dead beneath the floors of mud-brick houses. To figure out how the buried humans were related, scientists tried — unsuccessfully, to extract DNA from the skeletons. Larsen and his colleagues analyzed the next best thing: the size and shape of their teeth. Since people who are related should have similarities in tooth morphology, the researchers compared the ancient dental remains of 266 individuals from the site. What they found was that the people buried beneath the floor were, in general, not related to each other.

Their results support one idea scientists have put forth: that Çatalhöyük society was determined by membership in houses in which a group of people passed down rights and resources.

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