Konya Plain, Türkiye · 5 min
Çatalhöyük: Life in a 9,000-Year-Old Town
Çatalhöyük in central Anatolia: houses entered by ladder, early pottery and grain storage, and what new research on DNA and bread tells us.
Rising from the Konya Plain in central Anatolia are two grassy mounds that hide one of the best-preserved Neolithic towns ever excavated. Çatalhöyük was lived in around 9,000 years ago. Its people built their houses wall to wall, entered them through the roof, and kept their grain in clay bins.
It is also where the story of early pottery and household storage becomes tangible. This article explains how the town worked and what has been learned in recent years.
What was Çatalhöyük?
UNESCO inscribed the Neolithic Site of Çatalhöyük on the World Heritage List in 2012. It consists of two mounds. The taller eastern mound holds 18 levels of Neolithic occupation between 7400 and 6200 BC, according to UNESCO. The western mound is later and belongs to the Chalcolithic. Other publications use slightly different dates.
UNESCO calls the site important evidence of the shift from settled villages to larger agglomerations, kept going in the same place for over 2,000 years. Digs in the 1960s made headlines worldwide. A long international project led by Ian Hodder ran from 1993 to 2018, and Turkish-led teams have continued the work since.
Why did people enter their houses through the roof?
Çatalhöyük had no streets. Houses were built back to back, and people walked across roofs and climbed down a ladder through an opening. UNESCO lists this layout among the site's exceptional features, together with wall paintings, reliefs and sculptures.
What was life like inside a house?
According to the Çatalhöyük Research Project, interior walls were plastered smooth, raised platforms ran along the main room and served for sitting, working and sleeping, and ovens and hearths stood along one wall. Storage bins are often found in the corners.
Many houses also held burials beneath the plaster floors, often under platforms and hearths. The main room was a multipurpose space where cooking, storing, sleeping and remembering the dead all happened together.
What did people eat, and where did they keep it?
Grain was central. In 2014, Polish archaeologists reported the largest quantity of Neolithic grain ever found preserved in the Middle East, in a house occupied about 8,200 years ago. In a small room of roughly 7 square metres they found four clay containers, each holding barley. Almost 5 kilograms of grain was recovered from each of two containers studied.
An extinct species of wheat was also present, and the room's walls had been whitened on the inside. The store had burned, which is what preserved the charred grain.
It is a clear picture of household storage: clay bins in a dedicated room of the house.
When did pottery appear at Çatalhöyük?
Pottery is found in all of the site's building levels, but not at first in large numbers. A summary on the Ministry of Culture and Tourism's archaeological directory says that in the lower levels it rarely exceeded half a dozen pots per house, and that many pots seem to copy stone and wooden vessels. One summary dates the ceramics of the lower levels to the later 7th millennium BC, among the earliest in the Near East. Exact dates vary between sources.
Across Upper Mesopotamia, central Anatolia and the Lakes District, pottery became a regular technology in the early 7th millennium BC, according to work published in Documenta Praehistorica. A study of Çatalhöyük pots found reed chaff and fragments of mudbrick mixed into the clay.
Large, purpose-made storage jars are better known from later periods. Çatalhöyük shows an earlier stage: containers of clay, kept in the home.
What is new at Çatalhöyük?
Bread (2024). In March 2024, archaeologists reported a hand-sized, spongy mass found in a building they call Mekan 66, with wheat, barley and pea seeds nearby. Dated to about 6600 BC, it is recognised by Guinness World Records as the oldest fermented bread. Ali Umut Türkcan, head of the excavation, was quoted as calling it the oldest bread in the world.
DNA (2025). In June 2025 a study in Science analysed some 400 skeletons and used 130 ancient genomes. METU says it brought together 47 experts from Türkiye and 10 other countries over 12 years. Early on, people buried together were often biologically related. In later periods, those buried together were frequently not related.
A museum show (2026). From 24 July 2026 the Konya Archaeology Museum has displayed 322 Çatalhöyük objects. Hürriyet Daily News lists a plaster head inlaid with obsidian, a marble mace head and a rare ceramic vessel with human faces on opposite sides.
Did women rule Çatalhöyük?
The 2025 study found that maternal lineage predominated in household organisation. Women and girls buried together were more often related, while men appear to have come from other lineages. Coverage of the study, such as the University of Bonn's, cautions that this points to female-centred households, not necessarily to rule by women.
Why does Çatalhöyük matter today?
It gives a rare, detailed view of how ordinary households organised settled life in one of the earliest large communities: shared walls, storage, cooking, burial. The essentials were simple: a place for grain, a clay container, a hearth.
Key facts
- Çatalhöyük is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (2012) on the Konya Plain, with two mounds.
- UNESCO dates the eastern mound's 18 Neolithic levels to 7400–6200 BC.
- Houses were built back to back and entered through the roof; many held burials under the floors.
- Four clay containers with barley, in a house occupied about 8,200 years ago, show household grain storage.
- Pottery is found in every building level but was scarce at first; sources differ on exact dates.
- A 2024 bread find, dated to about 6600 BC, is recognised by Guinness World Records.
- A 2025 Science study of 130 genomes points to female-centred household organisation.
No piece in our atelier comes from a site like this; ours are ethnographic household objects. But Çatalhöyük is a good reminder that a clay vessel for keeping what matters close at hand is one of the oldest ideas in Anatolia, and a handmade jar in a modern home still speaks to it.
Sources
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Neolithic Site of Çatalhöyük
- History Hit: Çatalhöyük history and facts
- Çatalhöyük Research Project: current excavations
- Çatalhöyük Research Project: Çatalhöyük Guidebook
- Hürriyet Daily News: Konya museum unveils 322 Çatalhöyük artifacts (July 2026)
- Middle East Technical University: "Female-centered" and communal, genomics study reveals lifeways in ancient Anatolian village (Science, June 2025)
- Stockholm University: Two new papers in Science, Anatolian life, female lineages and travelling ideas (26 June 2025)
- University of Bonn: Was the Neolithic settlement at Çatalhöyük a matriarchate? (27 June 2025)
- Guinness World Records: Oldest fermented bread
- Turkish Minute: World's oldest bread discovered in Çatalhöyük (11 March 2024)
- Science in Poland: Poles discovered an over 8 thousand years old grain storage in Turkey
- Archaeology magazine: Intact Grain Stores Unearthed at Çatalhöyük (22 January 2014)
- Ministry of Culture and Tourism, TAED archaeological settlements directory: Çatalhöyük pottery summary
- Clues of production for the Neolithic Çatalhöyük (central Anatolia) pottery
- Documenta Praehistorica: Ulucak Höyük, the pottery emergence in Western Anatolia