Isotopes and Images: Fleshing out Bodies at ...

Isotopes and Images: Fleshing out Bodies at Çatalhöyük

Jessica Pearson & Lynn Meskell

Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory ISSN 1072-5369 J Archaeol Method Theory DOI 10.1007/s10816-013-9184-5

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Author's personal copy J Archaeol Method Theory DOI 10.1007/s10816-013-9184-5

Isotopes and Images: Fleshing out Bodies at Çatalhöyük Jessica Pearson & Lynn Meskell

# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013

Abstract For 20 years, archaeological approaches to the body have tended to focus upon evidence confined to specific areas of expertise. Such scholarly separations are understandable due to archaeological specialisations in osteology or figurines, burial practices or stable isotope ratios. Here, we provide a multi-stranded data analysis of the archaeological body at Çatalhöyük using data from stable isotope analysis, physical anthropology, figural representation and the burial assemblage. Using these diverse datasets dialectically, we suggest that our analysis offers more rigorous perspectives on ancient bodies and embodiment and that our interpretations are reinforced by the variation and scale of evidence employed. Recent research at Çatalhöyük underscores a general lack of gender differentiation in health, lifestyle and diet but does provide evidence for age differentiation. For example, the isotope data reveal that younger adults consumed different foods than older adults. This pattern accords well with a particular attention to age in the burial assemblage; older individuals accrued the most diverse and biographical burial assemblages. New studies of anthropomorphic figurines from the site reveal an emphasis on depicting fleshy, aging, non-gendered bodies that might signify a concern with old age and survival that serves to challenge older notions of a Mother Goddess cult. We suggest that the Çatalhöyük inhabitants attached a specific significance to flesh in their material world, which they used to signify age and maturity, and that this challenges older notions about matriarchy, gender hierarchies and the privileging of female fertility. Keywords Figurines . Stable isotope analysis . Maturity . Diet . Neolithic . Çatalhöyük

J. Pearson (*) Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3GS, UK e-mail: [email protected] L. Meskell Stanford Archaeology Centre, Department of Anthropology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA

Author's personal copy Pearson and Meskell

The aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh Lucian Freud

Introduction For two decades, archaeological approaches to the body have tended to focus upon evidence confined to specific areas of expertise, such as physical anthropology (Agarwal and Glencross 2011; Larsen 1999; Roberts and Manchester 2010), material culture and bodily treatments (Agarwal and Glencross 2011; Larsen 1999; Roberts and Manchester 2010), representation (Kus 1992; Loren 2001; Nanoglou 2008; Rautman 2000; Yates 1993; Yates and Nordbladh 1990) and theoretical perspectives (Joyce 2005; Meskell 1996, 1999; Thomas 2004). Such separations in scholarship reflect archaeological specialisation and the subsequent focus on particular types of archaeological evidence, whether human osteology or figurines, burial practice or stable isotope ratios. While some areas of bioarchaeology have become more ‘social’ through the consideration of human remains as material culture (Geller 2008; Sofaer 2006; White 2005), little progress has been made with non-visual skeletal evidence. This is especially true of stable isotope analysis, a tool used to reconstruct ancient diet from signatures of meals that are left behind in human bone long after food was eaten. Here, we combine very different archaeological evidence and techniques relating to the body at Neolithic Çatalhöyük, Turkey (7400–6000 Cal BC); palaeodietary reconstruction through stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis and bodily representation through figurines, building installations and the burial assemblage. Çatalhöyük was discovered in the 1950s and excavated between 1961 and 1965 by Mellaart (1962) and more recently by Hodder (2005). The site, inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2012, is well known for its agglomerated architecture with rooftop entry, elaborate wall paintings, plastered reliefs and bucrania (Fig. 1). A large number of figurines have been recovered including those that depict corpulent individuals. Here, we argue that figurine analysis needs to be integrated not only within material culture studies but within altogether different analytical fields such as faunal analysis, isotope analysis and bioarchaeology (Martin and Meskell 2012; Pearson and Meskell in press) and to employ techniques like CT scanning, XRF or spectrographic analysis (Clark 2009; Forouzan, et al. 2012; Insoll, et al. 2012). At Çatalhöyük and other prehistoric sites, figurines are routinely incorporated into excavational analyses, specifically spatial analyses and work on figurine densities (Halperin 2009; Lopiparo and Hendon 2006; Meskell, et al. 2008; Nakamura and Meskell 2013a; Nakamura 2004). Once interpreted as evidence for a Mother Goddess cult (Gimbutas 1989; Mellaart 1967), new studies suggest other possible readings about the significance of flesh, aging, maturity and longevity (Nakamura and Meskell 2009). Anthropomorphic ‘figurines were important because they were the habitual presentation of the human body’ (Bailey 2005; p. 123). They saturated communities with specific images of the human body and that continued presence must have been formative in developing notions of embodiment and being. However, it is no longer viable to study figurines solely as an isolated category, what Bailey (2005; p. 13) has termed ‘figurine essentialism’. These concerns are also reflected in the burial assemblages, where age and

Author's personal copy Isotopes and Images: Fleshing out Bodies at Çatalhöyük

Fig. 1 Plan of Çatalhöyük, Turkey. Courtesy of the Çatalhöyük Research Project, 2012

maturity rather than gender is the structuring principle (Nakamura and Meskell 2013a). Such social rules would have been long lived and would have required regular maintenance and reinforcement in social settings, including household activities and commensality. Stable isotope evidence of diet directly links individuals and their bodies by cataloguing long-term regulations about food consumption through which individuals and groups invested in bodies.

Flesh as a Social Fabric ‘For the individual and the group’, Turner writes (2008; p. 40) ‘the body is simultaneously an environment (part of nature) and a medium of the self (part of culture)’. Using this approach, we can consider the body at Çatalhöyük as a landscape around which the bodily environment (need, survival and reproduction) and the bodily self (desire, taste and aesthetics) must have been negotiated and communicated using various media. Accepting this division forces us to consider an apparent dualism represented by two extremes as follows: the ‘imaged body’ generated by sculpting and painting with natural materials into the desired human forms and the ‘physical body’, the product of genetics, diet and labour. Yet despite their separation, both are shaped through social interaction and life experience, both are materialized, and both lie at the intersection of the natural and cultural, thus illustrating their inherent comparability. The consumption of food at Çatalhöyük would have represented a significant investment in the body, one which is identifiable by stable isotope analysis of physical bodies, and as such has the potential to reveal more than just the


biological status (diet and health) of the skeleton (e.g. Fuller et al. 2010; Lösch et al. 2006). If food is also a metaphor as White (2005) suggests, then isotope measurements of human bones provide a summary of these metaphors that accumulate over the period of bone formation (around a decade or more). Therefore, the adoption of the adage ‘You are what you eat’ by practitioners of stable isotope analysis relates not just to the biochemical makeup of the Çatalhöyük body, but also to the nuanced perspective that Brillat-Savarin (1825) and Feuerbach (1842) originally intended. Archaeologists, however, tend to look to material culture or biological anthropology to provide cues about the physical body, rather than at the data derived from combining the two, which has been true also of Çatalhöyük until recently. Together, these two domains can provide a holistic perspective that allows a consideration of the impact of environment and the self upon the fleshed body, thereby providing a more robust evidentiary base for understanding persons and bodies as environments at Çatalhöyük. Fleshing out past bodies assumes the existence of an initial framework, a social skeleton, around which corporeality is constituted. Physical bodies are built upon a bony framework and are fleshed out through muscle and fat; elements strongly correlated with diet and formed from protein and lipids in food. This social skeleton is not static, however, because it must be maintained and may be modified throughout the life course. The physical body is, thus, created through diet, but modified through activity, posture (Molleson 1994), enhanced though bodily modifications (Haour and Pearson 2005) and wearing personal ornaments. This physical body is unmade through deprivation (Lösch et al. 2006), labour (Sofaer Derevenski 2000) and ultimately through burial rituals, in particular those practices that have involved removal of the head (Andrews et al. 2005), thus demonstrating the embeddedness of the physical body within both natural and cultural domains. In the representational sphere too, a bodily framework exists that constitutes a theoretical skeleton, which is formed using a mental blueprint of predetermined size before production, since the scale and proportions of representational bodies, as well as their overall size, must be decided before they can be made. At Çatalhöyük, we find that images and things are intentionally made, remade, rejuvenated, repeated, discarded and destroyed, indicating that, like the physical body, they are also not static entities (Meskell 2007). The lived body is built from food. Protein in food, a poor source of energy (Speth 1983; Stefansson 1932), is used to build proteinaceous body tissues (bone, muscle, hair and nails). In the presence of adequate protein in the diet, the human body deposits muscle. Lipids and carbohydrates consumed are metabolised for energy, allowing the body to perform activities, but where energy ingested exceeds energy spent, the body deposits the excess as adipose fat. Only through the consumption of fats and sugars, therefore, could the bodies at Çatalhöyük be enlarged beyond their musculoskeletal framework. If calorie-rich food was scarce or food was strictly shared, the ability to produce corpulence is restricted. Eating particular foods, therefore, creates specific physical body shapes and illustrates how food plays a central role in the amplification of the social skeleton and the constitution of corporeality. Similarly, even if calorie-rich foods were available, when these are regularly consumed in excess, they have deleterious effects on health and longevity making such a diet unsustainable (Turner 2008).


Communities may consume a distinctive or prestige food because of a supernatural property often relating to social health and wellbeing, which frequently has an underlying biological rationale. Fattening foods are often considered in this fashion. In contemporary rural Jamaica, for example, Sobo (1997) details how, amongst the community of the parish of Portland, body shape relates to ideas of social connectedness. Thin bodies represent the lack of social connectedness, whereas fatter bodies indicate a strong social network, a capacity for sharing and are directly correlated with happiness and health. These bodies are not fixed, however, since they become thinner when relationships breakdown. It is not clear at what point in history that humans understood the connection between food and corpulence or that people consumed particular foods to deliberately generate a particular physical image. Therefore, we suggest that the inherent vulnerability and precariousness of the body as lived (Van Wolputte 2004) might be mitigated, ameliorated or overcome through visual and material repertoires. At Çatalhöyük, we suggest the preoccupation with rendering flesh and the concomitant ideas of aging, maturity and longevity is materialized in the figural record (Nakamura and Meskell 2009), but also reflected in the burial assemblage (Nakamura and Meskell 2013b) and human remains themselves.

Building Bodies at Çatalhöyük Some potent examples of this recognition of bodily vulnerability and precariousness can be found in the treatment of particular bodies after death at Çatalhöyük. Given the practice of intramural burial at the site and evidence of the particular type of generational circulation and manipulation of bodies, we can say that the inhabitants were very familiar with bodily decay, physical partibility and the fragility of human remains. Various cultural strategies were employed to ameliorate these physical realities; the most obvious being the enhancement of the dead body through substances like plaster. Just as walls were repeatedly plastered and built up in layers to give them a new skin, so too were skeletal remains. In building 49, a middle-aged female (sk. 14441) was buried with plaster applied to the lower legs, both feet, the lower left arm and right hand. Some of these bones were entirely encased in plaster. In the same building, a child was also buried with plaster on the legs and feet. But the most dramatic example of this technique is the plastered skull (Hodder 2006) from building 42, showing multiple layers of plaster applied to flesh out the life-like appearance of the head as a living, not deceased, person (Hodder 2007). Given the number of plasterings, we can say that this skull likely was in circulation for a lengthy time. This concern with flesh as a living substance, mimicked by smoothed plasters, was a preoccupation that crossed the species divide as well. For example, in building 52, there is a bench with attached plastered horns and a bucrania that would have been attached to the wall (Bogdan 2005). Productions such as these evoked a life-like quality for perpetuity with the addition of plaster and shaping. Both clay and plaster could have symbolized flesh, the former specifically for figurines and the latter for house installations and the walls or ‘skins’ of houses, as well as animal and human re-fleshing and revivifying. The colour, texture, softness, sheen, plasticity and ability to layer and smooth must have made plaster an evocative material. Given the qualities of plaster—that it protects, transforms and fortifies an


underlying substructure—it is tempting to view the practice of plastering in terms of maintaining, building up, and indeed ‘enfleshing’ (Meskell 2008). Plaster provides the possibility to transform an individual beyond recognition, and yet the use of plaster on the skull at Çatalhöyük is modest, suggesting a focus on reconstruction rather than transformation, a point also noted concerning the plastered skulls of Jericho (Fletcher et al. 2008). Figurines, plastered bucrania and animal remains, as well as plastered skulls all underwrite the tension between fleshed and skeletal bodies, which are mediated by practices such as plastering bucrania, human skulls and figurine production. An evocative example of this tension is apparent in a headless figurine (12,401.x7, Fig. 2) that depicts an articulated skeleton on the back and a corpulent female with

Fig. 2 Figuring 12401.X7, showing a fleshed front (a) and skeletonised back (b). Photo courtesy of the Çatalhöyük Research Project and Jason Quinlan


large breasts and stomach on the front. This figurine can be interpreted as representing that tension between flesh and bone and their attendant, complex associations with life, survival and vitality, and emphasising that these figural bodies are indeed made, modified and unmade. Figurine makers sought to reconstitute the living body through plastering and painting, thus improving upon the bony scaffolding of bodies after death (Meskell 2008). This view is further bolstered by evidence of the use of red paint, particularly with human skulls and their circulation after death. Red paint was also noted on the headless figurine described above. Taken together, these practices may be testament to a material concern for co-producing and rendering permanent ancestors by again improving upon the frailties of flesh. Flesh would seem to be a valuable substance, one that seems to play a pivotal role in the life history of bodies at Çatalhöyük, whether human or animal. The question is how does the flesh of the imaged individual relate to the flesh of the lived individual, and how can we evaluate this through the archaeological record? Rather than consider whether individuals represented within the material culture at Çatalhöyük are reflections of real people, a central question is whether physical bodies were able to reproduce the imaged bodies? Because flesh is built from the food we eat, isotope analysis allow us to reconstruct which foods may have enhanced (or attempted to) corpulence and whether diet varied according to sex, age or other social structure (Barrett and Richards 2004; Bentley et al. 2007). Nitrogen isotope data provide information about the varying proportions of meat and plants that people ate as part of their regular diet allowing us to identify which foods were involved (DeNiro and Epstein 1981; Hedges and Reynard 2007). Relatively high nitrogen isotope ratios would suggest greater consumption of higher trophic level foods (animal protein). Lower nitrogen isotope ratios would indicate greater consumption of lower trophic level foods (plant protein). Since corpulence cannot be generated through lean animal protein consumption, which results in relatively high nitrogen isotope ratios (see Speth 1983; Stefansson 1932 for discussion of this), relatively low nitrogen isotope ratios should, therefore, point to significant consumption of plant resources and the much greater potential for the deposition of unused calories as adipose fat, whether this was deliberate or not. The site’s general socioeconomic practices, as reconstructed through charred plant remains and animal bones, indicate that fat and protein were acquired predominantly from domestic sheep and domestic/wild cattle and smaller contributions from equids, pigs and birds (Russell and Martin 2005). Plant protein was provided mostly by domestic wheat but also barley and lentil. These plants would have provided a significant amount of carbohydrates too, alongside that supplied from fruits such as hackberries (Fairbairn et al. 2005). The degree to which individuals consumed these resources can be inferred by their isotope ratios. Carbon and nitrogen isotope measurement were undertaken on all adults, and where possible from fauna in middens associated with the houses, beneath which the dead were buried (Pearson 2013). Criteria used to establish age, sex and other aspects of physical anthropology of the human remains are published elsewhere (Larsen et al. 2013; Hillson et al. 2013). When the human isotope data is plotted by house in the south (Fig. 3) and north areas (Fig. 4), it is clear that some adults from particular buildings have diets very similar to others they are buried with (Pearson 2013). Adults buried in buildings 6 and 60, for example, have similar isotope ratios to others from the same house, suggesting consumption of similar resources in similar quantities. This suggests sharing of


Fig. 3 Isotope data from adults buried beneath buildings from the South Area (after Pearson 2013)

resources or perhaps participation in similar events where food was distributed. This is in stark contrast to those buried in buildings such as buildings 65 and 54, where the isotope ratio range within the building is broader because the individuals buried there did not share meals over the long term but instead consumed different food from each other throughout their lives. A small number of individuals consumed a unique combination of foods that rendered their isotope ratios unique, suggesting their diet was very different (Pearson 2013). The fact that the inhabitants of Çatalhöyük did not all have a shared diet provides an opportunity to investigate what foods might have contributed towards particular isotope ratios and what impact this might have had on their body size. There is no clear

Fig. 4 Isotope data from adults buried beneath buildings from the North Area (after Pearson 2013)


sex-based patterning in the isotope values that shows females consumed more plants and males more meat. For example, a young man (sk. 16513) from building 75 has nitrogen isotope ratios lower than the site mean, suggesting at first glance that he had a diet focussed more on plants than meat. A high plant diet would involve the consumption of significantly more carbohydrates in his diet compared to others, and hence a greater likelihood of a corpulent body shape. However, this is only one interpretation of these data. The nitrogen isotope ratios of the fauna at Çatalhöyük reveal that wild animals had lower nitrogen isotope values than did those of domestic animals. Therefore, this man may have a lower nitrogen isotope value due to the consumption of protein from wild equids and wild boar (Pearson 2013). This is also supported by the evidence for dental health, which shows no difference in caries rates for males and females (Hillson et al. 2013). While some individuals at Çatalhöyük did have relatively unique diets, further research is needed to examine whether this is due to a different diet and what this might have been, or because they had recently moved from elsewhere in Anatolia or perhaps even further afield. Examination of the grave cut may provide additional clues as to the corpulence of this individual, since we might assume that larger-bodied individuals would be associated with larger grave cuts. Position in the grave is also useful, since the body of a corpulent individual could not be buried in a tightly flexed attitude. Unfortunately, the young man (sk. 16513) in the example above was not articulated, had been disturbed and probably cut through earlier interments rendering assessment of the grave volume impossible. Even if the grave volume could be calculated accurately, the burial practices at Çatalhöyük are not conducive to the reconstruction of body size. Many methods of treatment before burial, and the regular disturbance of graves to inter subsequent individuals and the disturbance of individuals already buried either to make room for another individual or for purposes of relocation, make grave volume calculation impossible. In addition, the practice of burial rituals that involved defleshing or desiccation of the body prior to burial would enable individuals to be more tightly flexed than if they were buried soon after death and not subsequently disturbed. In other buildings, some individuals have nitrogen isotope ratios that are 0.5– 1.0 ‰ higher than the average, suggesting more animal protein (from sheep and aurochs/cattle) in their diet, suggesting that their diet could not build or sustain a corpulent body shape. For example, in building 56 (Fig. 3), the skeleton of a middleaged woman (sk. 12863) has a carbon isotope ratio of −18.3 ‰, which is similar to the site mean, and a nitrogen isotope ratio of 13.3 ‰, which is 0.7 ‰ higher. Comparing these to the fauna from the associated midden, which has a combined mean nitrogen isotope ratio of 10.7 ‰ (again similar to the south area mean), indicates that she probably had access to more meat from sheep and aurochs/cattle, which have higher nitrogen isotope ratios, than the average south area inhabitant. Since this was a secondary burial, the grave cut could not be used to establish the physical dimensions of the individual. In general, these data show, despite being buried beneath the floors of the same house, that they did not have the same diet. The isotope data also suggest that differentiation in diet occurred even at the burial level. In building 65 (Fig. 5), the three adults buried there include a double burial of an older man and adult woman (sk. 14507) and an additional older man (sk. 14506). The separate male burial has carbon and


Fig. 5 Human isotope data from building 65 and animals from adjacent middens (after Pearson 2013)

nitrogen isotope ratios almost identical to the adult mean, whereas both individuals from the double burial have isotope ratios that are relatively higher in both isotopes. In addition, despite this burial comprising a composite of two partial skeletons to make one more or less whole individual (not the double burial of two complete skeletons), it is unlikely that the two enjoyed the same diet throughout their lifetime. This suggests that differential sharing of food occurred, and that archaeologists have yet to identify the circumstances under which this took place. A large-scale study of inherited dental traits at Çatalhöyük by Pilloud and Larsen (2011) demonstrates that men and women buried together within houses were not biologically related but instead organized themselves into ‘practical kin’ groups determined by economic and political factors. If this is the case, these isotope data indicate that individuals within the practical kin groups in houses did not eat the same food for much of their lives. Pilloud and Larsen suggest that women may have come from outside of the region, despite Çatalhöyük having a sufficient population capacity to allow for intra-site marriage (Baird 2005). Gender-based differences in food consumption have been identified elsewhere in Neolithic Anatolia (Pearson et al. 2013); however, at Çatalhöyük, the mean female isotope ratios for carbon and nitrogen are −18.8 and 12.6 ‰, respectively, virtually identical to males (−18.6 and 12.7 ‰, respectively), indicating that their diets were probably the same. These data illustrate that differentiation in diet was not normally organized along gender lines, although there may have been exceptions. This finding is especially significant because Pilloud and Larsen (2011) argue that females came from outside of the area; we might expect women to have had different diets to men. The similarity in isotope ratios might indicate that in fact women were relatively local and that Çatalhöyük supported marriage or alliance networks between nearby smaller communities perhaps associated with other exchange processes. This seems unlikely, since Baird (2005) has shown that smaller communities of the 9th and 8th millennium Cal BC disappear prior to the major phases of occupation. An alternative hypothesis is that if females arrived at the site long before they died, perhaps in adolescence, their isotope signatures would have been replaced with those of their new diet through the process


of bone turnover. Regardless of interpretation, these results reiterate the need to generally downplay gender differences in food sharing at the site. This leaves us with the possibility of age-based dietary distinctions between individuals (Fig. 6). Comparing the isotope ratios of adults of different ages (younger adults n=11, middle-aged adults n=15 and older adults n=17) strongly suggests that younger adults had a different diet to middle-aged and older adults. An independent sample two-tailed Student’s t test comparing the three groups shows the following levels of significance: δ13C

δ15N

Younger adults versus middle-aged adults

p=