Hittite Art
A REPRESENTATION of a bull in silver from recent excavations in Anatolia, and described as the most important work of art of Hittite origin yet discovered, is to be exhibited at the forthcoming Antique Dealers Fair to be held at Grosvenor House, London, W.I. The figure is seven inches high, and is mounted on bronze and inlaid with gold. It is dated tentatively at the third millennium B.C. As an evidence of high artistic culture, it is without parallel among Hittite antiquities. An obvious comparison with Sumerian bulls from Ur is suggested. To this, reference is made by Prof. Ernst Herzfeld, whose authority on Hittite objects is unquestionable. In an interview with a representative of The Times, which appears in the issue of September 16, he discusses the affinities of the Hittite bull with other finds from Anatolia and elsewhere, mentioning in particular the figurines from mounds in south Russia and the Caucasus, of which the best known are in the Hermitage Museum, and a terra-cotta bull (Bos primigenius) from Nihawand in his own collection, which belongs to the Early Bronze Age of the third millennium B.C. Prof. Herzfeld also directs attention to the principle, important in discussion of the qualities and characteristics of art in the ancient East, and of a relevance here, which will be immediately apparent to archaeologists, that down to Achaemenid times verisimilitude in line is frequently sacrificed to an artistic convention in attitude, which assimilates one species to another. This is apparent in this example in the manner in which the legs of a bull are represented in an attitude essentially capriform. It is thus evident that even at the early date to which this bull is assigned, an art, Hittite in all essentials, already conformed to a generalised eastern convention.
Domestication and inequality ? Households , corporate groups and food processing tools at Neolithic
Questions about the early Near Eastern Neolithic include whether domestic groups were autonomous and self-sufficient; whether they had access to similar goods; whether households were competitive; whether specialization existed; and how domestic units articulated with corporate groups. Feasting models emphasize household competition and complexity, but wide-ranging ethnographic studies show that hoe-farming societies in areas of land abundance are usually egalitarian, with little material wealth, little inequality, and little wealth transmission (inheritance). This paper explores inequality at Çatalhöyük East (Turkey), via ground stone artefacts, which were central to food preparation and craft production. Analysis of 2429 artefacts from 20 buildings and 9 outdoor yards reveals a mix of egalitarian features and emerging social complexity. Households had private property and relatively equal access to cooking features and some ground stone tools, but ground stone toolkits do not indicate self-sufficiency. In particular, large millstones (querns) were expensive to procure and were possibly shared between households. Most were deliberately destroyed, suggesting taboos on transmission (inheritance). Lorenz curves for features and ground stone artefacts suggest that storage units, unbroken querns and unfinished quern roughouts were the most unequally distributed food preparation facilities. There are indications of subsistence intensification, craft specialization, and emerging factional competition. 2013 The Author. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Introduction 1996, 2003, 2011; Banning and Chazan, 2006; Bienert, 2001; As early agrarian households evolved in the Neolithic of the Near East, how soon did differentials emerge between households in access to material ‘‘wealth’’? Do we see precocious emergence of privileged households with unusual accumulations of prestige items, atypically large storage features, or exceptional capacities for feasting? The Near East has a rich record of the evolution of agrarian societies, from the Late Epipalaeolithic (cf. Natufian) to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A, B and C periods (=PPNA, PPNB, PPNC), corresponding to the Early Central Anatolian I–III (Özbasaran and Buitenheis, 2002) (Table 1). This time range witnessed the emergence of semisedentary foraging (Late Epipalaeolithic/Natufian); pre-domestication cultivation (PPNA); true plant domestication (Early-Middle PPNB) (Fuller et al., 2011); sheep-goat domestication (Middle PPNB) and hyper-growth of some villages to 15 hectares (Late PPNB–PPNC). Many have debated whether early Neolithic societies were egalitarian or not, and in what ways (Asouti, 2005, 2006; Banning, Bogaard et al., 2009; Byrd, 1994, 2000, 2005a,b; Düring, 2005, 2006, 2007; Flannery, 1972, 2002; Goring-Morris, 2000; 2005; Hodder and Cessford, 2004; Kuijt, 2000a,b, 2002, 2012; Kuijt and Goring-Morris, 2002; Kuijt et al., 2011; Pearson et al., 2013; Rollefson, 2000; Schmidt, 2006; Verhoeven, 2004, 2006; Watkins, 2008; Wright, 2000). One of the largest Late PPNB–PPNC sites is Neolithic Çatalhöyük East (Turkey), where recent excavations revealed more than 50 buildings, along with outdoor yards and middens (Hodder, 2007, 2014) (Figs. 1 and 2) and detailed information on artefacts (e.g., Bains et al., 2013; Bogaard et al., 2013; Carter et al., 2005; Carter and Milic, 2013; Hodder, 2014; Nakamura and Meskell, 2013; Russell and Martin, 2005; Russell and Griffitts, 2013; Twiss et al., 2013; Wright et al., 2013; Yalman et al., 2013). The 1960s excavations (Mellaart, 1963, 1964, 1966, 1967) were confined to the South Area, a deep trench revealing diachronic change. There, Mellaart defined 13 ‘levels,’ from ‘Pre-XII’ (at the base) to I and 0 (at surface), with some of the best preserved finds coming from Levels VIA and VIB, in the middle of the sequence. The recent excavations (Hodder, 2007, 2014) opened several areas (Figs. 2 and 3), each with area-specific level designations (Table 1). In the South Area, these begin with G (at the base); the latest are South T, Area TP and the Istanbul Area. Area 4040 (in the north) encompasses a narrower time range and is a wide exposure, revealing neighborhood Fig. 1. Location of Çatalhöyük in relation to rock and mineral resources (Hodder, 2005a: Fig. 1.1; for further details of regional geology, see MTA, 2002). 2 Katherine I. (Karen) Wright / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 33 (2014) 1–33 relationships. Five levels (F–J) were defined for Area 4040, from Level F (earlier) to Level J (later), of which Levels G and H are best known at present. These probably correspond to South Area Levels N through Q (and to Mellaart’s Levels VIB, VIA and V) (Table 1). In this paper, the term ’Area 4040’ is used as a shorthand for all exposures in the north i.e. Area 4040 sensu stricto; the BACH area; and the North area (see Fig. 2). Çatalhöyük East dates to between ca. 7400 cal BC (South Area, base of mound) and ca. 6000 cal BC at the surface (Cessford et al., 2005: table 4.1; Hodder, 2005b: fig. 1.6, 2013: 1, 10). In terms of schemes established for the Levant, it is coeval with the Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, the Pre-Pottery Neolithic C, and the beginnings of the Pottery Neolithic (or Late Neolithic) (Table 1) (see also Hodder, 2005b, fig. 1.5). In terms of schemes suggested for central Anatolia, it belongs to the later part of the Early Central Anatolian (ECA) II and the ECA III (Table 1) (Asouti, 2006; Özbasaran and Buitenheis, 2002). Its closest contemporaries are Can Hasan III, Suberde and Erbaba (central Anatolia); later levels at Çayönü (eastern Anatolia); Bouqras and Abu Hureyra II (north Euphrates); Ramad, Ain Ghazal and Basta (the Levant); and Ali Kosh, Guran and Jarmo (Zagros Mountains and adjacent valleys) (Hodder, 2013, fig. 1.1; Zeder, 2011). Near Eastern Neolithic villages are very diverse, both within regions and between them. Çatalhöyük East is not typical of the PPNB, PPNC or early ceramic Neolithic and cannot be understood as representative. It is unusually large; it appears to be isolated within its region (Baird, 2005); and it has distinctive architecture, material culture and unusually well-preserved art works. Largely as a result of the site’s size and the elaborate art, Çatalhöyük East has long been suspected of precocious social differentiation. While its buildings all appear to be domestic – there are no idiosyncratic, obviously corporate structures – the buildings vary. Hodder has identified four building types based on building form, contents or stratigraphy (Hodder, 2013): (1) elaborate/large houses, of unusual size and/or with paintings, reliefs or bukrania; (2) burial houses, with burial numbers exceeding those expected of one domestic group; (3) ‘‘history houses’’ built directly on top of other houses, with continuity in feature placement; and (4) relatively undistinguished houses. Of these four types, Hodder defined types 1–3 (elaborate/decorated houses, multiple-burial houses, history houses) as ‘‘special buildings,’’ which, although they have indications of domestic use (hearths, ovens, bins), nonetheless hint at either differential household status or special functions (Hodder, 2013). Variously, the elaborate or unusual structures have been interpreted as shrines (Mellaart, 1967); as foci for lineages and/or neighborhood-based corporate groups (Düring, 2005, 2006, 2007); as ‘‘dominant houses invested particularly in the construction and control of social memory’’ (Hodder and Cessford, 2004: 36); and as households engaged in competitive or cooperative feasting (Atalay and Hastorf, 2006; Bogaard et al., 2009; Russell and Martin, 2005). These interpretations, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive, are based on architecture, burials, art, faunal and botanical remains, storage and cooking facilities. Ground stone artefacts are essential for understanding social organization, food sharing and craft production. They inform on Fig. 2. Topographic site plan of Çatalhöyük showing areas excavated. Note: in this paper, the term ’Area 4040’ is used as a shorthand for all exposures on the north side of the mound, i.e. Area 4040 (sensu stricto); the BACH area; and the North Area. Katherine I. (Karen) Wright / Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 33 (2014) 1–33 3 residential-group composition, social units of production–consumption, subsistence intensification, surplus production, access to resources and landscapes, material value, and craft specialization. Detailed data on ground stone artefacts from Çatalhöyük East were unavailable when the aforementioned interpretations were written. These data are now in hand (Tables 2 and 3) (Wright et al., 2013). One aim here is to explore household equality/inequality, via spatial/contextual distributions of ground stone artefacts recovered from the East Mound. The focus is 2061 artefacts from 20 buildings and a further 368 from external yards (Tables 4–6) These derive from the South Area and Area 4040 (Figs. 2 and 3). Comprehensive recovery methods were used, to identify not only finished tools but also manufacturing debris (Table 2) (Wright et al., 2013; cf. Baysal and Wright, 2005). A second aim is to address wider questions about food consumption, food production and the emergence of early inequality. Food preparation tools have much to tell us about these issues. It has been argued that feasting is central to the development of social hierarchies (Dietler and Hayden, 2001) and that the early Near Eastern Neolithic displays evidence for both. But wide-ranging ethnographic studies assert that many or most societies engaged in low-intensity agriculture involving simple technologies (eg hoe farming) are egalitarian (Goody, 1976; Gurven et al., 2010; cf. Shenk et al., 2010; Smith et al., 2010a). However, ethnographic studies also sugest that animal herding is associated with inegalitarian wealth distributions (Borgerhoff Mulder et al. 2010). Çatalhöyük East wa
On the use of the Hardening Soil Small Strain model in geotechnical practice
This article highlights the importance of using advanced constitutive soil models in numerical modelling as daily geotechnical practice. In this context, the Hardening Soil (HS) model is presented as the most advanced soil model implemented in the ZSoil finite element code. The article recalls the basic features of the HS model and it explains their role in numerical simulations. The role of pre-failure non-linear behaviour of soils is also discussed. An application of the HS model is illustrated on typical geotechnical problems such as retaining wall excavation, tunnel excavation and undrained loading followed by consolidation.