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As I began my investigation of the Goddess in all her forms I was struck by the beauty of the artwork I encountered. From Paleo- and Neolithic times to the modern day, from East Asia to Europe and back again,
centuries worth of art has been created in the image of the Goddess. Yet what interested me the most was the application and interpretation of this art to everyday life. More specifically, I wanted to know how these images of the Goddess- wall paintings, statues, carvings, weavings- spoke to the lives of everyday women. To narrow my studies I chose an Anatolian (modern day Turkey) site named Catal Huyuk. Dating from 6400 to 5400 B.C., the findings at Catal Huyuk were absolutely mind blowing because, along with findings at Jericho in Palestine, they changed
previous concepts as to the "dawn of civilization". Sumer had held the record for the oldest evidence of large urban settlements and was
credited with the first organized religion (including a priestly class, sanctuaries, etc.). Yet the findings at Catal Huyuk changed all that and pushed the dates for civilized urban society and all its trappings back
3,000 yrs.. By using the revolutionary findings at Catal Huyuk, I then looked carefully at its art, specifically the statue seen as fig.1, above to see how it informed and reflected the lives of everyday women at Catal Huyuk. I hoped to prove that this society was matriarchal, as evidence of this would support many feminist ideas of our modern society today. Afterall, if women were able to run religion and society at some point in our long history then it seemed logical to hope that this power may once again fall into female hands. My conclusions were both
disappointing and inspiring, forcing me to reevaluate many of my
preconceived notions about Goddesses, prehistory and power structures both then and now.
As Joan Bamberger states, "...there is still no certifiable way of
documenting the political and jural relations of the earliest human societies...". This is the wall I continued to bang my head against in my search for a truthful picture of life in Neolithic Anatolia. I found myself pouring over pages and pages of wall paintings and shrine layouts wondering who the creators had been- men or women? The importance of this distinction being who had the power of definition? Did women have the freedom and power to create images depicting their own lives and experiences or did men define women through the images that they created of them? We see examples of the latter in "Goddess" images from our modern times as Ann Barstow notes, "Whether woman is depicted as sex object (Astar or Eve) or as magical virgin mother (the cult of Mary for instance) the symbol serves as a projection of male needs...". It is the possibility of different interpretations I kept in mind as I began to research Catal Huyuk and the excavations that have occurred there.
To create an accurate picture of life at Catal Huyuk one must first picture the settlement as it must have looked some 8,000 years ago.
Small, tightly packed houses, each a single room whose only entrance was from the roof by a ladder. Each house was formed of mud brick and kept incredibly clean, all evidences of trash and refuse were found neatly deposited in courtyards created specifically for that purpose. Inside each house was a sleeping platform, expansively covering the east wall with other platforms of various sizes strewn about the room.
Interestingly, there was little variation in signs of wealth or
possessions from house to house. Spread over more than 32 acres, Catal Huyuk is the largest Neolithic site discovered to date. With knowledge of weaving, stone carving, the smelting of copper and lead, basket
weaving, pottery, cloth dyeing and spinning, the people of Catal Huyuk flourished on the vast tree covered Anatolian plain. With large herds of red deer and wild cattle and a specialized knowledge of the cultivation of crops, food was abundant and nourishing. Yet the large urban
settlement is puzzling in many aspects not the least of which being its apparently high infant mortality rate. This infers a difficult labor and childbirth despite immense attention to the mother and birth giving process in Catal Huyuk's artifacts. Numerous birth shrines nave been excavated with depictions of the Goddess giving birth as well as statues such as fig.1 where the head of the child being born is visible between the Goddess' strong thighs. In studying these shrines, I came to the work of James Mellaart, the main archaeologist who headed diggings from
1961-1965. He attempted to define 'shrine' areas from 'non-shrine' areas as a means to categorize and break down the site. These initial
interpretations have since been refuted by modern scientific technology which has found traces of everyday life in all areas. This speaks to an integral worship practice which is not easily separated from the more
'secular' areas of life at Catal Huyuk. Another fascinating point, open to interpretation is the burial placement- women and some children under the large sleeping platform on the east wall of the dwelling and men and some children (though never together) under other platforms in the
house. It is the burials, layer after layer that Ian Hodder, a current archaeologist at Catal Huyuk and head of the Catal Archaeological
Project hopes to decode with DNA testing. The testing would help
determine whether these people were matrilineal of patrilineal by
examining layers of skeletons to see whether daughters of daughters of daughters had been buried in sequence or sons of sons of sons. In this way science will go a long way in helping assess the lifestyles of the Catal Huyuk people.
The difficulty in interpretation is discussed further by Ian Hodder in his e-mail correspondence with Anita Louise, an educated and interested member of the Goddess community. He comments on additions to the Catal Huyuk site such as a museum and reconstructed rooms as well as a growing Newsletter and CD Rom, all of which are created to provide information to those interested in the site. Yet Hodder comments on the reactions of some Goddess groups, "Some have said 'But we are not interested in YOUR interpretations; they are already biased; we want to make our own
interpretations.'" Yet Hodder does not deny the validity of this
complaint and agrees saying, "We cannot assume the provision of 'raw data' is enough. This is because the data are never 'raw'. The data are interpreted immediately by the archeologist." He also goes on to say,
"The Goddess community will often have a very different point of view from which archaeologists can learn." By respecting the Goddess
community, Hodder leaves open the possibility for change and new
interpretation, he includes the Goddess community of today in examining what may be the first organized Goddess community of our prehistory. And yet was Catal Huyuk a Goddess culture? Does the prevalence of Goddess or female figures in their art and religious areas prove this? And if so, how did it effect the women at that time? Those women in the large urban settlement on the Anatolian plain, did they feel the power of the
Goddess in their own lives? Did they awaken each morning with the
knowledge that they had been made in Her image and that She watched over them as her daughters?
All of these questions come to mind when staring at the small Mother Goddess that at one time was held in the hand, perhaps even carved by the hand of an Anatolian woman c. 6,000 B.C.. I want to hold her myself, rough terra-cotta, and see if she still holds the power of life, of birth. Found in a grain bin, it is argued what significance a statue such as the Mother Goddess might have to the nature of this Anatolian society. This brings me back to my initial question of who was in
charge. As I read Ann Barstow's article from "Feminist Studies", I was initially taken aback by her answer. "...Perhaps the problem lies, at least in part, in the word 'dominance,' for it is, in fact, foolish to judge this material by our common definitions of power." She then goes on to suggest that one look at ancient societies like Catal Huyuk in terms of a more cooperative use of power. I began to see the sense of this when taking into account the immense dependence on nature by these societies. Their existence was so desperately linked with the world around them that they encountered the cycle of life daily and may have been able to see it more clearly. They were a part of nature, just as their religion was a part of their homes, death and burial a part of their lives and living areas. Women specifically were the bringers of the new wealth to Catal Huyuk as the realms of agriculture, spinning and domestic life were comfortable domain for them. In this way their
position was secure in a society which valued these things above all else. This is proven again and again in the artifacts at Catal Huyuk- women giving birth, running, dancing with hair streaming out behind them, women in loving embraces and threatening poses, women majestically enthroned or abstractly bulging with life. All these images were at Catal Huyuk -despite who created them. And one can't help but believe that their human counter parts were as well.
In their correspondence about Catal Huyuk, Anita Louise offers Ian
Hodder some advice in the form of a story about a Native American who when asked how one could integrate the spiritual and everyday selves, responded by saying they were one self. The Native American then added that the person was asking the wrong question- the question they needed to be asking was how to make oneself whole again. I take my cue from this as I come to my conclusion, for what really matters is not finding evidence of a matriarchal society to perpetuate the cycle of dominance between the sexes but to find evidence of a culture with strong people, male and female, who were capable of living spiritual, whole lives. This is the underlying quest that drives me to learn- the quest for
wholeness, be it through God or Goddess- to myself.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baring, Anne & Cashford, Jules. "The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image". ARKANA/ Penguin Books: New York, 1993
Barstow, Ann. "The Uses of Archaeology for Women's History: James
Mellaart's Work on the Neolithic Goddess at Catal Huyuk". Feminist
Studies 4(3):7-17, 1978
Gimbutas, Marija. "The Language of the Goddess", Harper Collins
Publishers, New York, 1989
Mellaart, James. "Catal Huyuk: A Neolithic Town in Anatolia", McGraw Hill, New York, 1962
http://catal.arch.cam.ac.uk/catal/catal.html
http://catal.arch.cam.ac.uk/catal/essays.html
http://catal.arch.cam.ac.uk/catal/Newsletter5/bots98.html
http://www.turknet.com/ninethousand/prehistory1.html