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The Leopard's Tale: Revealing the Mysteries of Çatalhöyük
A firsthand account of the discoveries at this seminal ancient site in Turkey, one of the first farming settlements in history.
Çatalhöyük, in central Turkey, became internationally famous in the 1960s when an ancient town--thought to be the oldest in the world--was discovered there together with wonderful wall paintings and animals, including leopards, sculpted in high relief. The archaeological finds included the remains of textiles, plants, and animals, and some female terra-cotta figures that suggested the existence of a "mother goddess" cult.
The initial excavation was interrupted in 1965, and answers to the riddles of this Neolithic site remained unresolved until Ian Hodder initiated a new campaign of research in the 1990s. Described by Colin Renfrew as "one of the most ambitious excavation projects currently in progress, undertaken at one of the world's great archaeological sites," this has been a truly multidisciplinary undertaking, involving the participation of over one hundred archaeologists, scientists, and specialists. Hodder and his colleagues have established that this great site, dating back some 9,000 years, provides the key to understanding the most important change in human existence--the time when people moved into villages and towns, adopted farming as a way of life, and began to accept domination of one social group by another. Through meticulous excavation procedures and laboratory analyses, they peel back the layers of history to reveal how people lived and died and how they engaged with one another, with their environment, and with the spirit world.
Full of insights into past lives and momentous events, "The Leopard's Tale" is superbly illustrated with images of the art, the excavations, and the people involved in this world-famous dig.
Çatalhöyük, in central Turkey, became internationally famous in the 1960s when an ancient town--thought to be the oldest in the world--was discovered there together with wonderful wall paintings and animals, including leopards, sculpted in high relief. The archaeological finds included the remains of textiles, plants, and animals, and some female terra-cotta figures that suggested the existence of a "mother goddess" cult.
The initial excavation was interrupted in 1965, and answers to the riddles of this Neolithic site remained unresolved until Ian Hodder initiated a new campaign of research in the 1990s. Described by Colin Renfrew as "one of the most ambitious excavation projects currently in progress, undertaken at one of the world's great archaeological sites," this has been a truly multidisciplinary undertaking, involving the participation of over one hundred archaeologists, scientists, and specialists. Hodder and his colleagues have established that this great site, dating back some 9,000 years, provides the key to understanding the most important change in human existence--the time when people moved into villages and towns, adopted farming as a way of life, and began to accept domination of one social group by another. Through meticulous excavation procedures and laboratory analyses, they peel back the layers of history to reveal how people lived and died and how they engaged with one another, with their environment, and with the spirit world.
Full of insights into past lives and momentous events, "The Leopard's Tale" is superbly illustrated with images of the art, the excavations, and the people involved in this world-famous dig.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2006
15 people are currently reading
716 people want to read
About the author
Ian Hodder
62 books47 followersIan Hodder is Dunleavie Family Professor of Archaeology at Stanford University. A Fellow of the British Academy, he has received numerous awards for his accomplishments, including the Oscar Montelius Medal from the Swedish Society of Antiquaries, the Huxley Memorial Medal by the Royal Anthropological Institute, the Fyssen International Prize, and the Gold Medal by the Archaeological Institute of America, along with honorary doctorates from the Bristol and Leiden Universities. Hodder is the author of numerous books, including Symbols in Action (Cambridge, 1982), Reading the Past (Cambridge, 1982), and Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things (2012).
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
January 31, 2021
A startling revolution has quietly occurred in our understanding of the origins of civilization, and Ian Hodder has been at ground zero. As the director of excavation at one of the most important archaeological sites in the world, Hodder is in a unique position to give an account of the ancient Anatolian settlement Çatalhöyük -- and what an account it is! This is clearly the definitive book on the site, and is absolutely essential reading for anyone interested in early Anatolia, or the development of agriculture and urbanization.
I could not conceive of a better guide to take us through the site. Hodder presents the carefully-gathered fruit of decades of research, ranging from careful sifting through dust and soil for tiny fragments to climatological surveys to surveys of midden heaps to microscopic examination of ten-thousand-year-old pollen samples.
With equal care, he has gathered together theoretical models to build hypotheses based on these findings to reconstruct some sense of the history and culture of the population of Çatalhöyük, giving a sense of how people lived, how the economy and society were organized, and what they may have believed.
The key unifying framework that Hodder meticulously assembles is what he calls "material entanglement," which is a framework for understanding how and why complex sedentary societies arose.
The old theory that planting led to agriculture, which led to sedentary housing, which grew because of greater availability of food, leading eventually to urbanism, has to be seriously reevaluated in the light of archaeological discoveries at Göbekli Tepe, which is in the same general region as Çatalhöyük. As far as we can tell, this monumental site was established and used by semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers. This suggests that the earliest large-scale collective constructions of great magnitude may have been ritual centers, and not the product of the stabilization of planters.
Hodder sees Çatalhöyük as a reflection of a millennia-long process of intercoupling by social groups, who begin sharing or exchanging material resources, and thereby gradually bind themselves in reciprocal dependencies and relationships. He does not use a systems theoretic vocabulary in the book, but the process would be well-described as the self-organization of an emergent society along the lines described by Stuart Kauffman.
The culture of Çatalhöyük gives every appearance of reflecting this process in its artistic culture and economic organization. There is a very gradual evolution from strong nucleation of material culture within each home to increasing dependencies and portable cultural artifacts traveling among the homes. Likewise, the early layers of the settlement show a profound interest in connecting the home to ancestry, to the extent that most of the homes include multiple human burials under the floors. This tendency becomes markedly diminished over time, perhaps reflecting the movement of the spiritual center of gravity from the individual house to the collective society.
Another important contribution of this book is a revision of the early reading of Çatalhöyük as evincing a "goddess culture" as popularized by Marija Gimbutas. The evidence does not give strong support to such a hypothesis, and her association of Çatalhöyük with her hypothetical matriarchal societies of Old Europe needs to be significantly revised. Many of the figures previously believed to be female figurines, for example, have turned out under closer inspection to probably depict animals, and research looking for evidence that women held privileged social positions have failed to find any corroboration for such a hypothesis.
Hodder's book is sweeping in scope, carefully argued, and beautifully written. It will surely stand for many years as the definitive work on the subject.
I could not conceive of a better guide to take us through the site. Hodder presents the carefully-gathered fruit of decades of research, ranging from careful sifting through dust and soil for tiny fragments to climatological surveys to surveys of midden heaps to microscopic examination of ten-thousand-year-old pollen samples.
With equal care, he has gathered together theoretical models to build hypotheses based on these findings to reconstruct some sense of the history and culture of the population of Çatalhöyük, giving a sense of how people lived, how the economy and society were organized, and what they may have believed.
The key unifying framework that Hodder meticulously assembles is what he calls "material entanglement," which is a framework for understanding how and why complex sedentary societies arose.
The old theory that planting led to agriculture, which led to sedentary housing, which grew because of greater availability of food, leading eventually to urbanism, has to be seriously reevaluated in the light of archaeological discoveries at Göbekli Tepe, which is in the same general region as Çatalhöyük. As far as we can tell, this monumental site was established and used by semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers. This suggests that the earliest large-scale collective constructions of great magnitude may have been ritual centers, and not the product of the stabilization of planters.
Hodder sees Çatalhöyük as a reflection of a millennia-long process of intercoupling by social groups, who begin sharing or exchanging material resources, and thereby gradually bind themselves in reciprocal dependencies and relationships. He does not use a systems theoretic vocabulary in the book, but the process would be well-described as the self-organization of an emergent society along the lines described by Stuart Kauffman.
The culture of Çatalhöyük gives every appearance of reflecting this process in its artistic culture and economic organization. There is a very gradual evolution from strong nucleation of material culture within each home to increasing dependencies and portable cultural artifacts traveling among the homes. Likewise, the early layers of the settlement show a profound interest in connecting the home to ancestry, to the extent that most of the homes include multiple human burials under the floors. This tendency becomes markedly diminished over time, perhaps reflecting the movement of the spiritual center of gravity from the individual house to the collective society.
Another important contribution of this book is a revision of the early reading of Çatalhöyük as evincing a "goddess culture" as popularized by Marija Gimbutas. The evidence does not give strong support to such a hypothesis, and her association of Çatalhöyük with her hypothetical matriarchal societies of Old Europe needs to be significantly revised. Many of the figures previously believed to be female figurines, for example, have turned out under closer inspection to probably depict animals, and research looking for evidence that women held privileged social positions have failed to find any corroboration for such a hypothesis.
Hodder's book is sweeping in scope, carefully argued, and beautifully written. It will surely stand for many years as the definitive work on the subject.
September 19, 2010
This book is the archaeologist's ruminations and analyses of the ongoing dig at Catalhoyuk, a prehistoric site in central Anatolia, now Turkey. I read it after I read Michael Balter's "The Goddess and the Bull".
For anyone interested in prehistoric archaeology and the long story of how we have become what we are learning about Catalhoyuk is fascinating. But this book is not the first to read; some background, Balter's book at least, is essential.
The daughter of a friend is an archaeologist. She thinks that Hodder is full of himself and is an arrogant SOB, and he may well be, but the story is fascinating and the personality of the archaeologist beside the point.
For anyone interested in prehistoric archaeology and the long story of how we have become what we are learning about Catalhoyuk is fascinating. But this book is not the first to read; some background, Balter's book at least, is essential.
The daughter of a friend is an archaeologist. She thinks that Hodder is full of himself and is an arrogant SOB, and he may well be, but the story is fascinating and the personality of the archaeologist beside the point.
November 30, 2021
This is a report on the excavation of a famous Neolithic settlement in modern-day Turkey, written by one of the archaeologists. He is perhaps more gifted in scholarship than in writing, but it is still a fascinating story. Perhaps 5,000 people or more lived in the town, with variations over time. The houses were built of mud brick, cheek by jowl. There is no great difference between them, and no sign of an overall plan. The interior walls and floors were plastered over frequently, maybe even monthly. From the absence of doors and the presence of stairs, we conclude that they walked over each other's roofs for access. Some of their dead were buried beneath their floors. The spaces between the houses were used to dump household garbage, including excrement and kitchen garbage--the place must have stunk to high heaven. Every few generations, perhaps when they became dilapidated, the houses were knocked down, filled in, and built over.
The place seems to have been egalitarian. Most activity in the town was organized and carried out at the household level. There is no strong evidence against sexual equality. No public spaces or temples were found (though most of the town remains unexcavated). In fact, one of the unanswered questions is why the people chose to live so close together in the first place. The economy was based on goat and sheep herding, supplemented by agriculture and hunting. There was some amount of long-distance trade going on, including in obsidian, so valuable for cutting tools.
Much has been made of "Mother Goddess" worship in the town, which the author thinks is overblown. Some crude and damaged relief sculptures that have been taken for women giving birth he thinks are more likely bears. There are a number of statuettes of obese women, almost all in the higher layers, which may represent a mother goddess. Leopards seem to have been important; they appear frequently in the wall art but not in the remains (except for one pendant in a burial). Wild cattle were hunted, as shown by wall paintings and their horns mounted on walls. Some of the paintings seem to show the daredevil baiting of wild animals.
To my mind, the author indulges in too much airy, elaborate, unverifiable speculation about the inner life of the residents. We really want to know this, but talking about it reveals more about the speculator than about these Neolithic herders. But the author concludes with the interesting idea that the town and other Anatolian sites seem to show a development starting with communal living for feasting, then the gradual accumulation of chattels (disparagingly and oddly called "material entanglement"), leading to sedentary living and the development of agriculture, rather than the invention of agriculture leading to settlement in villages. A culture of mutual reciprocity gradually gave way to one of long-term co-operation. All this happened with glacial slowness, of course, with only one or two seemingly insignificant changes in each generation.
The place seems to have been egalitarian. Most activity in the town was organized and carried out at the household level. There is no strong evidence against sexual equality. No public spaces or temples were found (though most of the town remains unexcavated). In fact, one of the unanswered questions is why the people chose to live so close together in the first place. The economy was based on goat and sheep herding, supplemented by agriculture and hunting. There was some amount of long-distance trade going on, including in obsidian, so valuable for cutting tools.
Much has been made of "Mother Goddess" worship in the town, which the author thinks is overblown. Some crude and damaged relief sculptures that have been taken for women giving birth he thinks are more likely bears. There are a number of statuettes of obese women, almost all in the higher layers, which may represent a mother goddess. Leopards seem to have been important; they appear frequently in the wall art but not in the remains (except for one pendant in a burial). Wild cattle were hunted, as shown by wall paintings and their horns mounted on walls. Some of the paintings seem to show the daredevil baiting of wild animals.
To my mind, the author indulges in too much airy, elaborate, unverifiable speculation about the inner life of the residents. We really want to know this, but talking about it reveals more about the speculator than about these Neolithic herders. But the author concludes with the interesting idea that the town and other Anatolian sites seem to show a development starting with communal living for feasting, then the gradual accumulation of chattels (disparagingly and oddly called "material entanglement"), leading to sedentary living and the development of agriculture, rather than the invention of agriculture leading to settlement in villages. A culture of mutual reciprocity gradually gave way to one of long-term co-operation. All this happened with glacial slowness, of course, with only one or two seemingly insignificant changes in each generation.
January 30, 2015
I'm going to have a hard time telling you how much I loved this book, but I'll try. I was mentally composing this review last week and thinking "It's unputdownable" and then it turns out I got really sick and I had no choice but to put it down. Which was okay because I just got to enjoy the book longer. Just don't borrow my copy of the book because of the germs I breathed into it -- although the odds are really slim I'd have let this book out of my house anyhow. Just saying.
Ian Hodder is writing about an early human settlement in Anatolia, kind of like a beehive in the way the houses are constructed (entrance at the top, everything identical, ritual cleaning, etc) and this settlement went on to become huge, for thousands of people, and it lasted for a thousand years. The people themselves seem fascinating, burying their dead right in the house and every so often going back to retrieve some ancestor's skull or burying someone with someone else's skull. There's a fascination with wild animals and a disdain for domesticated ones at a time when humans were involved in wholesale domestication of themselves.
And although archaeologists have found 650,000 animal bones on the site, and although paintings show lots of leopards and leopard skins, they found not one single leopard bone.
Ooh. Mystery!
Hodder's prose is at times clunky but at the same time, he's very thorough about explaining what he's saying, so by the time you get to a really technical sentence, you understand the whole thing *and* its significance. EG, Hodder writes "The number of phytoliths displaying greater than 10 cells constituted less than 15 percent of the assemblage, and there were no wheat-husk phytoliths with over 70 silicified adjacent cells," and you don't think, "Huh?" Instead you think, "Oh, WOW, really?"
Hodder also writes with class. He collaborated with a lot of other scholars and scientists and credits them right in the text, and where he disagrees with someone, he phrases it with the utmost respect. I'm going to look up his other books to see if he wrote anything else I might find interesting.
Overall, yeah. Read this. This is cool.
Ian Hodder is writing about an early human settlement in Anatolia, kind of like a beehive in the way the houses are constructed (entrance at the top, everything identical, ritual cleaning, etc) and this settlement went on to become huge, for thousands of people, and it lasted for a thousand years. The people themselves seem fascinating, burying their dead right in the house and every so often going back to retrieve some ancestor's skull or burying someone with someone else's skull. There's a fascination with wild animals and a disdain for domesticated ones at a time when humans were involved in wholesale domestication of themselves.
And although archaeologists have found 650,000 animal bones on the site, and although paintings show lots of leopards and leopard skins, they found not one single leopard bone.
Ooh. Mystery!
Hodder's prose is at times clunky but at the same time, he's very thorough about explaining what he's saying, so by the time you get to a really technical sentence, you understand the whole thing *and* its significance. EG, Hodder writes "The number of phytoliths displaying greater than 10 cells constituted less than 15 percent of the assemblage, and there were no wheat-husk phytoliths with over 70 silicified adjacent cells," and you don't think, "Huh?" Instead you think, "Oh, WOW, really?"
Hodder also writes with class. He collaborated with a lot of other scholars and scientists and credits them right in the text, and where he disagrees with someone, he phrases it with the utmost respect. I'm going to look up his other books to see if he wrote anything else I might find interesting.
Overall, yeah. Read this. This is cool.
Read
August 4, 2019James Mellaart'ın 1961'de başlattığı kazılardan neredeyse 30 yıl sonra, 1993'te Çatalhöyük'te çalışmaya başlayan öğrencisi İan Hodder, yepyeni bulguların ışığında Çatalhöyük'ü gündeme taşıyor. Çatalhöyük-Leoparın Öyküsü, Hodder ve ekibinin Anadolu'nun kalbine açılan yolculuklarının ilginç bulgularını ortaya koyuyor.
January 2, 2024
I remember learning about Çatalhöyük in an archaeology class as an undergraduate in college, and being completely fascinated by the idea of a prehistoric city that looked nothing at all like what I imagined human settlements to look like (no streets, or doors, with entrances from roofs, etc). The idea that so many people could live together in a proto-city, full of cultural ideals that must have made complete sense to them, but which we can only piece together from archaeological clues - I just can't tell you how enchanting that was to me back then, and even more so now that I've had a chance to read this very fun book.
While The Leopard's Tale is not, perhaps, as accessible as a book written for a general audience would be, it's still admirably readable (even if I had to admit that my eyes did glaze over a tiny bit at some of the more archaeologically technical bits of the book). I appreciated that Hodder stuck to the archaeological facts, and grounded his explanations in a way that reminds readers not to apply too much of our modern, western lens to the society that inhabited Çatalhöyük. I did wish at times that there was a little more speculation on what daily life looked like at Çatalhöyük, since the later chapters that look at society and individuals at Çatalhöyük were my favorites, but I also respect that Hodder stays firmly in the realm of what we definitively know about Çatalhöyük.
I only wish there were more books about Çatalhöyük for me to continue reading and learning about the site (especially since this book is now two decades old)!
While The Leopard's Tale is not, perhaps, as accessible as a book written for a general audience would be, it's still admirably readable (even if I had to admit that my eyes did glaze over a tiny bit at some of the more archaeologically technical bits of the book). I appreciated that Hodder stuck to the archaeological facts, and grounded his explanations in a way that reminds readers not to apply too much of our modern, western lens to the society that inhabited Çatalhöyük. I did wish at times that there was a little more speculation on what daily life looked like at Çatalhöyük, since the later chapters that look at society and individuals at Çatalhöyük were my favorites, but I also respect that Hodder stays firmly in the realm of what we definitively know about Çatalhöyük.
I only wish there were more books about Çatalhöyük for me to continue reading and learning about the site (especially since this book is now two decades old)!
March 5, 2023
Uzun yıllar Çatalhöyük'te kazı çalışmalarını yürüten Ian Hodder'ın kaleminden tarihin en eski yerleşimlerinden birinin öyküsü. Baskı kalitesi ve görselleriyle harika bir kitap.
November 30, 2022
A thorough (or slightly more than thorough, considering a few repetitions that could have been cut) and well-illustrated account of findings at the famous Neolithic "city" in southern Turkey. Almost entirely comprehensible, though I couldn't figure out how they've made sense of what's apparently a stratigraphic nightmare. I guess it's not Hodder's job in this book to explain that, but "The Leopard's Tale" is aimed at laypeople, and it would have been very helpful.
I'm a David Lewis-Williams fanboy, and I went in hoping that Hodder would mention the idea that shamanism lies behind Neolithic religion and its remarkable imagery. He did, summarizing Lewis-Williams' notion of the three-tiered cosmos but not really using it to explore why Catalhoyuk was built the way it was, why certain animals are depicted repeatedly or why, in a mostly egalitarian culture, certain people were singled out for, let's say, unusual postmortem treatment. ("The Leopard's Tale" is not for the easily spooked.) Again, possibly not why Hodder wrote this book, and I imagine he goes into the subject more deeply in "Religion in the Emergence of Civilization: Catalhoyuk as a Case Study" and "Religion at Work in a Neolithic Society." In any case, this was published in 2006, and it would be nice to read an account of how the dig has progressed since then.
Spare a thought for archaeologists whose sites attract the world's attention. Hodder says Goddess devotees, drawn by the idea that female deities were worshiped at Catalhoyuk, turn up expecting to behold the mother church of Neolithic matriarchy. He tells them that the sexes appear to have been on a fairly equal footing, and scholars no longer believe that there was anything approaching a matriarchy there. Some of the visitors don't take it well. He claims to be grateful for the public's interest, but I got the idea he's being polite.
I'm a David Lewis-Williams fanboy, and I went in hoping that Hodder would mention the idea that shamanism lies behind Neolithic religion and its remarkable imagery. He did, summarizing Lewis-Williams' notion of the three-tiered cosmos but not really using it to explore why Catalhoyuk was built the way it was, why certain animals are depicted repeatedly or why, in a mostly egalitarian culture, certain people were singled out for, let's say, unusual postmortem treatment. ("The Leopard's Tale" is not for the easily spooked.) Again, possibly not why Hodder wrote this book, and I imagine he goes into the subject more deeply in "Religion in the Emergence of Civilization: Catalhoyuk as a Case Study" and "Religion at Work in a Neolithic Society." In any case, this was published in 2006, and it would be nice to read an account of how the dig has progressed since then.
Spare a thought for archaeologists whose sites attract the world's attention. Hodder says Goddess devotees, drawn by the idea that female deities were worshiped at Catalhoyuk, turn up expecting to behold the mother church of Neolithic matriarchy. He tells them that the sexes appear to have been on a fairly equal footing, and scholars no longer believe that there was anything approaching a matriarchy there. Some of the visitors don't take it well. He claims to be grateful for the public's interest, but I got the idea he's being polite.
October 22, 2019
I laughed upon reading "but lest we become too taken by abstract theories (pg. 203)," because this person spent a decade critiquing logical positivism, promoting contextualism, and befuddling us graduate students. Here, he describes the artifactual patterns that his team found in the present at Catal Hoyak, a famous Neolithic village site in Turkey. For example, the site contains leopard sculptures and images of people wearing leopard skins painted on house walls and lacks actual leopard items. He postulates the taboos that Neolithic people created that would result in this and other patterns. He looks at other Neolithic sites, and finds that the leopard pattern is unique to Catal Hoyuk. His conclusion is that as Neolithic peoples led a more settled life, they made more artifacts that expressed values or meanings, and their lives became more and more entangled with these items over time. This is a long-winded way of saying humans exhibit culture, which changes over time (very slowly in this case), without using an evolution framework to do so. The contextual approach reminded me of the motorway bypass plans mentioned by another befuddling writer-"It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard."
August 20, 2016
Catalhoyuk itself is interesting enough, but, for me, the writer certainly didn't make it seem that way. Certainly, as a scholar, Hodder can't write in such an entertaining way as to make the findings as engaging as fiction. Yet, the book suffers from poor writing; how many times must we read the same details or find that the Hodder starts to veer into fascinating details, only to tell us that we'll read about it later? Each chapter becomes bogged down in terribly inconcise detail about the findings of the past 50 years. I'm not saying that these details are unimportant--they are--but get on with the good stuff, man! If you're deeply interested in Catalhoyuk, I'm afraid this book is unavoidable. But, Hodder should take a page from far more engaging and yet equally as educational popular science writers, if he hopes to reach a wider audience than people with scholarly interests. Because Hodder simply needed a better editor, I had to put this one down. Intend to read "The Goddess and the Bull" instead.
March 11, 2023
SEDENTARISM, AGGREGATION, AND AGRICULTURE IN ANATOLIA, ÇATALHÖYÜK
Ian Hodder and his book The Leopard’s Tale represent an important step or stage in the field of archaeology and anthropology. It studies the city of Çatalhöyük in Anatolia which flourished from 7,400 to 6,000 BCE in what he calls the Pre-Pottery Neolithic.
Pre-Pottery Neolithic Chronology
PPNA (ca 8,500 to 7,500 BCE) Jericho, Netiv Hagdud, Nahul Oren, Gesher, Dhar', Jerf al Ahmar, Abu Hureyra, Göbekli Tepe, Chogha Golan, Beidha.
PPNB (ca 7,500 to 6,200 BCE) Abu Hureyra, Ain Ghazal, Çatalhöyük, Cayönü Tepesi, Jericho, Shillourokambos, Chogha Golan, Göbekli Tepe.
PPNC (ca 6,200 to 5,500 BCE) Hagoshrim, Ain Ghazal.
This book is essential since it studies a city that flourished some 2000 years after Gobekli Tepe was built, or at least had reached a certain level of achievement, exactly when in this region of the world the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture and herding was taking place. In fact, at this time the two developments were arriving from the Fertile Crescent, according to the standard approach. This development goes along with sedentarism and agglomeration for the populations concerned. The question is to know whether the first constructions were ritualistic, religious, or spiritual centers like Gobekli Tepe, and the residential cities developed later, as Ian Hodder states, or if agriculture came first and caused sedentarism and then agglomeration which would state the spiritual development is simultaneous or even posterior. The third solution would be a simultaneous and reciprocal transition from hunting-gathering to agriculture-herding, the former going down and the latter going up over a long period. Ian Hodder does not solve the problem, but he leans towards spiritual development and buildings first, sedentarism and agglomeration second. This debate is fundamental, and we must keep in mind this case of the Fertile Crescent is only one case in the world in the same period, after the peak of the Ice Age (19,000 BCE for the peak itself and the whole top period of this Ice Age covers about 8,000 or 10,000 years from at most 24,000 BCE to at most 14,000 BCE. I agree with Ian Hodder on one essential element. Dates have to be given from one fictitious year ZERO, and it is the beginning of our present era, most often known as the Christian Era. Hence older dates have to be given in BCE terms and in the proper orientation of the timeline, so moving towards the present time. In BCE date the year 3 BCE comes after the year 4 BCE, or vice versa the year 4 BCE comes before the year 3 BCE. Some authors very systematically follow the numbers from smaller to bigger, which is absurd in prehistory and archaeology. Ian Hodder acknowledges that on page 44, he should have used BCE years rather than years ago or YA in illustrations 18 and 19.
But this transition from hunting-gathering to agriculture-herding is essential. I will defend the idea that during the ten thousand years or so of extreme cold, human beings, Homo Sapiens since all other Hominins had become extinct then, had had to regroup south or north according to the hemisphere to resist the cold, and had had to intensify their exploitation of natural resources to simply survive. This intensification of taking care of the natural garden led them to observations and reflections that made the emergence of agriculture possible. We must also understand that before that peak of the ice age, the Gravettians for instance in Europe had developed seasonal permanent residential constructions with wooden skeletons carrying earth packed on top. This back base was for the winter, whereas during the summer they followed the wild herds that went north or south according to the hemispheres. That is to say, the observations and the data collected by Ian Hodder is here essential for a wider approach and I am thinking of the Middle East of course, but also of Asia and the three rivers in Yunnan and Southeast Asia, the Yangtze (Jinsha), Mekong and Salween, or the Indian subcontinent and the Indus and Ganges. But we must also think of the Nile in Egypt, the Congo in central Africa, and some others north or south of the Congo River, plus the lakes and rivers in Eastern Africa. We have to think of the Amazon river in South America (it is not the only one) and the Mississippi and Missouri rivers in North America, and these are not the only ones. Specific forms of agriculture developed autonomously in those various zones at about the same time, between, 14,000 BCE and 3,000 BCE. I choose 14,000 BCE because that’s the real beginning of climate change with the thawing of the ice, and then 3,000 BCE because it corresponds to the period when writing is being developed all over the world. Between 14,000 BCE and the year 1 CE, the water went up 120 meters. We do not cope with this phenomenon properly, and the water had to come down the rivers and probably caused a lot of flooding, and repetitive floods before finally getting more or less regular at the beginning of the Christian Era.
So, this book is crucial. I am going to get into it and my reading will be critical not so much on the data collected, but on what I think is missing, and this limits what could and can be said about this transition.
Dr Jacques Coulardeau
Ian Hodder and his book The Leopard’s Tale represent an important step or stage in the field of archaeology and anthropology. It studies the city of Çatalhöyük in Anatolia which flourished from 7,400 to 6,000 BCE in what he calls the Pre-Pottery Neolithic.
Pre-Pottery Neolithic Chronology
PPNA (ca 8,500 to 7,500 BCE) Jericho, Netiv Hagdud, Nahul Oren, Gesher, Dhar', Jerf al Ahmar, Abu Hureyra, Göbekli Tepe, Chogha Golan, Beidha.
PPNB (ca 7,500 to 6,200 BCE) Abu Hureyra, Ain Ghazal, Çatalhöyük, Cayönü Tepesi, Jericho, Shillourokambos, Chogha Golan, Göbekli Tepe.
PPNC (ca 6,200 to 5,500 BCE) Hagoshrim, Ain Ghazal.
This book is essential since it studies a city that flourished some 2000 years after Gobekli Tepe was built, or at least had reached a certain level of achievement, exactly when in this region of the world the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture and herding was taking place. In fact, at this time the two developments were arriving from the Fertile Crescent, according to the standard approach. This development goes along with sedentarism and agglomeration for the populations concerned. The question is to know whether the first constructions were ritualistic, religious, or spiritual centers like Gobekli Tepe, and the residential cities developed later, as Ian Hodder states, or if agriculture came first and caused sedentarism and then agglomeration which would state the spiritual development is simultaneous or even posterior. The third solution would be a simultaneous and reciprocal transition from hunting-gathering to agriculture-herding, the former going down and the latter going up over a long period. Ian Hodder does not solve the problem, but he leans towards spiritual development and buildings first, sedentarism and agglomeration second. This debate is fundamental, and we must keep in mind this case of the Fertile Crescent is only one case in the world in the same period, after the peak of the Ice Age (19,000 BCE for the peak itself and the whole top period of this Ice Age covers about 8,000 or 10,000 years from at most 24,000 BCE to at most 14,000 BCE. I agree with Ian Hodder on one essential element. Dates have to be given from one fictitious year ZERO, and it is the beginning of our present era, most often known as the Christian Era. Hence older dates have to be given in BCE terms and in the proper orientation of the timeline, so moving towards the present time. In BCE date the year 3 BCE comes after the year 4 BCE, or vice versa the year 4 BCE comes before the year 3 BCE. Some authors very systematically follow the numbers from smaller to bigger, which is absurd in prehistory and archaeology. Ian Hodder acknowledges that on page 44, he should have used BCE years rather than years ago or YA in illustrations 18 and 19.
But this transition from hunting-gathering to agriculture-herding is essential. I will defend the idea that during the ten thousand years or so of extreme cold, human beings, Homo Sapiens since all other Hominins had become extinct then, had had to regroup south or north according to the hemisphere to resist the cold, and had had to intensify their exploitation of natural resources to simply survive. This intensification of taking care of the natural garden led them to observations and reflections that made the emergence of agriculture possible. We must also understand that before that peak of the ice age, the Gravettians for instance in Europe had developed seasonal permanent residential constructions with wooden skeletons carrying earth packed on top. This back base was for the winter, whereas during the summer they followed the wild herds that went north or south according to the hemispheres. That is to say, the observations and the data collected by Ian Hodder is here essential for a wider approach and I am thinking of the Middle East of course, but also of Asia and the three rivers in Yunnan and Southeast Asia, the Yangtze (Jinsha), Mekong and Salween, or the Indian subcontinent and the Indus and Ganges. But we must also think of the Nile in Egypt, the Congo in central Africa, and some others north or south of the Congo River, plus the lakes and rivers in Eastern Africa. We have to think of the Amazon river in South America (it is not the only one) and the Mississippi and Missouri rivers in North America, and these are not the only ones. Specific forms of agriculture developed autonomously in those various zones at about the same time, between, 14,000 BCE and 3,000 BCE. I choose 14,000 BCE because that’s the real beginning of climate change with the thawing of the ice, and then 3,000 BCE because it corresponds to the period when writing is being developed all over the world. Between 14,000 BCE and the year 1 CE, the water went up 120 meters. We do not cope with this phenomenon properly, and the water had to come down the rivers and probably caused a lot of flooding, and repetitive floods before finally getting more or less regular at the beginning of the Christian Era.
So, this book is crucial. I am going to get into it and my reading will be critical not so much on the data collected, but on what I think is missing, and this limits what could and can be said about this transition.
Dr Jacques Coulardeau
March 4, 2008
A facinating read on one of the most amazing archaeological sites in the world, Catalhoyuk. As a fan of Ian Hodder, he discusses and give his interpretations on some of the mysteries of this site. If interested, check the Catalhoyuk webpage: http://www.catalhoyuk.com/
July 20, 2009
work book!
January 7, 2023
Well written and engaging; an attempt to understand the general mind set of residents of a Neolithic town located in Anatolia, based on what can be gleaned from the archeological record. Half of the interest of the book lies in the various ways archeology goes about developing some idea of the cultural frame within which these people lived their lives. Human bone is looked at to determine diet, residential structures are looked at to define cultural organization, and various other remnants of a polity are considered to produce a picture of a culture that is both familiar (in terms of cultural concerns) and totally alien (how they specifically play out). It's a book that demands slow reading, additional research and a bit of imagination.
April 28, 2019
Ideal for the lover of Archeology and Architecture.
February 26, 2025
His findings are not exactly new, fascinating story nonetheless
January 20, 2020
this 2005 book is by Ian Hodder who oversees the Neolithic (approximately 8000-9500 years ago) archaeological dig at Catalhöyuk, Turkey which is an UNESCO World Heritage site. In it he careful he tries to interpret the physical evidence of this settlement's occupation. He discusses the concepts of "material engagement“ and its effects on the development of humans society in this area of Turkey. material engagement is the term that describes the sociological & cultural effects of human’s dependence upon material objects. I thought this was an very interesting concept to ponder.
although very detailed in its presentation and quite repetitive, it is a book written to be accessible by a general audience. It’s also very well illustrated, which helps immensely. since the book is about 15 years old now, I do wonder what changes have occurred and who is interpretations based upon the new evidence. I noticed that the Catalhöyuk dig has an extensive website and I plan to go visit it and learn more.
I also really enjoyed the approach of the author's interpretation. Defining human culture based upon archaeological evidence as fraught with controversy and error and I thought that he did a fine job of trying to not over interpret and present evidence that conflicts with previous interpretations without ranging into politcal and personality disputes, etc.
although very detailed in its presentation and quite repetitive, it is a book written to be accessible by a general audience. It’s also very well illustrated, which helps immensely. since the book is about 15 years old now, I do wonder what changes have occurred and who is interpretations based upon the new evidence. I noticed that the Catalhöyuk dig has an extensive website and I plan to go visit it and learn more.
I also really enjoyed the approach of the author's interpretation. Defining human culture based upon archaeological evidence as fraught with controversy and error and I thought that he did a fine job of trying to not over interpret and present evidence that conflicts with previous interpretations without ranging into politcal and personality disputes, etc.
October 3, 2015
Interesting study. The author sifts through things found at the site in the different levels. He has come to the decision that social growth led to a settlement/village agrarian lifestyle with domesticated animals and plants. There is still much to be learned from the site, much excavation and study still to do. The title comes from the paintings on the walls showing people in leopard skins and leopard paintings used as decoration and the fact there were no leopard bones or traces at the site. There was much use of wild bull skulls and horns and other wild animals, but no leopards.
The author frustrates me by speaking of something in a chapter, then saying ,"but I'll talk about later in chapter x". I found that quite irritating.
Probably written for a more serious archeology person.
The author frustrates me by speaking of something in a chapter, then saying ,"but I'll talk about later in chapter x". I found that quite irritating.
Probably written for a more serious archeology person.
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April 9, 2012Archaeologist Hodder details the excavation of this neolithic site in Turkey. It was continually inhabited from 9000 years ago to 6000 or so. The people were agriculturalists who still hunted wild game. They lived in small close-set houses with roof-top openings and buried their dead beneath platforms in the houses they lived in. Art covered the walls of the houses much of it centered on the leopard still active in the Middle East at this time. Hodder perhaps goes overboard on this culture's connection to the spirit world but it's still a fascinating job of prehistoric detection.
December 27, 2011
Low on jargon and high on provocative speculation about the 7th millennium in central Anatolia. I am not an anthropologist or sociologist but I enjoyed reading about the roots of our earliest civilizations in the area. Fantastic illustrations and drawings elucidate the story even further. A great effort which may be followed by more research of this area in the future. I hope so.
September 11, 2012
I read very little in archeology, but I found this book very accessible and engaging. Hodder is obviously deeply invested in the subject, but his writing manages to focus on the minutiae of the site as well as the broader implications for human historical and cultural development. It helps that the site, Catalhoyuk, is an amazing and strange find.
April 30, 2008
Civilization markers. A good book for the serious scholar.
February 4, 2015
Endlessly fascinating if you come expecting a full-on post-processuralist description of a well-known dig -but topography descriptions do wear on you if you aren't a paleobotanist.
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January 13, 2016Beautifully illustrated and clearly written.
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