A society of things: animal figurines and material scales at Neolithic Çatalhöyük

Abstract

Neolithic animals comprise more than half of the total figurine assemblage at Çatalhöyük (7400–6000 cal. BC), with some 741 horns and 449 quadrupeds, as opposed to only 187 human figurines. Many figurines, whether of wild cattle, boar or deer, are small, detailed, finely modeled and demonstrate anatomical knowledge and specificity. Their miniature quality allows them to do what real animals, plastered animal installations and wall paintings cannot – to socialize, and to facilitate embodied and immediate interaction between humans and wild animals. Figurines are active things in themselves and their small scale invites an intimacy, control and democratization of experience that was not possible with large-scale narrative paintings that were relegated to a few houses or with plastered bucrania retrieved from hunting. In this society of things, figurines are conduits between very different material scales and they effectively embody and communicate across the species divide in expedient and intimate ways.

Keywords:

• Neolithic Çatalhöyük
• animal figurines
• miniature
• scale
• circulation

Acknowledgements

This article owes much to my long and rewarding collaboration with Carolyn Nakamura and Louise Martin at Çatalhöyük. Lindsay Der, Stratos Nanolgou, Camilla Mazzucato and Jason Quinlan have also been generous with their time and expertise. I would like to thank Lin Foxhill for her support and Ian Hodder and two anonymous referees for their thoughtful comments on the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lynn Meskell

Lynn Meskell is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Archaeology Center at Stanford University. She received her BA (Hons) First Class and the University Medal from the University of Sydney in 1994. For her PhD in Archaeology (1994–7), she was awarded the Kings College scholarship from Cambridge University. She held the Salvesen Junior Research Fellowship at New College, Oxford University (1997–9) before accepting a position at Columbia University in New York City where she became professor in 2005. From that time onwards she has been Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University and Honorary Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. In 1999 she founded the Journal of Social Archaeology, for which she serves as editor. She has been awarded grants and fellowships including those from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Science Foundation and the School of American Research. Some of her recent books and edited collections include Cosmopolitan Archaeologies (2009, Duke University Press) and The Nature of Culture: The New South Africa (2011, Blackwell).