Spirit Birds at Neolithic Çatalhöyük

ABSTRACT

As they soar into the air and dive below the water's surface, birds inspire awe for their superhuman capacity to pass among earth, air, and water. People often see birds as spirits, or as messengers to and from the spirit world. Whereas at earlier sites in the region birds made a significant contribution to human diet, at Neolithic Çatalhöyük in Central Anatolia their nutritional significance is small. Body part distributions suggest that for the most part feathers were more important than meat. Bird remains, mainly the feathery parts of wings, appear in a number of special deposits at Çatalhöyük. Together with artistic representations, these deposits suggest that cranes and vultures played key roles in life cycle transitions and were invoked mimetically through dance. Additionally, waterbirds, particularly in association with newborn human infants, may have mediated between human and spirit worlds. Although there is little indication that Çatalhöyük residents made much use of brightly coloured feathers, bird wing deposits do attest to the importance of colour symbolism at the site. Thus bird remains offer material evidence of aspects of Neolithic cosmology and ontology, as well as social structure.

KEYWORDS:

• Zooarchaeology
• Anatolia
• feathers
• colour
• crane
• vulture

Acknowledgments

I thank Catrin Kost and Shumon Hussain for organising the stimulating EAA session that led to this paper. Their feedback and that of fellow participants and three anonymous reviewers was very helpful in improving the published version. I am grateful to the members of the zooarchaeology team at Çatalhöyük for their aid in separating avian material for further study, and especially for the stimulating conversations that were a constant feature of work in the lab. I have learned a great deal about birds from Kevin McGowan (Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology), who collaborated with me in the analysis of some of the bird bones discussed here. I was able to identify these specimens thanks to the reference collections of the Cornell University Museum of Vertebrates and the Bird Division of the National Museum of Natural History. I am indebted to Charles Dardia at the CUMV and to Chris Milensky and other NMNH staff for facilitating this work.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Nerissa Russell is Professor of Anthropology at Cornell University. She has conducted zooarchaeological research in eastern Europe, Turkey, and Pakistan. Her work has explored human-animal relations in ancient societies, focusing on the Neolithic.

ORCID

Nerissa Russell http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7623-1364