Closely packed houses on the plain
Çatalhöyük grew on the plain of south-central Anatolia between roughly 7100 and 5900 BCE. Residents built mud-brick houses closely against one another, moving across roofs and entering rooms from above. Ovens, storage areas and raised platforms organized activities inside. Houses could serve for decades, and new buildings often occupied the footprint of earlier ones. Repeated rebuilding gradually produced the mound that archaeologists excavate today.
Organizing crops and flocks
Food production continued outside these densely packed homes. Residents cultivated cereals and pulses, kept sheep and other livestock, and used wild resources. Managing fields, moving flocks and processing grain demanded time and labor. Studies of plant remains, sheep isotopes and weeds preserved in dung show both shared practices and differences among households. Some activities became more clearly associated with houses and house groups during the later occupation, linking production with the settlement’s changing social organization.
Life and memory inside houses
Houses also held the dead and memories of earlier inhabitants. Many people were buried beneath floors or platforms while everyday activities continued above them. Paintings, plaster reliefs and animal-horn installations shared interiors with cooking, sleeping and repairs. Successive coats of plaster and rebuilt floors preserved activities from different periods. A house therefore connected its inhabitants with earlier occupants through the practical spaces in which they lived.
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The consequences of living together
Population growth brought greater crowding and changes in the handling of waste and the spaces shared by humans and animals. Teeth and skeletons preserve traces of diet, disease and work. Dependence on crops, exposure to infection and physical demands became part of settled life. Residents repeatedly adapted their buildings and productive activities. The result was a farming community sustained by many households and rebuilt across generations.