ANATOLIA · c. 7400–6200 BCE

Çatalhöyük

Houses entered through the roof

The houses were clustered together. Their inhabitants moved across the roofs to enter them.

Museum documentation · free public access, no account required.

Image of Çatalhöyük — **DECLARED VISUAL RECONSTRUCTION · AI-GENERATED IMAGE · TRACEKEEPERS**
Generated reconstruction · Declared visual hypothesis
Declared visual reconstruction, created for museographic contextualisation; not a photograph of the original nor does it constitute documentary evidence.

History and context

Eighteen levels of the eastern mound preserve back-to-back houses, roof access, hearths, platforms, domestic painting and relief.

'City' helps express density, but does not imply streets, palace or central government. Houses were rebuilt repeatedly over memory and earlier debris.

Evidence and interpretation

Plans, accesses, levels and decoration are excavated. Population, political organisation and meaning of each image remain under revision.

Catalogue facts

Date: c. 7400–6200 BCE
Location: Çatalhöyük · Anatolia, Turkey
Material: Mudbrick, timber and plaster
Form: Adjoined houses · roof access

A closer look

About 1 min to read · 1 section. Further reading and sources · free access. Editorial review recorded: September 5, 2026.

Replastering a house was also preserving its history

Excavations distinguish successive wall and floor plasters, remodelled platforms and burials beneath living areas. In the building described by the 1996 excavation report, dozens of renovations and over thirty burials, mainly of infants and juveniles, were counted. This is not a single domestic scene frozen in time: a house accumulated changes, care and the dead. That superimposition obliges us to study each phase before interpreting a plan as if all its features had existed simultaneously.

Research · Çatalhöyük Research Project · 1996 excavation reportAccess recorded: September 5, 2026.

Location and territory

LOCATED SITE

Çatalhöyük · TurkeyWorld Heritage site marker.

Sources and references

Open the institutional record and expand the object

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