Catalhoyuk, on the Konya Plain in south central Anatolia, in the 1960s
became the most celebrated Neolithic site of western Asia: huge (21 h
ectares), with early dates, tight-packed rooms with roof access, exube
rant mural paintings, cattle heads fixed to walls, dead buried beneath
floors in collective graves. This site, as difficult to excavcate as
if is strange, is the object of a pioneering application of the 'post-
processual' approach, hitherto largely a matter of re-working and crit
icism outside the trench. The Catalhoyuk project director explains his
approach, in which the conclusions as well as the work in early progr
ess will be 'always momentary, fluid and flexible'.