The material politics of houses at Çatalhöyük, 7000–6300 BCE
type: CreativeWork
description: Archaeologists often treat past houses and households as social units—as places of stability within larger political dynamics. Houses are rendered as conservative objects, not places of profound change. This thesis adopts a material political approach to houses, considering the way they were assembled through time as a working-out of social alternatives. By approaching prehistoric houses, not as units but as processes of space-making extending through time, it shows the great extent to which past societies’ politics were navigated and transformed through intimate communities and intimate places. Using fine analysis of the internal stratigraphy of houses, I show how much more variable and consequential domestic communities were at a turning point in human history (the beginning of the Neolithic expansion) where many conventional ‘prime movers’ of more recent histories (nations, armies, corporations, elites of various sorts) simply did not exist to drive change. In so doing, The material politics of houses at Çatalhöyük opens avenues for perceiving the full political weight of small houses and everyday relationships elsewhere and at other times—even in the present. The focus of this thesis is space-making in domestic contexts at the 7th millennium site of Çatalhöyük in central Turkey. Çatalhöyük spanned two worlds, both geographically and chronologically: one where settled farming life developed, piecemeal and dispersedly, over many millennia following the last glacial maximum within the confines of the Middle East, and one where settled farming life seemed inexorably spread across the world map in a matter of 2,000 years. It thus represents a window into a turning point in the social dynamics of vital technologies and human lifeways writ large. The site itself, pristinely preserved and meticulously excavated, is the result of a unique way of living that packed small mudbrick houses, wall-against-wall with very few gaps, onto an exceptionally dense mound of old disman…
abstract: Archaeologists often treat past houses and households as social units—as places of stability within larger political dynamics. Houses are rendered as conservative objects, not places of profound change. This thesis adopts a material political approach to houses, considering the way they were assembled through time as a working-out of social alternatives. By approaching prehistoric houses, not as units but as processes of space-making extending through time, it shows the great extent to which past societies’ politics were navigated and transformed through intimate communities and intimate places. Using fine analysis of the internal stratigraphy of houses, I show how much more variable and consequential domestic communities were at a turning point in human history (the beginning of the Neolithic expansion) where many conventional ‘prime movers’ of more recent histories (nations, armies, corporations, elites of various sorts) simply did not exist to drive change. In so doing, The material politics of houses at Çatalhöyük opens avenues for perceiving the full political weight of small houses and everyday relationships elsewhere and at other times—even in the present. The focus of this thesis is space-making in domestic contexts at the 7th millennium site of Çatalhöyük in central Turkey. Çatalhöyük spanned two worlds, both geographically and chronologically: one where settled farming life developed, piecemeal and dispersedly, over many millennia following the last glacial maximum within the confines of the Middle East, and one where settled farming life seemed inexorably spread across the world map in a matter of 2,000 years. It thus represents a window into a turning point in the social dynamics of vital technologies and human lifeways writ large. The site itself, pristinely preserved and meticulously excavated, is the result of a unique way of living that packed small mudbrick houses, wall-against-wall with very few gaps, onto an exceptionally dense mound of old disman…
author: Kay, Kevin
language: eng
keywords: Prehistory, Turkey, Archaeology, Archaeological theory, Architecture, Domestic, Houses, Object biography, Neolithic
license: https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/d319fe1b-7a50-4457-802b-559668ac4cee/download
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 2020-04-17
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:27Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.64739