Çatalhöyük
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Çatalhöyük, on the Konya plain in central Anatolia, was one of the largest settlements of its time, occupied from about 7100 to 6000 BCE and housing perhaps as many as 8,000 people. The houses were built side by side with no streets, and entry was through a hole in the roof reached by ladder, so that people walked across the rooftops. Inside, rooms were plastered and swept, with hearths, ovens and storage bins, and the walls were painted with red ochre scenes of hunting, vultures carrying human heads and geometric patterns. The dead were buried beneath the floors, sometimes beneath the sleeping platforms, and skulls were removed and plastered with clay faces, which suggests ancestor rituals. There were no public buildings and no clear rulers; the material culture is remarkably even between houses, which has led archaeologists to describe the settlement as egalitarian. Women figurines have been found in large numbers. From about 6000 BCE the settlement burned and was rebuilt repeatedly, and the community later moved to a nearby eastern mound before the site was abandoned. Excavations have found no clear palace or temple, and the richest graves differ only slightly from the poorest, which is why the site is often called a city without rulers.