Religion at Work in a Neolithic Society Vital Matters

This book tackles the topic of religion, a broad subject exciting renewed interest across the social and historical sciences. The volume is tightly focused on the early farming village of Çatalhöyük, which has generated much interest both within and outside of archaeology, especially for its contributions to the understanding of early religion. The volume discusses contemporary themes such as materiality, animism, object vitality, and material dimensions of spirituality while at the same time exploring broad evolutionary changes in the ways in which religion has influenced society. The volume results from a unique collaboration between an archaeological team and a range of specialists in ritual and religion.

1. The vitalities of Çatalhöyük Ian Hodder; Part I. Vital Religion: The Evolutionary Context of Religion at Çatalhöyük: 2. Different strokes for different folks: Near Eastern Neolithic mortuary practices in perspective Nigel Goring-Morris and Anna Belfer-Cohen; 3. Excavating theogonies: anthropomorphic promiscuity and sociographic prudery in the Neolithic and now LeRon Shults; 4. Religion as anthropomorphism at Çatalhöyük Stewart Guthrie; 5. The historical self: memory and religion at Çatalhöyük J. Wentzel van Huyssteen; 6. Modes of religiosity and the evolution of social complexity at Çatalhöyük Harvey Whitehouse, Camilla Mazzucato, Ian Hodder and Quentin D. Atkinson; Part II. Vital Materials at Çatalhöyük: 7. Relational networks and religious sodalities at Çatalhöyük Barbara Mills; 8. Using 'magic' to think from the material: tracing distributed agency, revelation, and concealment at Çatalhöyük Carolyn Nakamura and Peter Pels; 9. 'Motherbaby': a death in childbirth at Çatalhöyük Kimberley Patton and Lori Hager; 10. The hau of the house Mary Weismantel; 11. Material register, surface, and form at Çatalhöyük Victor Buchli; 12. The use of spatial order in Çatalhöyük material culture Anke Kamerman; Part III. Vital Data: 13. Theories and their data: interdisciplinary interactions at Çatalhöyük Ian Hodder.

Ian Hodder is Dunlevie Family Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University and Director of the Stanford Archaeology Center. He previously taught at Leeds University and Cambridge University. His main large-scale excavation projects have been at Haddenham in the east of England and at Çatalhöyük in Turkey, where he has worked since 1993. He has been awarded the Oscar Montelius Medal by the Swedish Society of Antiquaries and the Huxley Memorial Medal by the Royal Anthropological Institute, has been a Guggenheim Fellow, and has Honorary Doctorates from Bristol and Leiden Universities. His main books include Spatial Analysis in Archaeology (Cambridge University Press, 1976), Symbols in Action (Cambridge University Press, 1982), Reading the Past (Cambridge University Press, 1986), The Domestication of Europe (1990), The Archaeological Process (1999), The Leopard's Tale: Revealing the Mysteries of Çatalhöyük (2006) and Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships Between Humans and Things (2012).