Hello again,
Gerry, you wrote:
>What types of agriculture was conducted at Catal Huyak? And were the
workers prisoners (living in their cells) when they weren't in the
fields or were they simply religious followers of the "chief"? <
As I've mainly looked at the frescoes when looking into the Catal Hoeyuek
story I can't tell you very much. The inhabitants of the town were growing
wheat, barley, peas and vetch, kept sheep, goats and cows and held dogs (but
they also traded, I don't know what they gave (may have been their artistic
beads and baskets) but they owned material from far away (flint from Syria,
marble from the Aegean).
Why do you think of workers as prisoners? I don't understand the question,
sorry.
I've been thinking a lot about their burial rites where the dead where first
picked clean by vultures and then the bones buried under the (sleeping-?)
benches of the houses. Vultures are also an important motive in the
frescoes.
The Anatolian word for vulture seems to have been ku-pa (cf. GR gyps,
gypas). Does anybody have an idea if that might be connected to the name of
the cypress (ku-pa-ri-si, if I remember correctly in Mycenaean), the ancient
tree of the dead (its resin was e.g. used - among others - for preparing
mummies in Egypt) around the Aegean?
With best wishes
Sabine