Çatalhöyük

Colleen Morgan is an archaeology Ph.D. candidate in the Anthropology Department at the University of California, Berkeley.  She is the first anthropology graduate student at UC Berkeley with a dedicated emphasis in New Media.

Morgan received a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology/Asian Studies from the University of Texas in 2004.  She has worked as a professional archaeologist in Texas and California, as well as Dhiban, Jordan, the island of Moloka'i and Catalhoyuk, Turkey. 

In 2008, she studied the historical archaeology of Kalaupapa on the island of Moloka’i then went from the tropical south Pacific to the arid deserts of Jordan as part of the 2009 Dhiban Excavation and Development Project, a Faculty Career and Enhancement Project sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. 

Ian Hodder was born in Bristol, England on November 23, 1948.  He received a degree in prehistoric archaeology at the University of London in 1971 then went on to the University of Cambridge where he received his doctorate in spatial analysis in archaeology in 1974.  He secured a position at the University of Leeds where he lectured from 1974-1977 then returned to Cambridge where he served in a number of positions before being appointed Professor of Archaeology from 1996 to 1999.  In 1996 he was also named as a Fellow of the British Academy.

In 1999, he left Cambridge to accept an appointment at the Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology, Stanford University where, in 2002, he was named Dunlevie Family Professor.

British archaeologist, James Mellaart, was born in London in 1925.  His family moved to Holland where his father worked as an expert in Dutch old master paintings and drawings.  At the outbreak of World War II, Mellaart secured a position at the museum in Leiden, where he worked until the war ended.  Then he enrolled in University College in London where he studied egyptology.  His studies led him to join the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, Turkey.

In the early 1950s, he began an archaeological survey of Anatolia.  His first dig at Hacular produced a cache of painted pottery and female figurines that led to speculation about an early culture that worshipped a mother-goddess.  Then, in November 1961, he began excavating a 20-meter high mound on the plains of Konya known locally as Çatalhöyük.  There, he unearthed thirteen levels of occupation dating back over nine thousand years that contained the remains of a population center housing up to 10,000 people at its zenith.