Shadows on the Plaster: A Journal of Çatalhöyük

Third Day of the Summer Harvest

The morning light always enters our home first as a narrow, dusty beam, striking the hearth and waking me before the rest of the household. I lay on my woven reed mat for a moment, listening to the soft breathing of my family. Above us, the rectangular opening in the roof was a frame of pale blue sky. For my people, this opening is both our door and our window, the mouth through which our home breathes. I climbed the sturdy wooden ladder, my bare feet finding the familiar, smooth notches worn into the timber by years of use. Emerging onto the roof, the cool morning air of the Anatolian plateau rushed to greet me, carrying the scent of damp earth, roasting barley, and the faint, sweet smell of sheep from the pens down on the plain.

Up here, on the terrace of roofs, our daily life unfolds. Because our houses are built tightly against one another with no streets between them, the rooftops are our plazas, our paths, and our workspace. To visit my cousin, I do not walk down an alley; instead, I step carefully over the low parapet of our roof, cross our neighbor’s plaster dome, and leap across a narrow gap to her family’s terrace. This morning, the rooftops were already buzzing with activity. Elders sat in the shade of drying hides, knapping dark obsidian into sharp blades, while younger children chased semi-domesticated dogs across the flat mudbrick spans. My primary chore today was to assist my mother in preparing the winter stores of emmer wheat and lentils. We spread the golden grains across a large woven mat in the direct sunlight, picking out small pebbles and dirt. It is tedious work, but necessary if we want to avoid breaking our teeth on our bread come winter.

Fifth Day of the Summer Harvest

Today was a day of renewal inside our home. Every few weeks, the soot from our indoor hearth coats our white plaster walls in a layer of dark grime. Today, my mother decided it was time to apply a fresh coat of white marl. We walked down to the clay pits outside the settlement, carrying large baskets woven from marsh reeds. Digging the heavy, pale clay is exhausting, backbreaking work, but carrying it back up the steep slopes of our mound is even harder. Once inside, we mixed the clay with water until it was a smooth paste. Using sheepskin pads, we smeared the cool, wet plaster over the soot-blackened walls. As I worked, I was careful not to smear the ancient paintings left by my ancestors—the red ochre handprints that line the western wall and the grand mural of the twin-peaked volcano erupting over our village. My mother watched me closely, reminding me that these images connect our family to the spirits of those who walked these roofs before us.

Indeed, the ancestors are never far from our thoughts, literally sleeping beneath our feet. Under the raised platform where my brother and I sleep lie the bones of my grandmother and grandfather, buried deep within the clean soil beneath the house. We do not fear them; rather, we feel protected by their presence. When we plaster the floors and walls, we are keeping their resting place clean and beautiful. To us, a house is not just a shelter from the wind and rain; it is a living history book, built directly on top of the ruins of our ancestors' homes. Our village has stood on this mound for hundreds of years, rising higher and higher above the plains as old houses are collapsed to form the foundations for new ones.

Ninth Day of the Summer Harvest

Late this afternoon, a great excitement swept across the rooftops. A trading party had returned from the distant mountains to the east, bringing with them fresh lumps of raw obsidian. Obsidian is the black glass of the volcano, and to our people, it is more precious than almost anything else. I watched as my father traded two of our finest woven woolen blankets for a large, glassy nodule that shimmered like a dark pool of water under the sun. Later, he sat near the hearth fire, carefully striking the edge of the obsidian with a deer antler flaker. With precise, rhythmic taps, long, razor-sharp blades peeled away from the core. One of these blades will be used for harvesting our grain, while others will be traded to families who specialize in carving delicate bone needles.

As the sun dipped below the horizon, painting the sky in shades of deep violet and orange, the smoke from dozens of hearth fires began to drift upward through the roof openings. The rooftops, which had been busy workspaces all day, transformed into a single communal hall. My family gathered on the roof of our uncle’s house, sharing a meal of stewed mutton, wild peas, and sweet crabapples. As we ate, an elder began to recite the story of the great bull hunt from the time of our great-grandfathers, pointing to the plastered bull horns mounted on the walls of the room below us. Listening to his voice mix with the evening breeze, I looked out across the endless patchwork of roofs, feeling incredibly safe within the warm, interlocking embrace of our ancient city.