ABSTRACT
Ten years ago, in a Scientific American article titled 'Women and Men at Catalhoyuk', Ian Hodder synthesized various lines of evidence that yielded clues to the roles of the sexes in this early farming society. Excavations undertaken by the Catalhoyuk Research Project between 1993 and 2014 have afforded researchers with one of the largest human skeletal assemblages available for studying health and lifestyle during the Near Eastern Neolithic Age with over four hundred individuals categorized as 'primary', 'secondary', or 'primary-disturbed' burials. Although artefacts and figurative representations may provide indirect evidence of differences in activity between the sexes or over time, human skeletal remains provide more direct evidence of past behaviour in the form of markers of habitual biomechanical stress. The Catalhoyuk ground stone assemblage presents great variability in object types and raw materials used. The repertoire of ground stone arte-facts includes, among others, percussive and grinding tools of varied forms, axes and adzes, grooved abraders, polishing tools and palettes.
