ABSTRACT
The occupation of the mega-site at Catalhoyuk gradually came to an end in the final centuries of the 7th millennium cal BC. This process was marked by significant social and economic transformations, including different settlement layout, architecture, burial practices, plus pottery, and chipped stone manufacturing traditions. This chapter aims to systematically contrast developments at Catalhoyuk in central, western, and northwestern Anatolia. It explains the questions to whether Catalhoyuk East in the last five hundred years of occupation retained its preeminence, and cultural/technical/economic frame of reference for neighbouring communities, or did its inhabitants fail to keep apace of developments in the larger region? These objectives will be achieved through reference to architecture, pottery, and lithics from Late Neolithic Catalhoyuk and its contemporaries. The chapter discusses some difficulties in implementing an approach advocating an assembling of different datasets in a context where such data are produced in an incommensurable way.
