CONTRADICTIONS IN ARCHAEOLOGICAL THEORIES AND EXCAVATION METHODS NEOLITHIC PHENOMENA IAN HODDER AND ÇATAL HÖYÜK

Abstract

Archeology is a science that studies the scientific past. However, as the past is full of mysteries, the considerations and analysis on it have a certain ideological content. At this point, when analyzing (describing and explaining) the results of archeological research, archeologist is seen as a product of the ideological and philosophical thought of his time. Sometimes, in archaeological research and archaeological considerations, archaeologists insist on giving the past an "absolute identity" or a "name" for archaeological cultures. In many cases, the source of the thoughts and ideas of researchers studying the past is overlooked. Thus, it is important to look at the sources on which archeological materials are based when theoretically analyzing the results and analyzing ancient cultures. From that point of view, it would not be wrong to think that the opinions of archaeologists analyzing the past are a manifestation of the political-ethnic-economic ideologies and cultural processes of the time. In this research, the theoretical and practical methodology and epistemology of prehistoric periods, especially the Neolithic period, are analyzed, taking into account the historiography of archeological science. For this purpose, the article consists of two main parts. The first part is devoted to the analysis of the philosophical content of prehistoric (prehistoric) archaeological theories, and the second part is devoted to the methods of archeological excavations. Thus, in the first point, when evaluating the archeological theories that emerged in the 60s and 80s of the XIX century, and in the second discussion, the modern archeological excavation method of the late Neolithic monument Çatal Hoyuk (Konya, Turkey) logically compared. In this study, it was emphasized that the science of archeology has an important place in both the epistemological-philosophical worldview and the methods and techniques of archeological excavations. Theories of Processual Archeology and Post- Processual Archeology are the main research topics in this article. A comparison between the two theories examines how and why archeology is studied, especially in prehistoric archaeological research. The other topic of the article is the place of archeometry and experimental researches applied in archeological excavation methods in the development of archeological science. This article focuses on the Çatal Höyük, one of the Neolithic centers where both archaeological theories and modern archeological methods and archeometric research are applied. Thus, the researches of archaeologists James Mellaart (1961-1965) and Ian Hodder (1993-2017) on the monument at different times were covered in detail. Looking at these studies, it has been shown that different theories lead to different excavation methods, and the results obtained differ from each other.