Catalhoyuk Social Conditions

Social conditions of past societies is not a perfect system to study, because they rely on studying certain aspects of the human culture that could then be used to determine different social structures. The sites of Catalhoyuk in Turkey, and Stonehenge of southern England, help to see the ways in which social complexity and social conditions can be determined by analyzing certain social aspects. Each of these groups had relied on agriculture in some ways to develop into sedentary lifestyles, and because of this there was the ability of the society to grow and develop into civilizations in some form. These two sites vary in the fact that one is simply the society connected to the stone circle, so there is less of a direct connection between
During this period of time, humans were changing from the effects of a sedentary life made possible by agriculture to one of more complex civilizations. Inside of the town, the structures were mud brick and wooden homes decorated with wall art and divided into different sections for the individuals. The town lacked streets between homes, so the opening to the home was through a hole that then turned the upper level of the homes into a sort of community space. There were no homes that were built to the same specifications, but there were also no distinct structures within the entire town. What this tells us is that there were no distinctly important buildings, such as would be needed for governing or religious purposes evident in socially complex groups. With limited space inside of the town, the dead were buried inside of their homes under the floors where living relatives then slept. All bodies were placed in the same graves together, equal past their lives, with no markers signaling differences between them. From this, it is possible to tell that there was little social complexity past the egalitarian communal
When Stonehenge was beginning to be built, starting around 3,000 BCE, the society that decided to construct this amazing site was much more complex than that of the Catalhoyuk. The movement of these large stones alone is a difference that can be seen from those in Turkey. If the Catalhoyuk are egalitarian because of their lack of distinctive structures, then it is easy to see how this extremely distinctive structure makes this society likely to be more socially complex. The necessary skills to plan and carry out this project are highly unlikely to have emerged from an egalitarian society where no one person has say over another. Another sign of social complexity is seen in the burial of a man that became known as the Amesbury Archer, because of the artifacts with which he was buried. Burials are signs of the importance of a person in life, and in this burial site were a number of valuable stone arrowheads, precious metals, and even, “On his forearm was a black coloured sandstone wrist-guard, or bracer. This both protected his arm from the recoil of the bow he would have used when hunting or fighting and acted as a symbol of status” (Fitzpatrick). The importance of this burial then suggests that there were social groupings within the Stonehenge area society, which is vastly different from the seemingly equal social groups that lived in