Towards Reflexive Method in Archaeology: The Example of Catalhoyuk

In the early 1990s the University of Cambridge reopened excavations at the Neolithic site of Catalhöyuek in central Turkey, abandoned since the 1960s. In this volume, Ian Hodder explains his vision of archaeological excavation, where careful examination of context and an awareness of human bias allows researches exciting new insights into prehistoric cognition. The aim of the volume is to discuss some of the reflexive or postprocessual methods that have been introduced at the site in the work there since 1993. These methods involve reflexivity, interactivity, multivocality and contextuality or relationality.

Ian Hodder is Dunlevie Family Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University and Director of the Stanford Archaeology Center. He previously taught at Leeds University and Cambridge University. His main large-scale excavation projects have been at Haddenham in the east of England and at Catalhoyuk in Turkey, where he has worked since 1993. He has been awarded the Oscar Montelius Medal by the Swedish Society of Antiquaries and the Huxley Memorial Medal by the Royal Anthropological Institute, has been a Guggenheim Fellow, and has Honorary Doctorates from Bristol and Leiden Universities. His main books include Spatial Analysis in Archaeology (Cambridge University Press, 1976), Symbols in Action (Cambridge University Press, 1982), Reading the Past (Cambridge University Press, 1986), The Domestication of Europe (1990), The Archaeological Process (1999), The Leopard's Tale: Revealing the Mysteries of Catalhoyuk (2006) and Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships Between Humans and Things (2012).