Past event

Mitford Memorial Lecture: 25 years of excavation at Çatalhöyük, a neolithic proto-city in Southern Anatolia -- was it all worth it?

Join the University of St Andrews Archaeological Society for the annual Mitford Memorial Lecture.

Light refreshments will be served from 7pm before the lecture begins at 8pm. All are welcome to attend and Society membership for 2018 to 2019 will be taken at the door.

The lecture will be delivered by Professor Ian Hodder, Dunlevie Family Professor and Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University, California.

The excavations at the Neolithic ‘town' of Çatalhöyük in central Turkey have involved a very large team and large amounts of resources. In this talk I consider what has been learned from this 25 year effort, and whether the resources used are justified by the results obtained. Indeed, can any archaeological research project produce results that justify the huge amounts spent? Archaeological research has become so technical, detailed, forensic, slow that the question of whether the ends justify the means becomes critical. I hope to answer this question in a positive vein.