Equality of the sexes is revealed in ancient diet

Under the Microscope: Since the 18th century, a tradition has grown in anthropology that pictures women playing a dominant role in early agricultural society. However, recent archaeological findings in Turkey call for a radical revision in this simple picture. Expanded details can be consulted in Scientific American, January 2004.

Early European scholars, prompted by Aristotle and the Bible, believed that the early political development of society was patriarchal. In the 19th century, North American tales told of tribes that traced decent through the matriarchal line. This idea became commonplace in the second half of the 19th century and throughout the 20th century.

About 9,000 years ago in the late Stone Age a group settled on the banks of a river in central Turkey and built a town there, now known as Catalhoyuk. They planted cereals and kept sheep and used nicely polished stone tools. They also used many wild plants and hunted wild pigs, cattle and wild horses.

Catalhoyuk grew to accommodate 8,000 people in 2,000 houses, jammed into a 26-acre site. There were no streets in the mature town and people moved about on the roofs of the houses. Each house was entered via a stairway from the roof. The rooms were liberally endowed with wall paintings and sculpture, mainly depicting animals and humans.

Because of its large size and its elaborate art, Catalhoyuk has - and is - being closely studied in order to elucidate the way of life of these early farmers. James Mellaart and his wife Arlette first excavated the site in the 1960s. He drew attention to prominent female statuettes that he interpreted as representing the mother goddess.

This theme was taken up by other scholars who argued effectively for an early matriarchal society, evidenced not only at Catalhoyuk but also found elsewhere around Europe with the advance of agriculture. In a matriarchal society the leaders are women, descent is through the female line, inheritance passes from mother to daughter and society worships a mother goddess. It was argued that patriarchal societies arose later, along with horse riding, warring and metallurgy.

Excavation was resumed at the Catalhoyuk site in the 1990s, under the direction of Ian Hodder, Stanford University, and fresh evidence has since emerged concerning the relative power of the sexes 9,000 years ago. Some of the most powerful evidence involves an analysis of diet. If men and women at the time lived significantly different lives one would expect to discover dietary disparities between the sexes, with the dominant group having access to better foods.

The inhabitants of Catalhoyuk buried their dead under the floors of the houses and an analysis of these ancient bones shows no significant differences between male and female bones, implying that they ate very similar diets. An extensive evaluation of teeth wear patterns also shows no difference in terms of wear and tear between males and females, also strongly indicating that males and females ate very similar diets.

The patterns of wear and tear on bones were also analysed and these indicate that men and women seem to have carried out very similar work during their lives. The interiors of the houses in Catalhoyuk were quite smoky, particularly in winter, and the inhabitants inhaled considerable amounts of soot, some of which remains in the skeletons, stuck to the rib cage.

Analysis of many skeletal remains at the site has found no significant difference between male and female, implying that both sexes lived similar lives as regards amount of time spent out of doors. The physical evidence, in summary, indicates that men and women ate similar diets and had similar lifestyles with little difference in power or status.

The dead were buried beneath built-in raised platforms, normally used for sitting, working and sleeping, along the walls of the main house room. If there were significant status differences between men and women, this would probably be reflected in burial practice, e.g. burying the men in one part of the room and the women in another part. Careful study has revealed no pattern to the burials, again suggesting a society in which sex does not pre-determine social role.

However, the artwork of the houses in Catalhoyuk does show partitioning of roles between men and women. The paintings largely concentrate on men, usually hunting wild animals. There are also many pictures of male wild animals, often with erect penises. But the evidence gathered on diet indicates that, if the men were more involved with hunting, men and women partook equally in eating the meat.

Excavations to-date have concentrated on the older layers of the site. On-going work will examine more recent layers in detail. In these later layers, depictions of women working with plants are more common as plant agriculture began to play a more prominent role in the society.

There is no evidence to-date that this ancient society worked either on patriarchal or matriarchal lines. There seems to have been some division of labour between the sexes, but otherwise both sexes seemed to have played key roles in social life. Further work on the more recent layers will reveal if the roles of men and women became more sharply delineated along divergent paths as time moved on.

William Reville is associate professor of biochemistry and director of microscopy at University College Cork