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James Mellaart - Wikipedia
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James Mellaart

James Mellaart FBA (14 November 1925 – 29 July 2012) was a British and Dutch archaeologist and author who is noted for his discovery of the Neolithic settlement of Çatalhöyük in Turkey. He was expelled from Turkey when he was suspected of involvement with the antiquities black market. He was also involved in a string of controversies, including the so-called mother goddess controversy[2] in Anatolia, which eventually led to his being banned from excavations in Turkey in the 1960s.[3] After his death, it was discovered that Mellaart had forged many of his "finds", including murals and inscriptions used to discover the Çatalhöyük site.[4]

James Mellaart
Mellaart at Çatalhöyük
Born(1925-11-14)14 November 1925
London, United Kingdom
Died29 July 2012(2012-07-29) (aged 86)
London, United Kingdom
Other namesJimmy Mellaart
Occupation(s)Archaeologist, forger
Years active1951–91
SpouseArlette Meryem Cenani 1954–2012 (his death)
ChildrenAlan Mellaart[1]

Biography

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Mellaart was born in 1925 in London. He held both British and Dutch citizenship, and his family originally came from Scotland; according to one colleague, he "considered himself a Scot".[5] He lectured at the University of Istanbul and was an assistant director of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara (BIAA). In 1951 Mellaart began to direct excavations on the sites in Turkey with the assistance of his Turkish-born wife Arlette, who was the secretary of BIAA. He helped to identify the "champagne-glass" pottery of western Anatolia in the Late Bronze Age, which in 1954 led to[citation needed] the discovery of Beycesultan. After that expedition's completion in 1959, he helped to publish its results. In 1964 he began to lecture in Anatolian archaeology in Ankara.

Çatalhöyük excavation

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James Mellaart excavating a mural in Çatalhöyük

When Mellaart excavated the Çatalhöyük site in 1958, his team found more than 150 rooms and buildings, some decorated with murals, plaster reliefs, and sculptures. The site has since been seen as important as it has helped in the study of the social and cultural dynamics of one of the earliest and largest permanently occupied farming settlements in the Near East.

According to one of Mellaart's theories, Çatalhöyük was a prominent place of mother goddess worship. However, many other archaeologists did not agree with him, and the dispute created a controversy. Mellaart was even accused of making up at least some of the mythological stories he presented as genuine. The furor caused the Turkish government to close up the site. The site was unattended for the next 30 years until excavations were begun anew in the 1990s.

The city as a whole covers roughly 32.5 acres (130,000 m2), and housed between 5,000 and 8,000 people, whereas the norm for the time was around one tenth of this size. The site stirred great excitement when Mellaart announced it and has since caused much head scratching. In fact, more recent work has turned up comparable features at other early Neolithic sites in the Near East, and this has benefited many people in their understanding of the site so that many of its one-time mysteries are no longer real issues.[citation needed]

Dorak affair

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Main article: Dorak affair

In 1965 Mellaart gave a report of a new rich find from Dorak to Seton Lloyd of the British Institute. Mellaart said that he had seen the treasures in 1958 in the İzmir home of a young woman whom he met on a train. She sat in front of him in the train car, wearing a gold bracelet which drew his attention. She told him that she had more at home, so he came over and saw the collection. She did not allow him to take photographs, but did let him make drawings of them. He gave the story to The Illustrated London News, and then Turkish authorities demanded to know why they had not been informed. He said that the young woman, named Anna Papastrati, asked him to keep it secret.[6] He asked the Institution to sponsor publications of the story, but they refused with no real evidence. When looking for Papastrati's home, it turned out that the street address did not exist in İzmir, and her name was not found. The only document that can be traced to her is a typed letter that after examination appears to have been done by Mellaart's wife Arlette.[7] In consequence, Turkish officials expelled Mellaart for suspected antiquities smuggling. He was later allowed to return but eventually banned completely[citation needed].

Retirement

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As of 2005, Mellaart had retired from teaching and lived in North London with his wife and grandson. He died on 29 July 2012.[8][9]

Theories about early Anatolia

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According to Mellaart, the earliest Indo-Europeans in northwest Anatolia were the horse-riders who came to this region from the north and founded Demircihöyük in Eskişehir Province, Turkey, in ancient Phrygia, c. 3000 BCE. They were ancestors of the Luwians who inhabited Troy II, and spread widely in the Anatolian peninsula.[10] It was Mellaart who first introduced the term "Luwian" to archaeological discourse in the 1950s. According to Christoph Bachhuber, current surveys and excavations tend to support many of Mellaart’s observations on changes in material culture at a regional scale.[11]

Mellaart cited the distribution of a new type of wheel-made pottery, Red Slip Wares, as some of the best evidence for his theory. According to Mellaart, the proto-Luwian migrations to Anatolia came in several distinct waves over many centuries. The current trend is to see such migrations as mostly peaceful, rather than military conquests. Mellaart focused on the archaeologically observable destruction events of Troy II (ca. 2600–2400 BCE). For him, they were associated with the arrival of Indo-Europeans from the eastern Balkans.[11]

Forgeries

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In 2018 Mellaart's son Alan and the Swiss-German geoarchaeologist Eberhard Zangger published an investigation according to which Mellaart had fabricated extensive forgeries in support of his theses.[12][13][4] After investigating the late Mellaart's apartment, Zangger revealed that Mellaart "faked several of the ancient murals and may have run a 'forger's workshop' of sorts."[12] These forgeries included prototypes of murals and engravings that Mellaart had claimed to have discovered in Çatalhöyük.

Beyköy 2 inscription

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Another of Mellaart's texts was a Hieroglyphic Luwian inscription named Beyköy 2, which received global headlines when it was announced in 2017 because it purported to contain specific history of the groups known to the Egyptians as Sea Peoples and to the biblical authors as the Philistines.[14] This text, however, may also be a forgery,[12] and several scholars have since debated its authenticity. Zangger and Fred Woudhuizen, who published the text after discovering drawings of it (held to be copies of drawings made by Georges Perrot in 1878 of stone blocks that later disappeared) among Mellaart's papers,[15] have contended for its authenticity,[16][17] but other scholars consider the inscription spurious, pointing out that it fits the pattern of Mellaart's previous forgeries but does not fit what is otherwise known about the history of the period.[18][19]

Works

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  • "Anatolian Chronology in the Early and Middle Bronze Age"; Anatolian Studies VII, 1957
  • "Early Cultures of the South Anatolian Plateau. The Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Ages in the Konya Plain"; Anatolian Studies XIII, 1963
  • Çatal Höyük, A Neolithic Town in Anatolia, London, 1967
  • Excavatians at Hacilar, vols. I–II, Edinburgh, 1970
  • The Neolithic of the Near East, New York, 1975
  • The Goddess from Anatolia, 1989 (with Udo Hirsch and Belkıs Balpınar)

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Zangger, Eberhard (11 October 2019). "James Mellaart: Pioneer…..and Forger". Popular Archeology. Retrieved 4 October 2023.
  2. ^ Mallett, Maria. "The Goddess from Anatolia". Archived from the original on 19 March 2016. Retrieved 23 April 2016.
  3. ^ Strauss, Robert L. (2014). "What Happened here?". Stanford Magazine. Stanford University. Archived from the original on 10 February 2023.
  4. ^ Ebehard Zangger (2018), "James Mellaart's Fantasies", Talanta: Proceedings of the Dutch Archaeological and Historical Society 50, 125–182.
  5. ^ It could also be, it was speculated, that Mellaart was reluctant to tell his wife that he spent a week at the woman's home.
  6. ^ Mazur, Suzan (4 October 2005). "Dorak Diggers Weigh In On Anna & Royal Treasure". Scoop. Retrieved 9 July 2012.
  7. ^ "James Mellaart" The Telegraph 03 Aug 2012
  8. ^ "James Mellaart 14 November 1925 - 29 July 2012" Antiquity Journal
  9. ^ James Mellaart (1981), "Anatolia and the Indo-Europeans", Journal of Indo-European Studies 9, 135–149
  10. ^ a b Christoph Bachhuber (2013), James Mellaart and the Luwians: A Culture-(Pre)history
  11. ^ a b c Jarus, Owen. "Famed Archaeologist 'Discovered' His Own Fakes at 9,000-Year-Old Settlement". Live Science. Retrieved 12 July 2022.
  12. ^ "British prehistorian forged documents throughout his life" (PDF) (Press release). London, Zurich: Luwian Studies. 1 March 2018. Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 March 2021. Retrieved 12 July 2022.
  13. ^ Borschel-Dan, Amanda (11 October 2017). "Is this huge inscription our missing link to the biblical 'Sea Peoples'?". The Times of Israel. Retrieved 12 July 2022.
  14. ^ Zangger, Eberhard; Woudhuizen, Fred (2018). "Rediscovered Luwian Hieroglyphic Inscriptions from Western Asia Minor" (PDF). Talanta. 50: 9–56.
  15. ^ Zangger, Eberhard (2018). "James Mellaart's Fantasies" (PDF). Talanta. 50: 169–172.
  16. ^ Woudhuizen, Fred; Zangger, Eberhard (2018). "Arguments for the Authenticity of the Luwian Hieroglyphic Texts from the Mellaart Files" (PDF). Talanta. 50: 183–212.
  17. ^ Stissi, Vladimir (2018). "What Is Drawn and Written Is Not Necessarily True. Contextualising Mellaart's Fakes" (PDF). Talanta. 50: 87–124.
  18. ^ Bányai, Michael (2018). "Der Beyköy Text: Eine Fälschung?" (PDF). Talanta. 50: 57–82.

Further reading

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  • Balter, Michael. The Goddess and the Bull: Çatalhöyük: An Archaeological Journey to the Dawn of Civilization. New York: Free Press, 2004 (hardcover, ISBN 0-7432-4360-9); Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2006 (paperback, ISBN 1-59874-069-5).
  • Pearson, Kenneth; Connor, Patricia. The Dorak Affair. London: Michael Joseph. 1967; New York: Atheneum, 1968.
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