Variation in Neolithic teeth from Çatalhöyük (1961-1964)

The largest series of Neolithic human skeletal material derives from Catalhoyuk, in the Konya plain of peninsular Turkey. The excavations were carried out by James Mellaart in three seasons between 1961 and 1964 (Mellaart 1962; 1963; 1965). Larry Angel of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, and Denise Ferembach of the Musee de L'Homme, Paris, worked on the material in the mid-1960s (Angel 1971; Ferembach 1972). Angel was primarily interested in recording pathological conditions, and Ferembach in recording skeletal metrics; consequently their two sample sets are not entirely the same. Where there is overlap, in general their sex determinations agree. Neither published any detailed study of the jaws or teeth, and yet these are now the most intact part of the material. It is this collection of jaws and teeth that has been the subject of our study, which is an attempt to provide a comprehensive analysis of the dentitions of a Neolithic sample.