The 'art' discovered by James Mellaart at the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey has generated enormous interest, scholarly and popular, over the last 30 years. This paper presents a critique of previous approaches to what is one of the best-known bodies of iconographic evidence in the archaeo logical literature, arguing that these interpretations fail to address the intimate, domestic context of the murals and mouldings. Instead they should be understood in terms of the routinized practices occurring within the same architectural spaces, which reflect their past interpretations and embodied experience. This mode of archaeological interpretation is developed in relation to the methodology adopted in new excavations at Çatalhöyük during 1995-7.
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