Introduction

The first question put to the 2006–2009 Templeton scholars was, How can archaeologists recognize the spiritual, religious, and transcendent in early time periods? The question is difficult, not least because the very meanings of the terms “spiritual,” “religious,” and “transcendent” are contested. The initial question thus immediately devolves to theoretical issues both broad and hoary. That question was not addressed to our cohort; yet the issues are so central, rich, and refractory as to merit further comment. I therefore wish to offer another answer to the question What is religion? and to apply it to a few topics at Çatalhöyük. These include the nature of ancestral remains, the house, leopards, and teeth and claws in walls. More specifically, my answer helps account for the vitality – that is, the animacy – that these objects apparently had for the people who created or curated them.

In addressing the question of what is religion, I assume that religion is a concept, not a real thing in the world, and that this concept originated at a particular time in a particular part of the world. In contrast, in most of the ancient and modern world, including Çatalhöyük (Hodder 2010a: 16, Hodder this volume), religion does not stand out as a separate concept but is part of the cultural fabric. As Pels (2010: 233) writes, we should not look for a “distinct practice, with institutional and doctrinal unity or coherence” at Çatalhöyük. Nonetheless, religion there as elsewhere can be given a particular, substantive definition, one based on a category of human thought and action that is even broader than religion, yet still distinctive.