Publisher's Synopsis
THE GODDESS AND THE BULL details the dramatic quest by archaeologists to unearth the buried secrets of human cultural evolution in the largest and best preserved prehistoric settlement ever to be discovered: the 9,500-year-old village of Catalhoyuk in Turkey. Here lie the origins of modern society - the dawn of art, architecture, religion, family, and even the first tangible evidence of human self-awareness, the world's oldest mirrors.
Michael Balter, the excavation's official biographer, takes readers behind the scenes, providing unprecedented access to the remarkable site and its history of scandal and thrilling scientific discovery. He features colourful characters like James Mellaart, the man who discovered the site only to lose it in the wake of a scandal, and Ian Hodder, a path-breaking archaeological rebel who reopened excavations in the early 1990s and who continues to probe the site today. Along the way, Balter describes the cutting-edge advances in archaelogical science that have allowed the team at Catalhoyuk to examine and illuminate the central questions of human existence.
