The Center, along with the Department of Anthropology, supports the Çatalhöyük Research Project, a Neolithic archeological site in south-central Turkey first excavated in the early 1960s. Today, Çatalhöyük is considered one of the most important prehistoric sites in Turkey, revealing how life was lived in an ancient urban center that dates to around 7,400 B.C. The site includes the remains of agricultural activities, art such as wall paintings and plastered reliefs, graves, living quarters, pottery, figurines, and other artifacts that provide insights into how the people lived their daily lives. The site also contains animal remains that have puzzled researchers, including animal horns protruding from walls and seats.

Creating records of every item excavated is a critical task that allows researchers to gain a deeper understanding of this ancient culture and society. For years, the project’s on-site researchers entered geo-spatial

information—used to identify where exactly artifacts were unearthed—into a database that was maintained and updated using time-consuming manual methods. It took one person 20 hours or more a week to enter and modify information using this system.

“It was a slow and costly process that also created confusion among researchers about which version of specific data was the most current,” says Lindsay Der, a Stanford PhD candidate working at the site. “We had a field database with one person in charge of controlling the local master copy—but that person was not always around. Because of the large number of researchers involved in the project, there were often changes made to information that was not updated properly, so we were constantly cleaning up data. It was particularly frustrating for collaboration efforts when there was uncertainty about the accuracy of the information.”