Çatalhöyük (Turkish pronunciation: [tʃaˈtaɫhøjyc]; also Çatal Höyük and Çatal Hüyük, or any of the three without diacritics; çatal is Turkish for "fork", höyük for "mound") was a very large Neolithic and Chalcolithic settlement in southern Anatolia, which existed from approximately 7500 BCE to 5700 BCE. It is the largest and best-preserved Neolithic site found to date.

Çatalhöyük is located overlooking wheat fields in the Konya Plain, southeast of the present-day city of Konya (ancient Iconium) in Turkey, approximately 140 km (87 mi) from the twin-coned volcano of Mount Hasan. The eastern settlement forms a mound which would have risen about 20 m (66 ft) above the plain at the time of the latest Neolithic occupation. There is also a smaller settlement mound to the west and a Byzantine settlement a few hundred meters to the east. The prehistoric mound settlements were abandoned before the Bronze Age. A channel of the Çarşamba river once flowed between the two mounds, and the settlement was built on alluvial clay which may have been favourable for early agriculture.

Ian Hodder FBA (born 23 November 1948 in Bristol) is a British archaeologist and pioneer of postprocessualist theory in archaeology that first took root among his students and in his own work between 1980-1990. At this time he had such students as Henrietta Moore, Ajay Pratap, Nandini Rao, Mike Parker Pearson, Paul Lane, John Muke, Sheena Crawford, Nick Merriman, Michael Shanks and Christopher Tilley. As of 2002^[update], he is Dunlevie Family Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University in the United States.

Since 1993, Hodder and an international team of archaeologists have carried out new research and excavation of the 9,000 year-old Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in central Anatolia (modern Turkey). He is Director of the Çatalhöyük Archaeological Project which aims to conserve the site, put it into context, and present it to the public. He has endeavoured to explore the effects of non-positivistic methods in archaeology, which includes providing each excavator with the opportunity to record his or her own individual interpretation of the site.