{
 "name": "The Deep Days",
 "tagline": "Ordinary life, nine thousand years early.",
 "premise": "Cinematic documentaries about ordinary life in the world's first villages and underground cities — Çatalhöyük, Göbekli Tepe, Derinkuyu — built on published excavation evidence.",
 "youtube": "https://www.youtube.com/@thedeepdays",
 "email": "info@thedeepdays.com",
 "signoff": "Same species. Different Tuesday.",
 "posts": [
  {
   "title": "The Skulls Under Çatalhöyük's Vulture Painting Were Never Missing",
   "slug": "catalhoyuk-vulture-mural-skulls-not-missing",
   "url": "https://thedeepdays.com/posts/catalhoyuk-vulture-mural-skulls-not-missing/",
   "date": "2026-08-31",
   "description": "Çatalhöyük's famous mural shows vultures stripping headless bodies — but the burials directly beneath the painting still have their skulls. A 2016 forensic study on the site's real headless skeletons found a messier story than the wall lets on.",
   "sources": [
    {
     "note": "Forbes coverage of the 2016 Pilloud et al. bioarchaeological re-assessment (verified this cycle)",
     "url": "https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2016/06/09/griffon-vultures-defleshed-corpses-to-create-headless-burials-in-ancient-anatolia/"
    },
    {
     "note": "ScienceAlert coverage giving the 14-skeleton sample and the single-cutmark detail (verified this cycle)",
     "url": "https://www.sciencealert.com/archaeologists-might-finally-know-what-happened-to-these-14-headless-corpses-in-turkey"
    },
    {
     "note": "Cambridge Core listing for Gifford-Gonzalez (2007), 'On beasts in breasts: another reading of women, wildness and danger at Çatalhöyük,' Archaeological Dialogues (author/journal/year verified this cycle)",
     "url": "https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/archaeological-dialogues/article/abs/on-beasts-in-breasts-another-reading-of-women-wildness-and-danger-at-catalhoyuk/4C0C343CE47E5FBEFF34F35DE484B7E7"
    },
    {
     "note": "Pilloud, M.A., Haddow, S.D., Knüsel, C.J. & Larsen, C.S. (2016) 'A bioarchaeological and forensic re-assessment of vulture defleshing and mortuary practices at Neolithic Çatalhöyük', Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 10: 735–743",
     "url": null
    }
   ]
  },
  {
   "title": "Why Çatalhöyük had no streets",
   "slug": "why-catalhoyuk-had-no-streets",
   "url": "https://thedeepdays.com/posts/why-catalhoyuk-had-no-streets/",
   "date": "2026-08-31",
   "description": "For most of its 1,100 years the world's most famous early town had no streets and no doors at ground level. You came home across the rooftops — and that changes how you picture everything else.",
   "sources": [
    {
     "note": "Çatalhöyük Research Project — Architecture (the excavation's own project page)",
     "url": "https://www.catalhoyuk.com/site/architecture"
    },
    {
     "note": "Hodder, I. (2012) \"Çatalhöyük. A Summary of Recent Work Concerning Architecture\", in Festschrift for Ahmet A. Tırpan, Istanbul: Ege Yayınları, pp. 303–314 — roof access, ladder scars in wall plaster, hearth placement",
     "url": "http://www.ian-hodder.com/articles/catalhoyuk-a-summary-of-recent-work-concerning-architecture-book-chapter-pdf"
    },
    {
     "note": "Shillito, L-M. et al. (2021) \"Analysis of fine particulates from fuel burning in a reconstructed building at Çatalhöyük\", Environmental Geochemistry and Health (open access) — PM2.5 measured in the site's own reconstructed house",
     "url": "https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8863713/"
    },
    {
     "note": "Ian Hodder, The Leopard's Tale: Revealing the Mysteries of Çatalhöyük (2006)",
     "url": null
    },
    {
     "note": "Ali Umut Türkcan (then head of the excavations), 2021 — a street found in a newly opened area of the North Terrace; roughly 6% of the site excavated",
     "url": "https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/excavation-works-reveal-2nd-neigborhood-in-catalhoyuk-166321"
    }
   ]
  }
 ]
}