CITIES. In order to obtain the deepest historical understanding of urban religiosity, one may begin with the Neolithic site of Çatal Hüyük, located on Turkey's Anatolian Plateau. The main mound represents the continuous habitation of a coherent cultural group between about 7000 and 5700 BCE, making this one of the oldest known cities in the world. The earliest excavations exposed residential abodes adjoining structures identified as shrines in a section of the city described by James Mellaart, the principal excavator (1967), as a sacred or priestly quarter. The remarkably preserved shrine rooms reveal a dominant female image, molded on the walls in plaster with arms upraised and legs extended, sometimes portrayed as pregnant and sometimes portrayed with an animal's head emerging from her womb. Other images of animal heads in plaster adorn the walls of the shrines, and short pillars with mounted bulls' horns adorn the edges of raised...