As the first full-length volume about Çatahöyük aimed at the general public since James Mellaart's 1967 book, Çatal Hüyük: A Neolithic Town in Anatolia , this book has the potential to reach a very wide audience. For that reason, I decided at the outset to employ literary devices that would allow me to get across a maximum of archaeological knowledge, including details of the theoretical debates that led Ian Hodder to reopen the site in the first place, with a minimum of pain to the general reader. I felt that the best way to do this was to tell the story of the excavation through the lives of the archaeologists themselves, exploring their backgrounds, what led them to become archaeologists, and the various ways that they participated in the dig and experienced its challenges. For many members of the team, this occasionally created anxiety about the extent to which their private lives would be exposed publicly; in most cases these issues were easily resolved through discussions and negotiations about what would and would not be included. It is a great credit to the members of the team that they allowed me to go to the maximum limits in this regard: Once having accepted the basic premise of the book, they courageously permitted their lives to be opened up for scrutiny.

Although at the beginning I had no intentions other than producing an "objective" piece of journalism about the dig, the book ended up being, in my opinion, a good example of the principle of "multivocality" which has guided Ian Hodder's direction of the excavations. That is, the book is part of the Çatahöyük Research Project, and yet independent of it at the same time. While a number of members of the team carefully reviewed the text and made corrections and very helpful suggestions, at all times it was understood that I would have the final say about what went into the book. It is rare that a journalist has the opportunity to produce a work under these conditions, which insured the credibility of the book while at the same time maximizing the input by its very subjects. If the book ends up having even a modest success in the literary marketplace, it will be largely due to this collaborative effort. And in writing it, I learned a great deal myself about what "objective" journalism really means, and to what extent it is achievable or even desirable. I think I expressed this best in the book's Introduction:

"One day, while consulting the dig's Web site…I was surprised to see that without my knowledge I had been designated as the excavation's official 'biographer.' At first I was a little concerned. I even thought about asking them to take my name off. Wouldn't being a member of the team jeopardize my reputation as an objective journalist? Indeed, I had often secretly wondered whether I kept going back to Çatahöyük so that I could write this book, or whether I wrote this book so that I could keep going back to Çatahöyük. But in the end, it really doesn't matter; either way, the story comes out the same."

Now that the book is done, I have to find a new excuse to visit the dig. I am sure I will come up with something.
    The Çatahöyük Biography (Michael Balter, ÇATALHÖYÜK 2004 ARCHIVE REPORT)

This meant that no one archaeologist, no matter how many degrees he or she had or how much experience in the field, could claim to have the magic key to understanding the past. Rather the archaeologist engaged in a complex and often frustrating process of interpretation of what had happened in prehistory, an excavator had to be receptive to multiple points of view.