Mellaart was banned from Turkey for his involvement in the Dorak affair in which he published drawings of supposedly important Bronze Age artifacts that later went missing.Kenneth Pearson and Patricia Connor, The Dorak affair, New York, Atheneum, 1968 After this scandal, the site lay idle until 1993, when investigations began under the leadership of Ian Hodder, then at the University of Cambridge.I. Hodder, Çatalhöyük, Anatolian Archaeology, vol. 4, pp. 8–10, 1998I. Hodder, Getting to the Bottom of Thing: Çatalhöyük 1999, Anatolian Archaeology, vol. 5, pp. 4–7, 1999I. Hodder, Çatalhöyük, Anatolian Archaeology, vol. 8, pp. 5–7, 2002I. Hodder, A New Phase of Excavation at Çatalhöyük, Anatolian Archaeology, vol. 9, pp. 9–11, 2003 Çatalhöyük: Excavations of a Neolithic Anatolian Höyük – Çatalhöyük Archive Report 2008 The Hodder led excavations ended in 2018. Hodder, a former student of Mellaart, chose the site as the first "real world" test of his then-controversial theory of post-processual archaeology. The site has always had a strong research emphasis upon engagement with digital methodologies, driven by the project's experimental and reflexive methodological framework. According to Mickel, Hodder's Çatalhöyük Research Project (ÇRP) established itself as a site for progressive methodologies - in terms of adaptable and democratized recording, integration of computerized technologies, sampling strategies, and community involvement."
