quote: Archaeological excavations at Göbekli Tepe, a transitional Neolithic site in southeast Turkey, have revealed the earliest megalithic ritual architecture with characteristic T-shaped pillars. Although human burials are still absent from the site, a number of fragmented human bones have been recovered from fill deposits of buildings and from adjacent areas. We focus on three partially preserved human skulls, all of which carry artificial modifications of a type so far unknown from contemporaneous sites and the ethnographic record. As such, modified skull fragments from Göbekli Tepe could indicate a new, previously undocumented variation of skull cult in the Early Neolithic of Anatolia and the Levant.
INTRODUCTION Human skulls can be venerated for various reasons, ranging from ancestor worship to the belief in the transmission of protective or other properties from the deceased to the living (1). This focus on the human skull, including its special treatment, led to the establishment of the term skull cult in the anthropological literature [for example, Cauvin (2), Bienert (3), and Wahl (4)]. Skull cult can take on different forms, that is, with skull modifications frequently underlying very specific cultural codes. In the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN; 9600–7000 calBC) of Southeast Anatolia and the Levant, there is an abundance of archaeological evidence for the special status assigned to the human skull: In addition to the deposition of skulls in special places, as attested by the “skull depot” at Tell Qaramel (5) or the “skull building” at Çayönü (6), human skulls are also known to have been decorated, for example, where the soft tissue and facial features have been remodeled in plaster [such as, Goren et al. (7) and Rollefson (8)] and/or color was applied to the bone (9, 10).
A hitherto unknown type of skull modification has recently been observed at Göbekli Tepe in Southeast Anatolia. Fragments of three human skulls have been recovered, all of which carry intentional deep incisions along their sagittal axes. In one of these cases, a drilled perforation is also attested. These findings are outstanding because they provide the very first osteological evidence for the treatment of the dead at Göbekli Tepe. The monumental stone buildings and rich symbolism encountered at this site have provided unprecedented insights into human belief systems and worldview at the Neolithic transition in one of its earliest geographical regions of genesis (11). Here, we present results from the analyses of these modifications according to several technical features. Results are compared with modified skulls from other Neolithic sites and examples from ethnographic research. Finally, we discuss whether the deep incisions (hereinafter also referred to as “carvings”) are congruous with activities associated with a variation of skull cult that is perhaps distinct to the site of Göbekli Tepe.
quote:Indeed, Gobekli Tepe sits at the northern edge of the Fertile Crescent
—an arc of mild climate and arable land from the Persian Gulf to present-day Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Egypt—and would have attracted hunter-gatherers from Africa and the Levant. And partly because Schmidt has found no evidence that people permanently resided on the summit of Gobekli Tepe itself, he believes this was a place of worship on an unprecedented scale—humanity's first "cathedral on a hill."
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