Establishing identities in the Protoneolithic: History making at Göbekli Tepe in the late 10th millennium calBC

Summary

Processes of early sedentism are associated with the agglomeration of complex hunter-gatherer populations within the ‘confines’ of spatially limited permanent settlement systems, possibly with ‘fixed’ territorial claims, and with an economy based on stored harvests of wild cereals and pulses, and broad-spectrum hunting. Against this background, the emergence of social hierarchies and identities has long been an area of discussion among archaeologists. Be this as it may, we still find it extremely challenging to describe the different paths which social evolution may have taken in the Early Neolithic, let alone backing up any assumptions with empirical or physical evidence. In this paper, we turn our attention to the PPNA ritual enclosures at Göbekli Tepe. We will discuss the role of these structures in the genesis of Early Neolitic group identities. In doing so, we posit that the monumental archirecture at this site was used as a means to express and substantiate long-term (historical) social relationships in the Early Holocene.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Religion, history and place in the origins of settled life in the Middle East.

Keywords

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