Human Body Parts from the Monumental Special Buildings at Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) Göbekli Tepe, Southeast Türkiye

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Embodied Essence: Anthropological, Historical, and Archaeological Perspectives on the Use of Body Parts and Bodily Substances in Religious Beliefs and Practices" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In recent years, the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (ca. 9500–8000 BC) site of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey has seen the emergence of some major hypotheses based on results from ongoing fieldwork. Perhaps the most significant new insight relates to site formation, especially the filling processes of the large monumental special buildings with their collections of characteristic limestone T-shaped monoliths. Until a few years ago, it was considered that human remains recovered during the excavation of some of these buildings were part of a massive intentional backfill of the structures at the close of their use lives. In the case of the animal bones found in this fill matrix, this interpretation led to ideas of the building-burial taking place against the backdrop of a religious ceremony accompanied by feasting. For the less numerous human bones, this scenario implied the intentional deposition of selected human body parts. Naturally, this is a very interesting possibility given the topic of this symposium. However, new interpretations of the archaeology and site formation processes have challenged this hypothesis. Here, we will present our current conclusions regarding the archaeology at Göbekli Tepe and focus on their impact on the interpretation of human body parts recovered from the special buildings.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Embodied Essence: Anthropological, Historical, and Archaeological Perspectives on the Use of Body Parts and Bodily Substances in Religious Beliefs and Practices   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39136.0