What is it about?
Reviews the last ten years' research at and about the important Neolithic site of Göbekli Tepe and its impact on fields outside archaeology and among the public. Principle takeaways include that recent excavations have begun to clarify that the enigmatic, small "Level II/III" buildings are PPNA houses, that the stratification is much more complicated than the old II, II/III and III levels can accommodate, that there is plenty of evidence for Neolithic habitation, that some of the plant foods at the site were in the early stages of domestication, and that the large level III structures were probably roofed. However, literature outside of archaeology rarely acknowledges any of this.
Featured Image
Photo by Frank Samol on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Emphasizes that recent discoveries that have revised or disproved some aspects of Karl Schmidt's hypotheses about the site have had little impact on the overall narrative about the site being "The World's First Temple".
Perspectives
I am one of the few who have strongly criticized the predominant narrative about the site and have previously argued that the "temples" may actually be large houses in a "House Society".
Edward B Banning
University of Toronto
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Paradise Found or Common Sense Lost? Göbekli Tepe’s Last Decade as a Pre-Farming Cult Centre, Open Archaeology, January 2023, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1515/opar-2022-0317.
You can read the full text:
Resources
Who Built Göbekli Tepe?
YouTube video on competing theories about the builders of this Neolithic site
The "Handbags" of Göbekli Tepe
This video concentrates on theories about what the three enigmatic images at the top of Pillar 43 at Göbekli Tepe might represent and whether they are of any special significance, ending with a substantially different interpretation.
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
