The Stone Age Sanctuaries of Göbekli Tepe

Abstract

About 15 kilometers north-east of the Turkish city of Þanlıurfa, on a mountain ridge that can be seen for miles around, lies the mound of Göbekli Tepe with its Stone Age Sanctuaries. Its enormous deposit layers, up to 15 meters high, have accumulated over several millennia on an area of about 9 hectares. Even today the place has lost nothing of its magical appeal. For example, a wishing tree, which stands on top of the ridge, is still sought by the inhabitants of the surrounding area. On this site, excavations done by the German Archaelogical Institute in cooperation with the museum of Þanlıurfa found an important piece of the puzzle represented by the early history of humanity, which contributes to a completely new understanding of the process of sedentism and the beginning of agriculture. Of course the hill, which is strewn with numberless stone implements, and with large-format, regular-shaped ashlars only revealed its secret as a result of the investigations, which have been carried on since 1995. Amazingly, no residential buildings have been discovered up to now. However, at least two phases of monumental religious architecture have been uncovered. Of these, the oldest layer, with its richly adorned monolithic pillars, is the most impressive. The buildings on this layer are circular, with a diameter of over 20 metres, and constructed from quarry stone. There are the enclosure A-D on the southern slope and enclosure E at the western plateau. Their age is impressive, having been dated to the 10th millennium BC, a time when men still lived as hunter-gatherers. This opened up a layer of the Stone Age, in which the so-called Neolithic Revolution took place. In superposition of layer III there is layer II, which has been dated to the 9th millennium BC. Now a certain reduction both in size of the structures and in numbers of the pillars can be observed. The uppermost layer I is represented by the surface debris including enormous deposits of Hangfußsedimente, accumulations of eroded sediments from layers II and III. There is no occupation from periods younger than the Pre-Pottery Neolithic at the site. Enclosure A had been discovered in 1996, but it is only partially excavated until now. Six pillars are known so far from this structure. Remarkable is the relief of a net like object, probably the interlaced bodies of several snakes. Enclosure B and C had been found in 1998 und 1999. Enclosere B includes 9 pillars. Between the central pillars the floor level had been uncovered. As expected it had been a Terrazzo floor. Remarkable is the depiction of a reptile like animal, may be a varan, on the back side of pillar 6. Enclosure C owns two circles of pillars, which are 18 in total so far. In the 2008 campagne the artificially smoothed bedrock had been unveiled representing the floor of this structure. In the centre of the enclosure two podests are visible. They had been worked out of the bedrock. These podests are the bases of the central pillars 35 and 37. Such an installation had been know allready from enclosure E, which is located outside the mound on the western plateau of Göbekli Tepe, where similar podests had been visible at the rock surface already in the first campagne 1995. The best preserved structure is enclosure D with 13 pillars. The stone pillars are the most characteristic feature of the sanctuaries at Göbekli Tepe. The pillars are without doubt abstract representations of people; they are, in other words, stone statues of anthropomorphic beings, as representations of arms and hands were discovered on several pillars. The head is represented by the cross of the T-shaped pillars. Differentiation of sex was evidently not intended. It is also clear that the minimalist form of representation was intentional, because the other statues and reliefs found at the site offer sufficient proof of the artist’s ability to produce naturalist works. If anything, the stone pillars represents ancestors, ghosts of the dead or daemons, and have therefore been given an ambiguous form. It even could be possible, that the pillars represent the first deities being visible after the long period of the Upper Palaeolithic with its famous art, but without anything, which could be understood as the depiction of a deity (not regarding the question, if the female statuettes of the Upper Paleolithic Gravettian could represent goddesses). Anyway, the stole that can be discerned on some pillars seems to represent an attribute or a garment, which could only be worn by certain persons as a ritual robe. Perhaps the stone buttons which occur in large numbers only in Göbekli Tepe belong to a robe of this type. The pairs of pillars in the centre of each space, which tower above the other pillars, must also be ascribed an important role. Twins, or pairs of brothers and sisters, are a common theme in mythology. On the other hand, they may simply present the classic duality of man and woman. However, there is no indication of sex. With few exceptions, the reliefs, adorning many of the 47 pillars discovered up to now in layer III, depict animals. So far as can be seen, the gender of the animals is also male: foxes and gazelles, lions and wild asses, bulls and boars. Beside the mammals there are ducks and cranes, vultures and ibises, and also snakes, spiders and scorpions. Some of the animals, most of which could be said to have terrifying or protective aspects, may have served as guards. It remains a mystery whether the relief pictures should be considered as attributes of the respective “pillar beings”, or whether they are part of a mythological cycle. The animal reliefs are naturalistic and correspond to the fauna of that time. However, the pictured animals need not necessarily have played a special role in the everyday lives of the people, as game animals for example. They were rather part of a mythological world, which we already encounter in