Pre-Pottery Neolithic

Göbekli Tepe (~9.500–8.000 calBC) is a prehistoric site in Southeast Turkey that dates back to an early stage in the transition from hunter-gathering to farming economies in the Near East. Research undertaken in the period 2015–2019 has included the excavation of deep-soundings and the re-evaluation of some two decades of excavation records. This work is leading to a revision of former interpretations of the prehistoric site which still fuel the popular media image of Göbekli Tepe as home to the »World’s First Temples«.

The practice of intentional burying of buildings is one of the controversial topics of Neolithic archaeology. Even though a consensus has not been attained on this matter, the number of buildings asserted as being intentionally buried is steadily increasing in Anatolia and in other parts of the Near East as well, exemplified both as domestic and special functions. The custom of burying buildings had its beginnings in the earliest phases of the Neolithic Period sustaining up to the latest stages, though considerably varying in the modalities of its implementation. The paper will introduce the buried structures recently excavated at the Neolithic site of Karahantepe. All structures exposed at present are special buildings, evidently intentionally filled in. The structure denominated as AB, being the most informative not only on the filling process but also on the final sealing process of the building, will be elaborated in some detail.

"Göbekli Tepe is one of the most important archaeological discoveries of modern times, pushing back the origins of monumentality beyond the emergence of agriculture. We are pleased to present a summary of work in progress by the excavators of this remarkable site and their latest thoughts
about its role and meaning. At the dawn of the Neolithic, hunter-gatherers congregating at Göbekli Tepe created social and ideological cohesion through the carving of decorated pillars, dancing, feasting—and, almost certainly, the drinking of beer made from fermented wild crops."

Although the Neolithic period is explained with the "simple agricultural communities" 1 , in previous years by excavating of Göbeklitepe, Çayönü, and Nevali Çori; the period got started to be defined as more complicated and developed phases because scientists found monumental buildings in Göbeklitepe which cause that agriculture system-settlementreligion-temples chronological order, was accepted by all scientist, turned into settlementreligion-temples-agricultural system array. Moreover, these structures that are totally different and specially built in nature which can be considered as temples, so archaeologist Prof. Dr.

This paper summarises typological and technological research on a small assemblage of pottery containers recovered at Kfar HaHoresh (KHH), a Pre-Pottery Neolithic B site in the Southern Levant. The majority of the sherds belong to a distinguishable fabric, composed of local marl matrix tempered with vegetal material originating from herbivore manure. Based on the scarcity and properties of the sherds, we propose that the pottery containers at KHH were rare vessels possibly produced for personal use or for use by distinctive individuals for very limited purposes.

Karahan Tepe is a Pre-Pottery Neolithic sanctuary situated beyond the eastern limits of the Harran Plain in southeast Anatolia. Located on a roughly north-northeast to south-southwest hill ridge, it includes a series of stone settings, with the possible presence also of now lost stone enclosures of a similar age. Most likely Karahan Tepe was a regional centre for the veneration of natural forces, perhaps associated with the symbol of the snake. On site investigations indicate the rocky outcrop could have acted as a backsight for observations of the bright star Deneb (α Cyg) in the Cygnus constellation and the Milky Way's Great Rift, which in the proposed epoch of construction, ca. 8500-8000 BC, would have set into a prominent flat-topped hill located 1 mile (1.6 kilometres) north-northwest of Karahan Tepe. Also discussed is Karahan's true name, Keçili, as well as the sanctuary's possible relationship to Göbekli Tepe, 23 miles (37 kilometres) away, and the suspected changes in cosmologically beliefs and practices that accompanied the Neolithic revolution in southwest Asia, ca. 9000 BC.

With the opening of Sanliurfa's new archaeological museum full attention has been given to its incredible reconstruction of Göbekli Tepe's Enclosure D, complete with its twin monoliths standing an almighty 5.5 metres (18 feet) high, and its stone-by-stone reconstruction of Nevali Çori's cult building. Yet lurking in the back of one of its display areas is a stone carving from Göbekli Tepe that almost certainly shows either a penguin or the great auk. But which is it? Learning the answer could throw greater light on the geographical origins of the Göbekli builders.

If H2a1 Mitochondrial DNA (MtDNA) bearers suddenly appeared in Eastern Europe in late 6th millennium BC and were omnipresent during Eurasian Copper and Bronze Ages, their modern dispersion's pattern seems to indicate they consciously overlapped Palaeolithic sites we have linked to the practice of early medicine. However they brought new characteristics from a prior southeastern Anatolian (Taurus Mountains) and Levantine (Galilea) ethnogenesis based on the convergence of Pastoralism for Milk (PM), co-evolution between gene and food practice implying the development of Lactase Persistence (LP), the Early Seeds Processing and specific associated behaviours such as selected body parts or perforated teeth as beads in burials. A Levantine thaumaturgical and matriarchal organization based on military force seemed to have synthesized all these influences and has diffused a culture whose elements are all reunited in the grave of Individual from Hilazon Tachtit Stage D (12000 cal BP, Natufian Culture). The lineage seemed to have followed the Fertile Crescent corridor that leads to Lesser Caucasus and reconstituted in Karabakh, close to the Kalavan-1 site, most of the Natufian cultural context. During Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB), while H2a1 MtDNA bearers expanded in Western Asia by Levant to become one of the most frequent sub-haplogroup of H, the corridor that promoted exchanges between Armenian Obsidian sites and the later Halaf site of Domuztepe, close to the modern Cilician H2a1 MtDNA hotspot, imposed advanced agricultural technics on the Araxes and Vorotan rivers. Thanks to a solid transgenerational transmission of medicinal practices that allowed overpassing the simultaneous development of new diseases like Yersinia Pestis, the innovative woman's lineage became a key element in the new population's admixture from Araxes – Vorotan-Hakari Rivers, future pillar of the Kura-Araxes Culture. While the agricultural Halaf influence extended towards the Caspian maritime plain, Bolgarçay River (Azerbaijan) and Gilan, (Iran), medicinal exchanges with central Asia triggered a new military network specialized in the trade of Boric acid and projected H2a1 MtDNA bearers in Inner Asia. West, the Transcaucasian expansion of H2a1 MtDNA bearers put an end to the Shulaveri-Shomu Tepe culture and their penetration between Don and Volga broadcasted thaumaturgy and advanced agricultural technics until Rhine following Gravettian sites we have demonstrated to be dedicated to medical practices. A last wave of H2a1 MtDNA coincides with the expansion of the Kura Araxes Culture in all Fertile Crescent and reached Atlantic during late 3 rd and early 2 nd millennia BC, changing the whole agricultural landscape of Western Europe until the Roman Empire. This paper demonstrate that Epi Palaeolithic elites were personally engaged in the survival and well-being of their groups, the Neolithic increasing demography forcing them to find solutions (*həll (n.) modern Azeri) making the 'Hellenism' the common base of the Indo-European culture born in Fertile Crescent.

The most famous Pre-pottery Neolithic site of Anatolia, Göbekli Tepe, since 1994 has been the subject of intensive studies due to its peculiar characteristics , linked to the presence of both circular buildings and the so-called anthropo-morphic T-shaped pillars. It was supposed that its discovery would have been one of a kind, but in the next few years scholars revealed the existence of similar settlements in the area of Şanlıurfa Province. These sites, still far from being investigated, share with Göbekli Tepe the same archaeological evidences, including chronological features, size and architectural and iconographic traits. The aim of this article is to focus on the new available data, which could lead us to re-discuss the interpretive models valid up to a few years ago, as recent publications point out. New inter-pretive tools and excavations are required to better understand what seems to be the clue of the presence of a real cultural facies with precise connotations, amongst which an high specialized craftmanship, that was able to exploit the best limestone morphology of the territory for the construction of monumental complexes.

A runaway model of agricultural evolution was developed to account for patterns of development and sustainability among the Pre-Pottery Neolithic societies of the southern Levant, and to provide insights into contemporary patterns of development and sustainability. A Darwinian theory of subsistence evolution was developed from first principles, framed in terms of cultural transmission or dual-inheritance theory. An approach to sustainability was formulated in terms of niche construction theory and resilience thinking. Adaptive models from human behavioural ecology (e.g. optimal foraging theory and nutritional ecology) and cultural transmission theory (e.g. cultural group selection and tribal social instincts) were scrutinised, and shown to be inadequate for modelling the evolution of early agriculturally-dependent societies. A maladaptive model of runaway agricultural evolution was developed, and a series of preconditions and predictions were derived. These preconditions and predictions were assessed against early Holocene archaeological and palaeoenvironmental records from the southern Levant. Data from more than 50 archaeological sites spanning more than 3000 years was examined across a range of disciplines, materials and methodologies, including: archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, osteology, genomics, palaeodemography, palaeopathology, site catchment analysis, palaeoenvironmental reconstruction, mortuary practices, architecture, material culture and stone tools. A distinctive pattern of development was identified, involving: increasing agricultural investment, increasing ritual investment, demographic growth, increasing social differentiation and inequality, the accumulation of sustainability problems, the accumulation of sustainability solutions, the possible evolution of formal regulative social institutions, and the erosion of social-ecological resilience leading to ‘niche cracking’. Socio-political and economic relationships critical to the instigation and maintenance of runaway agricultural evolution could have rendered LPPNB societies particularly vulnerable to disruption, triggering a de-escalation or reverse runaway. The most plausible triggers to the LPPNB/PPNC release (Ω) and reorganisation (α) appeared to be climate change, crop disease or anthropogenic landscape alteration. The runaway model sufficiently explained numerous dimensions of the PPN archaeological and palaeoenvironmental records in the southern Levant. A number of predictions received strong support (e.g. patterns of agricultural investment, demography and ritual performance and the development of sustainability problems and solutions) and others existed at the limits of archaeological detectability (e.g. the development of LPPNB regulatory social institutions). The idea that sustainability problems elicited genetic responses from PPN populations, and that those responses generated problems of their own, received precursory support from recent genome-wide SNP and WGS data, constituting particularly auspicious areas of future research. The runaway model could plausibly be extended to explain dominant patterns of Holocene socioeconomic development – e.g. patterns of increasing socioeconomic complexity, agricultural dispersals, the ‘origins of the state’, and even present-day patterns of sustainability and development.

A relatively large area has been excavated in the archaeological researches carried out since 2019 in Karahantepe. However, only a small part of this large settlement has been unearthed yet. The first results revealed that the special structures and dwellings are in the same place, and the special structures consist of a group of structures whose functions are defined to form a complex. In this paper the results achieved in the 2019-21 campaigns are introduced.

"The Tepe Telegrams" is a weblog meant to give insight into ongoing excavations and archaeological research at the Pre-Pottery Neolithic site of Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey. Notes on recent field work and short contributions by staff members of the research project will address some of the questions and topics often brought up regarding the monumental structures unearthed at Göbekli Tepe.

SUMMARY: Lecture-3 provides a broad overview of the Neolithic period in the Levant, including the Natufian, Pre-pottery Neolithic, and Pottery Neolithic. This lecture is designed mainly as an educational resource/aid for college students (i.e., normally posted only on my institution's course website), the public (e.g., people auditing my course), and interested colleagues from other disciplines (to whom I periodically provide copies privately).  I am posting it here, both as a broader access, educational tool, and especially to promote the study of this region and its past societies.  For further knowledge about this region and period, I refer interested parties to the textbooks and other sources from which the initial materials were extracted for this ppt. (see syllabus; e.g., initially Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible), and/or the bibliographies in these works and my online resource guides (see other files in my academia folders).  Much of this and the other lectures summarize the pertinent materials in the course textbook(s), add in other data, including my own research materials, and furnish numerous images to clarify/illustrate the wealth of information encountered in the textbook(s).  Some generic imagery (usually indicated as such) is posted to aid in transmitting various concepts visually, and/or when a specific image remains not located (temporarily).  I update and revise such lectures each time, with such elective courses normally being taught once every two years.  I try to cover the most current, mainstream views, and usually place summary notes at the end of each lecture (or in separate test study guides).  Over time, each lecture is improved, errors rectified, and additional data placed within the lecture.  These ppt. lectures take many hours to compile, but they have proved useful to many of my more serious students (who have since pursued graduate degrees), and a few colleagues, who, like me, often teach outside our main fields of specialty, and I hope they can be of benefit to others as well.  My apologies for any errors I may have made (over time, as I teach this course every two years, I try to rectify any errors that might slip in inadvertently), and for my liberal usage of educational imagery from professional sources and vetted internet sources.  In the case of my knowledge of ancient Syria-Palestine, fortunately I originally pursued a virtual specialist undergraduate and graduate degrees in this subject (under John S. Holladay), alongside my main focus in Egyptian Archaeology), subsequently examined Egypt's presence and influence in the Levant from 1550-525 BC (for my doctoral dissertation), and have since maintained my interest and research in Egypt's relations with this region (especially during the Old Kingdom [EB Age] and Late Period [Iron Age to Persian period]).  UPDATES: The course is offered every two years within a classroom setting, and is updated variously every two years. The revisions to this 2020 version are more substantial (added slides in Fall 2023  edition).

Multispecies Archaeology explores the issue of ecological and cultural novelty in the archaeological record from a multispecies perspective. Encompassing more than just our relationships with animals, the book considers what we can learn about the human past without humans as the focus of the question. The volume digs deep into our understanding of interaction with plants, fungi, microbes, and even the fundamental building blocks of life, DNA. Multispecies Archaeology examines what it means to be human-and non-human-from a variety of perspectives providing a new lens through which to view the past.

Recent fieldwork in the main excavation area at Göbekli Tepe has focused on the excavation of deep soundingsto reach the natural bedrock in preparation for the construction of a shelter, urgently required for the protection of the exposed Neolithic architecture. Eleven deep soundings have been excavated to the bedrock. At several locations, considerable amounts of  carbonized botanical material were discovered, so far unique for excavations at Göbekli. A series of more than 150 samples has been produced either on site or by flotation of the relevant soil units. To test the quality of the material for radiocarbon dating, five samples from the area of the large enclosures from Layer III were submitted for AMS-radiocarbon dating. These new data, together with a further age made on collagen from an animal tooth, are presented and discussed in context with previously available absolute chronological evidence.

The article attempts an alternative and anthropological-based hypothesis to explain the abundance of snake motives in the Earliest Near Eastern Neolithic, contrasted with their relative scarcity in later times. The focus is mainly, but not exclusively, on the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) of Southeast Turkey, with sites like Göbekli Tepe and Körtik Tepe having produced a huge number of snake motives applied to a variety of materials and items. The predominance of the snake motive is then related to venomous serpents being a cardinal thread to hominids and humans throughout their evolutionary history, and particularly to early farmers, where snakes were a notorious hidden danger for semi-sedentary, crop-cultivating communities.

Ölü gömme gelenekleri, toplulukları oluşturan bireylerin topluluk yapısı içerisindeki sosyal statülerinin anlaşılması noktasında önemli bilgiler sağlamaktadırlar. Farklı bireyler üzerinde saptanan
farklı uygulamaların yanı sıra mezarlarda tespit edilen ölü hediyeleri, topluluğun sosyal yapısı içerisindeki tabakalaşmayı gösterir niteliktedirler. Bu çalışma içerisinde Merkezi Bereketli Hilal
Bölgesi kapsamındaki, Türkiye’nin Güneydoğu Anadolu Bölgesi, Kuzey Suriye ve Kuzey Irak’ta bulunan Seramik Öncesi Neolitik Dönem yerleşimleri ölü gömme gelenekleri noktasında sosyal yapı
açısından değerlendirilecektir.

Burial traditions provide significant information on the social status of the community members in the group’s social structure. Different burial practices on different group members and burial gifts both signify the existence of a stratigraphy in the group’s social structure. In this study,
Central Fertile Cresent Pre-Pottery Neolithic Settlements which are located in Southeastern Turkey, Northern Syria and Northern Iraq are evaluated in terms of social structure by means of the burial traditions.

We review and evaluate human adaptations during the last glacial-interglacial climatic transition in southwest Asia. Stable isotope data imply that climatic change was synchronous across the region within the limits of dating uncertainty. Changes in vegetation, as indicated from pollen and charcoal, mirror step-wise shifts between cold-dry and warm-wet climatic conditions, but with lag effects for woody vegetation in some upland and interior areas. Palaeoenvironmental data can be set against regional archaeological evidence for human occupancy and economy from the later Epipalaeolithic to the aceramic Neolithic. Demographic change is evaluated from summed radiocarbon date probability distributions , which indicating contrasting and in some cases opposite-population trajectories in different regions. Abrupt warming transitions at ~14.5 and 11.7 ka BP may have acted as pacemakers for rapid cultural change in some areas, notably at the start of the Natufian and Pre-Pottery Neolithic cultures. However temporal synchroneity does not mean that climatic changes had the same environmental or societal consequences in different regions. During cold-dry time intervals, regions such as the Levant acted as refugia for plant and animal resources and human population. In areas where socio-ecological continuity was maintained through periods of adverse climate (e.g. Younger Dryas) human communities were able to respond rapidly to subsequent climatic improvement. By contrast, in areas where there was a break in settlement at these times (e.g. central Anatolia), populations were slower to react to the new opportunities provided by the interglacial world.

New research in southeastern Anatolia at Early Neolithic sites has brought a fresh per- spective on the emergence of the Neolithic way of life in southwest Asia. In addition to providing more details on the transition to settled life, food production, and technological innovations, this more recent work has increased our understanding of both the time span and geography of the last hunter-gatherers and the earliest farmers in the wider region. Now the picture of the beginning of the Neolithic is more complex and fragmented. This complexity necessitates a multifaceted approach to the questions of the emergence of the Neolithic. In this regard, the data coming from Pre-Pottery Neolithic A sites in southeastern Anatolia, particularly in the Upper Tigris Basin, is remarkable. In this paper the transitional stage to the Neolithic in the region and new data from Gusir Höyük is dis- cussed according to the architectural data.

Pre-pottery Neolithic period has been separated and mentioned on the chronological timeline for the sites that appeared in Near East during the end of Late Pleistocene and Old Holocene (Paleoholocene) and in the first half of Early Holocene (late arctic, subarctic, preboreal and boreal 1-2 phases, 12500-6500 BC) and for the archaeological cultures based on the study of those sites. Pre-pottery Neolithic period is divided into Pre-pottery Neolithic A (PPNA, 10500-8700 cal. BC), Pre-pottery Neolithic B (PPNB, 8700-7500 cal. BC) and Pre-pottery Neolithic C (PPNC, 7500 – 7000 cal. BC) phases .
The investigations of recent years have discovered archaeological sites in the territory of Republic of Armenia, which could be comparative with the earliest Neolithic or Proto-Neolithic phase of the Near East. First among these sites is Apnagyugh-8 (Kmlo-2) cave (discovered in 2002), which is located in the canyon of the Kasakh River, situated south from Apnagyugh village of Aragatsotn Province of Armenia, in the confluence of one of the tributaries of Kasakh and the main canyon, on 1700 m a.s.l. [Gasparyan et al. 2003: 58-59; Chataigner et al. 2012: 52 - 63]. This cave is a result of mechanical weathering in basalt flow, having large dimensions (approximately 30 m2 overall surface). The excavations of the cave were implemented in 2003-2009. During 2007-2009 the results of radiocarbon dating of new samples taken from the 5th horizons of Apnagyugh-8 cave show the time range of 11 - 10th millennium Cal. BC, and only one sample has the data referring to the middle of 8th millennium .
We need to mention, that “Apnagyugh” type tools are made of exceptionally obsidian, except the dacite sample from Aghvorik-3.  There are sites with these kind of tools’ recorded in Kabardino-Balkaria (Sosruko, Alebastroviy Grot), in North Ossetia (Chorniy Grot), in South Ossetia),  (Pichigin, Naguthney-1-2, Zura-Akho, Gijoeti, Tsipleti, Jermukh), in Svanetia (Paluri, Lebikvi, Nakuraleshi), in Adjaria (Beshumi), in Upper Imereti (Burghnari), in the Kura river basin, on the slopes of Papakar mountain chain (Damjli-1), on the Akhalkalaki Plateau (Paravani-1-2). These sites are located in high mountainous regions: depressions, plateaus and are represented by small caves and open-air sites in nearby deep gorges. Among them the most studied site is Paluri, which is a pre-settlement. “Apnagyugh” type tools found in these sites, which were called “lecale” “lekala” or “hook-like tool” type tools by G. Grogolia, are made of mainly flint, but they are made of again obsidian in the sites near the northern borders of the Armenian Highlands. According to the author, the above mentioned sites belong to Pre-pottery Neolithic phase. He offers to include them in a separate group and call Paluri-Nagutni cultural tradition. Their main sequence or their lower layers were attributed to Mesolithic period : This fact is based on the huge amount of geometrical or non-geometrical microliths of stone objects producing complex, but in G. Grigolia’s opinion, they should be studied separately and should be dated to the same period as Paluri considering the existence of “lecale” type tools. The sites of Paluri-Nagutni are not investigated enough so far, either. Their stratigraphy, comprehensive studies of lithic complexes, absolute dating and biostratigraphical data do not exist. However, it is obvious, that sites with “Apnagyugh” type tools and “lecale” type tools are spread in the area located between Ararat Depression and the Northern Caucasus and are exceptionally caves, rockshelters and open-air sites .
Recently studied Kotias Klde is a cave site situated in the Kvirila River basin of western Georgia. The deposits are divided into four layers, ranging from the Upper Palaeolithic to the Bronze Age. A series of radiocarbon dates indicates a time range of the Mesolithic for Layer B and Early Neolithic for Layer A2.
Regarding the “Çayönü” type tools, we need to mention, that they can be seen in the sites, which are located in the south from Ararat Depression and belong to the end of the 2nd phase (8700-7500 cal. BC) of Pre-pottery Neolithic B (middle PPNB).
Thus, the existence of prismatic technique, which wasn’t completely entrenched (entrenched version of this technique appears in the Neolithic-Eneolithic settlements of Ararat valley: Aknashen, Aratashen, Masis-Blur etc.), dominant role of secondary shaping of the tools (there is the opposite picture in the Neolithic-Eneolithic settlements of Ararat valley), significant quantity of geometrical microliths, the scarcity of  arrowheads with formed sides, the existence of backed inserts, and finally, the traditions of refreshing the working sides of the tools, which had wide usage even during Paleolithic period (Yerevan-1, Lusakert-1) let us conclude, that Apnagyugh-8 industry is closer to the production complexes with traditions of Mesolithic and/or Upper Paleolithic periods. But it’s difficult to show any culture or archaeological source in Armenia today, which belongs to these periods, preceding Apnagyugh-8 and could be its origin or prototype. The only site that emerged before Apnagyugh-8 is Kalavan-1, an upper Paleolithic site dating to 16th -14th millennia BC, where microliths of geometrical forms are fully absent. Though Apnagyugh-8 industry shows some similarities with Zarzian and Trialeti cultures, analytic studies for proving this comparison are still in the process.

دست ساخته های سنگی تپه تولایی (توله ای) مجموعه‌ای غنی از مصنوعات نوسنگی است که در نوع خود کم نظیر است. این مجموعه که در خلال کاوش های فرانک هول از محوطه‌ای به همین نام جمع‌آوری شده، در سال 2931 برای نخستین‌بار مورد مطالعه قرار گرفت.  نگارندگان طی دوره‌ی حضور خود در موزه ملی که با راهنمایی و مساعدت دکتر فریدون بیگلری میسر شد، سعی کردند علاوه بر سامان بخشی فیزیکی مصنوعات، گزارشی دقیق‌تر از ویژگی‌های عمده‌ی فناورانه و گونه‌شناسی ابزارها فراهم آورند. ناگفته پیداست این پژوهش مانند هر تلاش علمی دیگری خالی از خطا و بی‌نیاز از تکمیل نمی‌باشد. به‌ویژه، برای بررسی بیشتر درخصوص نمونه‌های معرفی شده و نیز بازسازی دقیق‌تر مراحل فناوری، مطالعات آتی ضروری است