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University of Gothenburg—The findings challenge traditional assumptions about mobility and migration in prehistoric societies. Previous research has often suggested that women were more likely to move between communities, particularly through marriage in patrilineal societies.

“Our study* demonstrates that the number of non-local women to men are comparable, suggesting that several different factors might have been driving an individual’s mobility”, says Serena Sabatini, University of Gothenburg.

The Mediterranean region saw significant socio-cultural and economic transformations during the Bronze Age, varying across regions and over time. Expanding exchange networks played an important role in these developments. To what extent these exchanges were accompanied by the migration and settlement of foreign individuals within local communities is still poorly understood. 

The study: Exploring mobility in Bronze Age Greece: A Sr isotope perspective has been published in PLOS One. The study investigation determined the childhood origins of 199 Bronze Age individuals from southern and central Greece. 

The study shows that a consistent rate of 5 to 10 percent of the individuals analysed in each of the studied Bronze Age communities from modern-day Greece were ‘foreigners’. 

“Interestingly, non-local individuals were identified across different burial practices, featuring both unremarkable and richly furbished graves, revealing that individuals were mobile regardless of their wealth or status”, says Serena Sabatini, University of Gothenburg.

While no ‘foreigners’ were identified among the investigated children, young adults under the age of 30 were most likely to be non-local, suggesting that mobility and migration concerned to a considerable extent single young individuals rather than the relocation of entire families. 

Serena Sabatini and Kristian Kristiansen, both archaeologists from the University of Gothenburg have participated in the study. The study is published in PLOS One as open access: Exploring mobility in Bronze Age Greece: A Sr isotope perspective 

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A foreign childhood origin can be determined with a significant degree of certainty as an individual’s skeletal Sr isotope composition is directly linked to the surrounding environment through the consumed water and food, which are typically collected in the immediate environment. Hence, individuals with a Sr isotope composition different from that has been measured in the region (so called bioavailable baselines) surrounding their burial site are interpreted as originated elsewhere. 

The study presents Sr isotope data from 199 skeletal samples belonging to individuals excavated at six archaeological sites from central and southern Greece to explore how mobility changed throughout the Bronze Age and whether it was driven by specific factors.

The study has been published as part of The Rise II Project. Department of Historical studies, University of Gothenburg.

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Article Source: University of Gothenburg news release.

*Exploring mobility in Bronze Age Greece: A Sr isotope perspective, PLOS One, 23-Sep-2026. 10.1371/journal.pone.0357576

A hypothesis for a major paradigm shift has emerged in Paleolithic archaeology, challenging the traditional textbook depiction of Upper Paleolithic human mammoth hunting. For decades, popular culture and science championed the image of nomadic, mostly male hunters tracking woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) across vast open tundras and attacking them on land with long spears. 

Recent comparative systems analyses, however—backed by taphonomic, economic, spatial, and iconographic data—proposes a radically different framework known as the River Paradigm (RP). 

This newly articulated paradigm reshapes our understanding of Paleolithic hunting, spatial economy, and the true function of the iconic mammoth-bone settlements discovered across Central and Eastern Europe. 

The Core Shift: From Terrestrial Chases to the “River Paradigm”

The River Paradigm, heavily detailed by researchers analyzing Eastern European river basins, argues that Paleolithic mammoth hunting was not an opportunistic land pursuit, but a vertically integrated, riverine subsistence system. Instead of tracking agile herds on open steppes where humans faced immense physical disadvantages, communities used navigable river systems to safely trap and kill mammoths. The rivers solved the impossible logistics of moving a 4-to-6-ton animal. Hunters utilized river currents to transport massive carcasses downstream toward centralized riverside settlements for butchery and processing. Rather than relying entirely on flimsy hand-thrown spears, the paradigm proposes that hunters used massive, pre-positioned, lubricated, hafted composite thrusting spears embedded securely along specific river channels and bottlenecks. 

Demographics: Target Selection

This economic re-evaluation aligns seamlessly with recent demographic discoveries. Zooarchaeological analyses indicate that Paleolithic hunters deliberately targeted female mammoths and matriarchal herds rather than solitary, wandering apex males. The female herds had much more stable, predictable migratory routes through river corridors, making them easier to intercept. While adult female mammoths still weighed up to 4 tons, they were physically smaller and far less aggressive than 6-ton lone males, maximizing caloric return while mitigating injury risk to the hunting collective. 

Reinterpreting Mammoth-Bone Circles as “Smokehouses”

One of the most profound aspects of this new paradigm is the radical reimagining of Mammoth-Bone Structures (MMBS)—the famous circular structures consisting of collected mammoth bone remains found at sites like Mezhyrich, Ukraine; Eliseevichi, Russiia; Kyiv-Kirilovskaia; and Kostenki, Russia.

Heretofore labeled as winter huts or ritual spaces, the new economic model presents the Smokehouse Hypothesis, positing that these structures were highly specialized facilities designed for the mass cold-smoking of meat and the rendering of fat. The massive quantities of burnt and calcinated bone found inside these circles were not structural garbage; they were deliberately used as fire fuel to slow down combustion, creating the steady, low-temperature smoke required for cold-smoking meat.

The hypothesis solves longstanding archaeological mysteries, explaining why many bone circles completely lack formal entranceways, are packed with rows of aligned flat hearths, and feature floor spaces explicitly scaled for commercial-grade meat storage. 

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The Kostenki site, taken from the roof of the associated museum – photo from Don’s Maps

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The World’s First “Process Charts”?

This paradigm is not built solely on bone taphonomy, but also on the re-examination of Upper Paleolithic art. Engraved ivory tusks and bones from Mezhyrich, Eliseevichi, and Kyiv-Kirilovskaia are now being interpreted by scholars as the world’s oldest process charts and pictographic documents. 

Rather than abstract or map-like drawings, these artifacts act as literal instruction manuals carved by the hunters themselves. They document step-by-step industrial sequences, from carcass docking at riverbanks, primary riverside butchery, cold-smoking operations within the bone circles, to finally fat-rendering and organized multi-tier storage.

The Broad Impact on Paleo-Economics.    

By demonstrating that Upper Paleolithic communities operated an organized, vertically integrated production line using water power, the River Paradigm shifts our timeline of human socio-economic complexity. It suggests that these Ice Age populations were far more sedentary, cooperative, and managerially advanced than the simple nomadic bands previously imagined.

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See A Hunter’s Hypothesis: Ancient Mammoth-Bone Circles Were Smokehouses, published at Popular Archaeology February 12, 2025.

Cover Image, Top: Credit Kyraxys,Pixabay

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Popular Archaeology Magazine

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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences—Ground-edged sickles and knives in Neolithic North China were likely used for fiber production as well as harvesting, according to a study*. The transition from the Paleolithic Period to the Neolithic Period in North China was marked by the development of stone sickles and knives with continuous cutting edges produced by grinding and polishing. Such ground-edged tools are thought to have been used for harvesting cereal crops, but the origins of the technology are unclear. Ran Chen and colleagues analyzed 140 stone artifacts from the site of Peiligang in Henan Province, China, including Upper Paleolithic flaked stone tools and Early Neolithic flaked and ground-edged stone tools. Using experimental replicas, the authors found that, compared with stone flakes, ground-edged tools were only slightly more efficient at harvesting seed-bearing grasses but significantly more efficient at cutting thick-stemmed weeds and fiber-yielding plants. Use-wear and microfossil residue analysis indicated that Upper Paleolithic flaked tools were used to process diverse plant and animal materials, a feature also observed in Early Neolithic flaked tools. In contrast, ground-edged tools were more specialized for plant-related activities, including harvesting and processing food plants and fiber-producing plants. According to the authors, fiber production, an under-appreciated factor in the development of ground-edged stone tools in Neolithic China, provides insights into prehistoric tool use beyond subsistence functions.

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Hafted experimental sickle replica.  Credit Ran Chen.

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Researcher using experimental sickle replica to harvest velvet leaf.  Credit Ran Chen.

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Article Source: PNAS news release.

*“Plant fiber exploitation contributed to the emergence of ground-edged cutting tools in North China,” by Ran Chen, Yongqiang Li, Xingcan Chen, Wanfa Gu, and Xiaoying Wu.  https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2608882123

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POPULAR ARCHAEOLOGY ON INSTAGRAM

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During archaeological excavations conducted on the territory of the ‘Keshikchidag’ State Historical and Cultural Reserve located in the Agstafa district, Azerbaijan, important Bronze Age artifacts were uncovered. A rare mace head, a bronze dagger, and various arrowheads indicating the burial of an individual with high social and military status were discovered in Kurgan No. 4, located in the Sariyokhush area.

The archaeological excavations are being conducted within the framework of the project ‘Scientific Archaeological Excavations and Summer School 6 in Keshikchidagh,’ organized in partnership with the Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences (ANAS), on the territory of the ‘Keshikchidagh’ State Historical and Cultural Reserve under the management of the State Service for Protection, Development and Restoration of Cultural Heritage under the Ministry of Culture. Students, master’s students, and young volunteers are also participating in the project. Under the guidance of specialists, they gain practical experience in field archaeological work.

Led by Vagif Asadov, leading researcher at the ANAS Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology and PhD in History, the archaeological excavations have brought to light material culture samples belonging to the Middle Bronze Age of the South Caucasus, dating back approximately to the 17th–16th centuries BCE.

The stone-covered kurgan has a diameter of approximately 12 meters, a height of 80 centimeters above the ground level, and a depth of 1–1.2 meters. The materials recovered from the burial chamber of the kurgan indicate that an individual with high social and military status was buried here. The finds provide new information about the military-political structure and social relations of that period.

Among the discovered artifacts, the bronze dagger is of particular significance. As a close-combat weapon, this dagger is considered one of the key indicators that the deceased held the status of a warrior or military commander.

One of the most notable artifacts of the excavation is a mace head made of diorite stone with a hole drilled from both sides through its center. Weighing approximately 400–500 grams, this artifact was crafted and polished from special stone. It is assumed that a wooden or bone handle was fitted through the central hole.

Archaeologists state that such mace heads were not used merely for practical purposes. These artifacts could also serve as symbolic and ceremonial objects denoting the high status of the military aristocracy, tribal leader, or commander. The smooth, symmetrical, and balanced form of the mace head also demonstrates the level of development of stonemasonry art in the South Caucasus during the Bronze Age.

Various arrowheads were also found in the kurgan. The rare winged arrowheads evoke special interest among Middle Bronze Age weaponry due to their material and shape. Two black obsidian arrowheads indicate the use of obsidian deposits in the region and the existence of raw material exchange.

In addition, nine flint arrowheads were discovered during the excavations. Distinguished by their dark oak-red shades, quality of craftsmanship, and delicate shape, these specimens provide detailed information about the high military and social status of the deceased.

The discovered artifacts, particularly the ceramic samples, are undergoing preliminary restoration and laboratory processing under special conditions by reserve staff. Subsequently, the samples will be properly accessioned into the reserve’s fund.

To determine the absolute age of the artifacts obtained from the archaeological excavations, relevant samples will be sent for radiocarbon analysis to the Tokyo University Museum Center at the University of Tokyo in Japan, TİKA in Turkiye, and the Woods laboratories at the University of Miami in the USA.

Systematic research conducted in the Keshikchidagh Valley of Kurgans makes an important contribution to the study of the Bronze Age history of Azerbaijan and the South Caucasus as a whole. Implemented with the participation of young volunteers, this project also serves to promote the cultural and archaeological tourism potential of the region and Azerbaijan overall.

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The excavation in progress.Keshikchidag DTMQ

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The Bronze dagger, in situ. Keshikchidag DTMQ

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The human burial remains with associated artifacts. Keshikchidag DTMQ

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Winged Arrowheads. Keshikchidag DTMQ

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POPULAR ARCHAEOLOGY ON INSTAGRAM

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Taman, Russia, 31 August 2026, — Oleg Deripaska’s Volnoe Delo Foundation has announced a major new discovery by the Phanagoria Archaeological Expedition: a winemaking district dating from the early centuries AD. It produced thousands of tonnes of wine a year, making Phanagoria the largest winemaking centre in the ancient Black Sea region.

The district uncovered by archaeologists consists of several blocks containing the remains of five wineries. Located in the heart of the city beside the seaport, it was likely one of the busiest and most crowded parts of ancient Phanagoria, where wineries stood alongside shops and warehouses. The largest winery could produce up to 30 tonnes of wine a year. Archaeologists believe there may have been more than a hundred winemaking sites across Phanagoria.

The discoveries give a detailed picture of the winemaking process. Grapes were crushed underfoot on platforms coated with a water-resistant mixture of sand, lime, shells and crushed ceramics. The juice was then poured into large clay vessels known as pithoi and left to ferment. Archaeologists have uncovered around 60 pithoi, each holding 600–800 litres. Some have survived almost intact, while others are preserved only as outlines in the ground.

The finished wine was poured into amphorae for sale. Before filling, the vessels were disinfected by burning sulphur, traces of which can still be seen on the bottoms of some of them. Phanagoria produced both red and white wine, sold locally and exported to Greek colonies across the northern Black Sea region. Hundreds of gold and copper coins found in the winemaking district attest to the scale of this trade.

Along with bread and olive oil, wine was a staple of the diet in Phanagoria and held an important place in religious practice. It featured prominently in the mysteries of Dionysus, one of the city’s most revered gods. Images of Dionysus and his companions, satyrs and maenads, as well as grape motifs associated with his cult, appear frequently on coins, amphorae and figurines found at the site.

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Photo from Oleg Deripaska’s Volnoe Delo foundation.

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Photo from Oleg Deripaska’s Volnoe Delo foundation.

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About the Phanagoria Archaeological Expedition

The ancient city of Phanagoria, studied with the support of Oleg Deripaska’s Volnoe Delo Foundation, existed for over 1,500 years, and served as the capital of the Asian part of the Bosporan Kingdom, the oldest state formation on the territory of modern-day Russia. Today, it is the largest ancient monument in the country.

Among the most remarkable discoveries of the Phanagoria Expedition are the palace of King Mithridates VI, two ancient Greek temples, and a sunken ancient ship. Artifacts from Phanagoria are preserved in the Hermitage, the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, and museums in the United Kingdom, Germany, and other countries.

About the Volnoe Delo Foundation

Volnoe Delo, a foundation supporting social innovation, was founded by industrialist Oleg Deripaska. Today it is one of the largest organisations in Russia operating in the field of charity, philanthropy and volunteering. The foundation helps solve socially significant problems, supports education and science and contributes to the preservation of Russia’s cultural and historical heritage. The foundation has supported 500 projects in 50 Russian regions, benefiting 90,000 pupils, 4,000 teachers, 8,000 university and school students, 4,000 scientists, and 1,200 educational, scientific, cultural, healthcare, sports and other organisations.

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Article Source: News release of the Volnoe Delo Foundation.

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While shooting a documentary at Göbeklitepe, I encountered strikingly different historical interpretations of the site. An international group of New Age seekers seemed to be searching for extraterrestrial connections there, but when I pointed out that the enclosures had originally been roofed, they recast the T-shaped pillars as traces of humanity’s mystical past. Representatives of an NGO working with conservative Turkish people in Germany likened the pillars’ posture to movements in Islamic prayer. A retired pharmacist insisted that ancient kings had used the site enclosures for astronomical divination. Even the visitor center offered a strongly mystical welcome. Amid this profusion of viewpoints, the material evidence received remarkably little attention.

This intense engagement invites an ambivalent response: should we welcome the considerable public interest, or question the frameworks through which the site is perceived? Much of Göbeklitepe’s popularity can be traced to German news magazine Der Spiegel’s 2006 cover story, which advanced archaeologist Klaus Schmidt’s description of the site as the “world’s first temple,” alongside speculation linking it to the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve. Meanwhile, the claims by pseudoscientists linking the site to extraterrestrials—as Swiss author Erich von Däniken and his present-day successors remind us—have always found a substantial audience.

But was Göbeklitepe really a temple? More importantly, does it show that religion was the primary force driving humanity toward settled life? Expecting definitive answers about societies without written records may be impossible, but does that make every interpretation equally valid? How did the “temple” interpretation gain factual authority while those questioning it were left to shoulder the burden of proof?

Through this article, I examine five possible arguments for why Göbeklitepe is considered a religious site, with condensed formulations of ideas that have circulated through archaeological scholarship, popular media, and the site’s public presentation:

1. Its monumental structures stood alone in the middle of nowhere, without a nearby water source or surrounding domestic buildings, and were periodically visited by people traveling up to 200 kilometers; they must therefore have been temples forming a pilgrimage center.

The evidence, however, suggests otherwise.

For decades, excavations at Göbeklitepe concentrated on the large circular structures, guided by the assertion that they lacked domestic context for their existence. Karahantepe and Sayburç, excavated more holistically as settlements, instead revealed large circular structures embedded within inhabited spaces. As research at Göbeklitepe has expanded and previously excavated areas have been reassessed, a similar pattern has emerged: monumental structures were embedded within a broader inhabited settlement.

Dwellings do not, of course, exclude ritual activity. But ritual served many purposes in deep prehistory. They could accompany initiation, birth, death, and burial, communal consumption, dispute resolution, social transitions, and the renewal of collective identity. Ritual is therefore not synonymous with religion, and such activity hardly proves that the space was devoted exclusively to worship.

Nor did the circles simply stand above an empty landscape as monuments designed to impress distant onlookers. They were carved directly into the bedrock below ground level, and the growing evidence that they were roofed would have further limited their external visibility. Their “monumentality” was therefore experienced largely from within, weakening the image of conspicuous landmarks built to dominate the landscape and draw pilgrims from afar.

The surrounding structures have yielded food remains, grinding stones, mortars, pestles, and other traces of everyday life. Although fragmentary and scattered, human remains are consistent with sustained occupation of the site, while water management features indicate the deliberate exploitation of local water resources. In October 2025, georadar, geomagnetic, and lidar surveys conducted across previously unexplored parts of the mound identified numerous structures interpreted as possible dwellings—despite decades of confident claims to the contrary, they had been lying there all along.

In short, even if people traveled considerable distances to Göbeklitepe, they were not approaching a solitary monument rising from an empty landscape. The large circular structures formed part of an inhabited settlement landscape.

2. With their T-shaped pillars, elaborate reliefs, wall niches, and polished terrazzo floors, the large circular structures were architecturally unique and distinct from ordinary domestic buildings. They must therefore have been sacred spaces.

Not necessarily.

The central circles are certainly impressive in scale—but unique? Not quite. Excavations at Karahantepe, Sayburç, and Göbeklitepe increasingly show that T-shaped pillars and large circular architecture were part of a shared regional vocabulary and not an isolated anomaly.

Smaller T-shaped pillars also appear in structures interpreted as dwellings, where they seem to have served practical architectural purposes, including roof support. In the circular structures, this functional form was enlarged and transformed into a richly symbolic one, particularly through animal imagery. This indicates symbolic meanings and collective functions extending beyond those associated with an individual dwelling; however, these functions cannot be identified as religious on their own.

Although generally less elaborate and lacking the carefully finished floors of the central circles, dwellings share features such as wall niches, stone-building techniques, and spatial arrangements. The difference lies in scale, investment, ornamentation, and social importance, and not in a wholly distinct architectural vocabulary. The argument therefore fails twice: uniqueness would not by itself prove that these structures were temples—and their architecture was not unique in the first place.

3. The large circular structures were deliberately buried at regular intervals and replaced by new ones. Because backfilling required immense effort, it could only be driven by a sacred taboo—a ritual requirement to conceal and protect the holy.

Not necessarily.

Although erosion and other natural processes contributed to the fills— whether they were intentional is debatable—deliberate filling occurred in varied contexts across the region. Crucially, it was not confined to large circular structures: dwellings at Göbeklitepe, Karahantepe, and Sayburç were also backfilled. Beyond Taş Tepeler—a group of Neolithic archaeological sites in Türkiye of which Göbeklitepe is the most famous—filling was accompanied by the renewal of communal and domestic structures at other sites such as Aşıklı Höyük and the later farming and herding settlement of Çatalhöyük, with comparable examples recurring as late as the Bronze Age at Küllüoba. A practice crossing architectural, economic, and chronological boundaries cannot be treated as exclusively religious.

Filling may instead have marked the end of a structure’s active life. While food remains in some deposits may reflect collective acts of closure or renewal—not necessarily the sacred burial of holy architecture. Backfilling may also have removed structures from material circulation and prevented them from becoming inherited spaces, allowing successive generations to establish their own spatial and social order rather than inheriting it from their predecessors.

The large circular structures appear to have remained in use longer than many dwellings, perhaps reflecting their greater communal importance. Repairs, alterations, and size reductions of these structures show that they were maintained and adapted across generations before being decommissioned.

Backfilling may therefore have carried symbolic meaning without proving the existence of a temple or specialized religious institution. The practice demonstrates that these structures mattered socially without revealing their true importance.

4. The prominence of male bodies, phallic imagery, and anthropomorphic T-shaped pillars reveals an emerging patriarchal religion, possibly centered on a male or paternal deity.

Not necessarily.

This interpretation turns a chain of possibilities into a conclusion: that phallic imagery signifies male dominance, male dominance establishes patriarchy, and patriarchy implies a religion centered on a paternal deity. Yet each step requires its own evidence.

As I have argued previously, even the identification of this imagery as straightforwardly male is not as well-established as it appears. Figures routinely classified as male—including the so-called human statues and “totems” from Balıklıgöl, Kilisik, and Karahantepe—combine features that may be seen as female, male, androgynous or hermaphroditic; infant or adult; human or animal. Rather than representing specific categories, these figures repeatedly blur boundaries of sex, age, and species.

The phallic-pillared chamber of Structure AB and Karahantepe’s large human statue—with its apparently circumcised penis—certainly foreground the male body. The first small statue found at Göbeklitepe likewise plainly depicts a circumcised penis, with the same feature also appearing in the Sayburç relief. Yet these markings may signify not only masculinity but also self-wounding, sacrifice, or bodily transformation, possibly within practices of initiation. Female figures have also been found at Karahantepe, even if they remain curiously marginally displayed at museums and are rarely mentioned in popular accounts. Meanwhile, the surviving stone record cannot establish the original balance of representation: female figures made from wood, fiber, or other perishable materials could have disappeared without a trace.

More importantly, symbolic prominence is not the same as social power. The material record does not clearly depart from the relatively egalitarian character attributed to these communities. If coordinating regional hunts and inter-settlement gatherings elevated particular men, their roles may have been temporary, protocol-bound, or status-based—not evidence of permanent patriarchal or religious authority.

And even prominent male symbolism would not, by itself, establish religion. A phallus does represent a father god, any more than a female figurine depicts a mother goddess. Such an inference assumes a distinct religious sphere populated by separate metaphysical deities.

Long before institutional temple economies emerged in Sumerian Mesopotamia, however, symbolic life may have been part of relational cosmologies—often described as animistic or shamanic—in which humans, animals, ancestors, landscapes, and other forces were entwined within an interconnected whole rather than divided into separate realms. Ceremonial representations such as the snake-bodied bust from Structure AB at Karahantepe and the Balıklıgöl statue may be better understood within this relational framework. Their composite imagery evokes an interwoven world more readily than a patriarchal pantheon.

5. Structures of this scale—with pillars up to 5 meters high and weighing 10 to 15 tons—could only have been built through coercion, whether physical or spiritual. Since no institutionalized coercive authority existed yet, only religion could have mobilized such “primitive” people.

Is this assumption correct?

This argument projects a distinctly modern hierarchical assumption onto early societies: that large-scale collective labor must have been commanded through either physical force or religious compulsion. Since organized physical coercion clearly did not yet exist, the argument leaves only religious compulsion. The asymmetry is striking: the absence of material evidence for physical coercion is treated as decisive, while the comparable absence of a clergy, temple economy or institutional religious authority is bypassed by treating the ambiguous evidence examined above—from architecture and backfilling to imagery, scale and collective labor—as religious by default. Since these “primitive” people had supposedly not yet been illuminated by modern rationality, what else but mystical belief could have moved them? Cooperation among non-state communities is thus not recognized as a social capacity in its own right, with these communities rendered intelligible only when coercive authority is used on them.

Voluntary and reciprocal communal labor—known as imece in Türkiye—is hardly exceptional. It remains visible to varying degrees in rural communities across much of the world, wherever modern institutions have left room for it, in practices such as harvesting fields, preparing seasonal provisions, bringing water from distant sources and constructing local infrastructure. Such practices are not recent social inventions, however: large-scale cooperation long predates Göbeklitepe. Paleolithic lifeways—particularly communal hunting and the gathering, processing and distribution of food—required planning, division of labor and the collective management of resources. The large circular structures may therefore embody an expansion of long-established cooperative capacities, not a form of organization invented by Neolithic communities.

The scale of such cooperation was recognized surprisingly early. In 1998, Der Spiegel, drawing on Schmidt’s theory, described kilometer-long V-shaped walls used during the Neolithic to funnel entire herds of gazelle into mega structures, arguing that constructing the traps, conducting hunts, and preserving the meat required hundreds or even thousands of people. Although the article did not connect these structures directly to Göbeklitepe, subsequent fieldwork has documented extensive animal-trapping systems in the region. These “desert kites” apparently exceeded both the labor capacity and consumption needs of any single village: constructing and operating them—and slaughtering, processing, preserving, and distributing their yield—required coordination between settlements. This material basis for supra-local cooperation was already visible in Schmidt’s account but was later overshadowed by the claim that “religion” had mobilized “monumental” labor.

Göbeklitepe points in the same direction: large quantities of gazelle bones indicate intensive and possibly seasonal consumption, while heavy grinding stones and wild-cereal processing installations—possibly used for brewing—suggest collectively organized gathering, processing, and consumption. These communities did not merely happen to assemble; their subsistence depended on working together.

Communities that built and operated together and shared hunting landscapes had practical reasons to construct places where cooperation was possible. The large circular structures may therefore have served as multifunctional gathering spaces: places for assemblies, resource allocation, exchanges, dispute resolution, mating and alliance networks, communal consumption, and rituals. They may have combined functions that were only much later divided among councils, courts, marketplaces, ceremonial spaces, and temples.

Shared beliefs may have bound these communities together and given their cooperation symbolic form—but, to adapt an old Turkish saying, not every bearded man is a sage; likewise, not every ritual is religious, nor every symbolic space a temple. Ritual could accompany exchange, negotiation, and collective consumption as a means of enacting, remembering, and renewing cooperation without constituting a separate religious sphere. These structures served communities whose survival depended on collective labor. To turn that achievement into evidence of priestly command is not an archaeological conclusion but a projection of modern hierarchy onto a potentially far more cooperative past.

Beyond the Temple Story

As we have seen, the available evidence not only fails to confirm the temple interpretation but also increasingly undermines the interpretation’s original premises. The site can no longer plausibly be described as an isolated complex without water or dwellings. Its architecture is not unique, backfilling was not confined to its large circular structures, and neither its imagery nor the labor invested in its construction necessarily establishes a religious institution. The question, then, is why the temple story became—and remains—so dominant. Part of the answer may lie in the intellectual and political climate in which archaeological interpretations gain authority and popular appeal.

It is precisely here that Çatalhöyük offers a useful precedent. Archaeologist and author James Mellaart interpreted seated female figurines as evidence of a “(mother) goddess,” an understanding later amplified through anthropologist Marija Gimbutas’s theories and their adoption within feminist goddess movements. Decades later, archaeologist Ian Hodder described Çatalhöyük as a society with “no boss” or specialized elites, yet characterized its death-related imagery as “religious iconography” and in 2010 edited Religion in the Emergence of Civilization: Çatalhöyük as a Case Study, generating debate about the relationship between archaeological narratives, contemporary interests and project sponsorship. At Göbeklitepe, a comparable transformation unfolded between Der Spiegel’s reports of 1998 and 2006, alongside changing emphasis in Schmidt’s interpretation that culminated in his 2006 book Sie bauten die ersten Tempel: Das rätselhafte Heiligtum der Steinzeitjäger (They Built the First Temples: The Mysterious Sanctuary of the Stone Age Hunters).

Although its title already invoked the Garden of Eden, Der Spiegel’s 1998 report was more firmly grounded in material finds and subsistence. Its subtitle foregrounded doorless buildings, burials, gazelle meat, and the origins of settled life, while the article described the site and its discoveries through materially grounded terms such as “megalithic houses,” “megalithic pillars,” and a “megalithic mound.” The article reported Schmidt’s proposal that people had built windowless stone depots to protect gazelle meat preserved by drying, roasting, and salting. Schmidt imagined larders at the edges and temples at the center. But the causal logic of his model remained unmistakably subsistence-based: mass hunting and stored surplus made settled life possible, after which people experimented with cultivation and herding almost as a hobby. Temples were already present in the interpretation, but religion was not yet the driving force. No intervening discovery established a clergy, temple economy, or institution devoted exclusively to worship.

Yet by 2006, the emphasis had shifted decisively. The temple had moved from the center of a subsistence-based settlement model to becoming the explanation for what led to the settlements. The famous cover story brought this shift in Schmidt’s interpretation fully into public view. Der Spiegel now presented Göbeklitepe through an explicitly biblical framework, staging a rapprochement between scientific authority and biblical revelation. It announced a remarkable debate in which geologists and climate experts, not deterred by the revelatory character of God’s document, believed that paradise had coordinates, that it was a real place, and that the Old Testament contained the signposts leading to it. Archaeological and environmental evidence was used to provide this narrative with a landscape, chronology, and material record—from the rivers and sacred mountain of Eden to Abraham’s connection with Urfa, Türkiye, to the tree of the knowledge and snake to agricultural labor and the emergence of property to violence and patriarchy; they were all linked.

“Megalithic houses” became “mighty snake temples.” Meanwhile, the possibility that Adam really existed and the biblical story of the Fall could have a historical basis became the main crux of the story. The magazine had not discovered Eden between 1998 and 2006; thereafter, it transformed Eden from an evocative framework for looking at the material evidence into the main explanation of that evidence.

This convergence suited a particular historical moment. Rigid modernist and Western-centered histories were losing authority, while neoliberal globalization and postmodern civilizational discourse encouraged the search for new global narratives to replace them. A religious origin story rooted in the “East,” in which scientific authority and biblical memory appeared to confirm one another, offered both a safe intellectual framework and a highly marketable story. It especially found fertile ground in Türkiye, where the political and bureaucratic elite who placed religion before, and above all, other forces in human history were rising within the wider climate of the “Alliance of Civilizations.”

This interpretation wasn’t just confined to religious conservatives. In a 2024 broadcast, even Evrim Ağacı (“Tree of Evolution”)—a popular science platform reaching millions and placing evolutionary biology at the center of its mission—argued that Göbeklitepe could not have been permanently inhabited because, apart from tools for quarrying and shaping stone, no domestic material had supposedly been found; its architecture did not indicate permanent habitation; and agriculture was absent from the region. The roofs of the newly excavated surrounding structures were accordingly recast as seating platforms for spectators—even though the central, semi-subterranean buildings were themselves roofed, leaving no line of sight into the interior. Grinding stones and other traces of domestic activity were discounted, while the absence of agriculture was treated as evidence against settled hunter-gatherer life. This interpretation clings to a linear, progressivist account of human development in which Neolithic communities are presumed incapable of complex organization and are governed instead by primitive impulses, emotions and mystical thought; even contrary material evidence is absorbed into this religious explanation rather than used to challenge it.

Yet there is a broader condition that encompasses and exceeds the postmodernist and neomodernist approaches exemplified above. As I have argued in previous articles, the pan-crisis we are living through has deepened a vacuum of grand narratives: the rational modernist consensus has fractured, while traditional religious accounts have likewise failed to provide adequate answers. Populist spiritualisms and hybrid ideologies that mix science, religion, mysticism and civilizational identity have flourished in that space.

As I witnessed during the documentary shoot, the temple story attracts people from strikingly different backgrounds precisely because it is flexible enough to accommodate mystical, religious, rationalist and civilizational expectations all at once. This may explain the story’s persistence but does not establish its archaeological validity. To consider a more archaeologically grounded interpretation of Taş Tepeler would require us to turn from the narrative needs of the present to the historical realities and everyday lives of the people who built these places.

Seen within that context, what emerged at Taş Tepeler is better understood not as the sudden invention of belief, ritual, symbolic thought, or collective architecture, but as a means of adapting older practices to the changing times. During the Paleolithic, some painted caves already appear to have served as recurring places of gathering and symbolic practice, while mammoth bone structures demonstrate that communities could create substantial spaces long before the Neolithic. Groups also assembled across wide territories to exchange materials and knowledge, sustain social and mating networks, share labor, and renew collective memory. With the climatic changes of the early Holocene and the transition toward settled life, the ecology and limestone geology of the Taş Tepeler region in Upper Mesopotamia made space for these much older practices to secure a permanent and locally distinctive architectural form.

Ritual undoubtedly formed part of life in these spaces. But calling them temples—and treating them as evidence that religion drove the transition to settled life—assumes that religion already existed as a distinct institutional sphere, separate from subsistence, exchange, politics and social memory. Neither a specialized clergy nor a temple economy or institution devoted exclusively to worship has been discovered. Nor did “religion” simply come first: the effort to locate oneself within the universe and give meaning to life evolved with the material and social dimensions of human existence, assuming different forms as life changed—neither preceding nor following them.

The evidence points instead to multifunctional places of assembly embedded within permanent settlement landscapes, serving as the central hubs for everyday socioeconomic cooperation, alliance building, and shared ritual practice. Göbeklitepe’s significance lies not in proving that religion built civilization, but in showing how material cooperation, symbolic life and social memory became embodied in permanent architecture. The large circular structures were not separate from everyday existence; they gave a collective form to the relationships through which these communities sustained life.

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This article was produced by Human Bridges.

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Cover Photo, Top: Gobekli Tepe site. Kerimbesler,  CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

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Frontiers—The Theban Necropolis, opposite Luxor, is comprised of more than 400 tombs. In a new Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology study, researchers in Spain examined a part of one of these tombs – chamber three in tomb TT 209 – more closely to reconstruct how this burial space was used and reused between its construction during the Twenty-fifth Dynasty (754-656 BCE) and the Ptolemaic period (305–30 BCE), when it was abandoned.

“We found a total of 16 mummified human individuals, a mummified dog, and a disturbed deposit containing the remains of at least four individuals,” said first author Dr Jared Carballo-Pérez, a researcher at the University of La Laguna. “The detailed study of the bodies indicates neither chaotic accumulation nor a loss of the original ritual over time. Rather, there was a spatial logic in which each new deposition was adapted to the presence of previous bodies – a kind of funerary memory in the processes of reuse.”

Senior author Dr Miguel Ángel Molinero Polo, a professor of Egyptology at the University of La Laguna, added: “We have few details regarding how the people who entered tombs behaved, what their motivations were in each historical period, and how they conceptually reconfigured the pre-existing space.”

Tomb through time

To deepen the understanding of the deposition of bodies and the transformation of funerary space, the team excavated the chamber, photographed the mummies, and produced sketches and descriptions of their position, orientation, and relationship with the tomb’s structures. The chamber contains nine funerary deposits, comprising individual and multiple burials, as well as associated funerary objects.

For the earliest deposits, the team observed relatively separated burials where bodies were placed in coffins.

“The earliest individuals buried here appear to have been of high social standing, as they were interred in coffins, with funerary nets and amulets, and with an assemblage containing costly items, such as the contents held in Phoenician amphorae, a large number of which were found alongside them,” said Molinero Polo.

Later, towards the end of the 25th dynasty and the Persian period (around 680-404 BCE), bodies started being inserted into any space still available. This resulted in denser use of space. In some cases, a change could be seen in the positioning of limbs, for example a folded-in arm whereas in earlier burials arms were typically stretched out. Also in the Persian period, the team observed a shift from individual deposits to a vertical way of arranging bodies. Superposition of bodies was found in two thirds of the burials in the chamber.

Reconstructing funerary practices

In the southeastern section of the chamber, four mummies and one mummified dog are buried on top of one another in the Ptolemaic Period.

“The bodies buried in vertical superposition did not have coffins but were carefully mummified. They also can be associated with upright jars that point to a specific ritual not found in the earlier phases of the tomb’s use,” said Molinero Polo.

“One detail I find quite beautiful is the presence of a mummified dog placed directly on top of the mummies of a man and a woman,” said Carballo-Pérez. “This could indicate a close relationship between these human individuals and the animal, an idea that I think is quite easy to empathize with.”

“It could also reflect a further change in ritual practice, with an animal taking on the role of a psychopomp, a symbolic helper in the journey to the afterlife,” added Molinero Polo.

This, alongside certain changes in the arrangement of bodies – for example, in later deposits individuals were buried with both arms folded over their chests in what Egyptologists call the Osirian position – suggests that the tomb did not become disordered or without structure, or that cultural rites were lost. Instead, the chamber should be considered a repeatedly reactivated space, reconfigured by new burials that transformed the organization and meaning of space itself without erasing the past.

In some funerary deposits, it is difficult to identify the exact sequence of depositions and reconstruct the precise intentionality behind them, the team noted. This is due to century-long use during which the chamber flooded multiple times as well as fires and human re-entry that transported debris within the tomb.

“Nevertheless, what we present means that deposits that were previously considered ‘disordered’ can be reinterpreted,” concluded Carballo-Pérez. “This helps us develop a better understanding of the social behaviors behind funerary practices.”

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Mummified individuals from Side Chamber 3 of Theban Tomb 209, showing variation in body orientation and arm position.  Credit: Proyecto dos cero nueve, Universidad de La Laguna / Jared Carballo-Pérez.

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Evidence of disturbance and displacement affecting two mummified individuals in side Chamber 3.  Credit: Proyecto dos cero nueve, Universidad de La Laguna / Jared Carballo-Pérez.

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Detail of superposition and spatial relationships between individuals in SC3 (TT 209). The figure shows the relative position of several individuals, highlighting direct vertical contacts and partial overlaps between bodies. M6 and M7 are closely superimposed, with the canid (M9) placed over their lower limbs.  Credit: J. Carballo-Pérez.

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Preserved painted stucco decoration showing a goddess on the inner side of the floorboard of the outer box of Coffin 2. Credit: Photograph: Proyecto dos cero nueve / José Miguel Barrios Mufrege. Drawing: Proyecto dos cero nueve / Daniel Méndez Rodríguez.

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Preserved painted decoration showing an Osirian djed pillar on the outer side of the floorboard of the outer box of Coffin 3.  Credit: Photograph: Proyecto dos cero nueve / José Miguel Barrios Mufrege. Drawing: Proyecto dos cero nueve / Daniel Méndez Rodríguez.

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Schematic plan of SC3 in TT 209 showing the approximate spatial distribution of funerary deposits (FD). Early deposits (FD1–FD2) are located in the eastern/northeastern and southwestern sectors and display relatively discrete spatial organization. Subsequent and later deposits (FD3–FD9) are mainly concentrated in the southeastern sector. The dashed outlines indicate approximate depositional areas, while the schematic representations of mummified bodies reflect their general orientation and spatial relationships rather than exact anatomical positions. The circular area (FD6) corresponds to a secondary assemblage of disarticulated, thermally altered remains. Credit: Jared Carballo-Pérez

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Exterior view of the superstructure of TT 209. The protective covering and visual homogenization of its walls were completed at the end of the 2026 season.  Credit: Proyecto dos cero nueve / José Miguel Barrios Mufrege.

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Article Source: Frontiers news release.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences—The widespread dispersal of an Austronesian painting tradition preceded pottery during a frontier phase of prehistory, according to a study*. When people speaking languages in the Austronesian family dispersed throughout island Southeast Asia and into the Pacific region, beginning around 4,200 years ago, they brought along a distinctive rock painting style characterized by small human figures, boats, and geometric motifs, including concentric circles with sun rays. The age and origins of the Austronesian painting tradition are not well-documented. Ceri Shipton and colleagues report the excavation of a painted stone plaque from a limestone rock shelter on Wetar Island in Southeast Indonesia that was radiocarbon-dated to 4,090–3,900 years ago. The portable plaque bears a red concentric circle and sun ray motif characteristic of the Austronesian tradition. Associated cultural artifacts and subsistence activities suggest that the plaque was in a transitional layer between Paleolithic and Neolithic occupation. The analysis suggests that the plaque is the earliest, securely dated example of the Austronesian painting tradition in the region, predating the introduction of ceramics. The dating supports an early origin of the Austronesian painting tradition, carried on portable objects at the wavefront of the Austronesian dispersal. According to the authors, the Austronesian diaspora may have been associated with a symbolic ideology.

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4,000-year-old painted plaque from Wetar Island, Indonesia.  Credit: Shimona Kealy.

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Color-enhanced photo of painted plaque from Wetar Island, Indonesia.  Credit: Shimona Kealy.

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Stratigraphic section of excavation showing position of slab (red), radiocarbon dates (black), and layer boundaries (white lines).  Credit: Shimona Kealy.

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Article Source: PNAS news release.

*“4000-year-old painted plaque from Southeast Indonesia reveals Austronesian Painting Tradition preceded Neolithic pottery,” by Sue O’Connor et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 17-Aug-2026. https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2611580123

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences—Mismatched evolutionary constraints between childbirth and locomotion are unlikely to have driven human pelvis shape, according to a study*. The Obstetrical Dilemma Hypothesis suggests that the shape of the human pelvis is an evolutionary compromise between the need to give birth to large-brained babies and to maintain bipedal locomotion. Whether such factors shaped the pelvic morphology of Neanderthals is unclear, given limited fossil evidence. Christoph Zollikofer and colleagues report virtual reconstructions and morphometric analyses of two nearly complete Neanderthal pelvises from a young adult female in Sima de las Palomas del Cabezo Gordo in Spain, as well as a 1.5-year-old infant in Dederiyeh Cave in Syria. The authors compared the reconstructions with age-matched Neanderthals and modern humans. The comparison identified differences in overall pelvis shape between Neanderthals and modern humans that were apparent from an early age. Both species shared patterns of sexual dimorphism in pelvis shape. The morphology of pelvic regions relevant for childbirth was also comparable between species, suggesting similar birth mechanics. However, modern humans and Neanderthals differed in features related to locomotion, including hip joint orientation and muscle movement arm geometry, suggesting that the two species had distinct stances and gaits. According to the authors, pelvis morphology in modern humans and Neanderthals may represent a compromise between childbirth and pelvic floor stability, rather than between childbirth and bipedalism.

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Virtual reconstructions of the Neanderthal pelvises of a 1.5-year-old infant from Dederiyeh Cave, Syria (left), and a young adult female from Sima de las Palomas de Cabezo Gordo, Spain (right), with transparent age- and sex-matched modern human pelvises superimposed.  Credit: Marcia Ponce de León and Christoph Zollikofer.

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Article Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences news release.

*“Insights into Neanderthal development, childbirth, and locomotion from the Palomas and Dederiyeh pelves,” by Christoph P. E. Zollikofer, Marcia S. Ponce de León et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 17-Aug-2026. https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2535303123

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Archaeologists from the Archaeological Centre Olomouc discovered a Bronze Age fragment hoard associated with the Urnfield culture during ongoing archaeological monitoring of Section 5 of the Brno–Přerov railway modernization project. Use-wear analysis has shown that most of the bronze objects had been used before their deposition and that some were deliberately damaged. Archaeologists believe the objects may subsequently have been deposited in a wetland near the river as part of a ritual practice.

The Archaeological Centre Olomouc has been carrying out archaeological monitoring for Správa železnic, the Czech railway infrastructure manager, since September 2025. The work is scheduled to continue until 2029. It follows a rescue excavation conducted at the same site from September to the end of December 2025, during which archaeologists uncovered an extensive prehistoric settlement.

“We knew that our work was continuing in an area occupied by an extensive prehistoric settlement, so we also used metal-detecting survey during the archaeological monitoring. It was this method that led to the discovery of the bronze hoard,” says Vít Záhorák, the archaeologist leading the archaeological monitoring.

Archaeologists discovered the hoard at the end of May in an area that had still been flooded shortly beforehand. The depositional setting is one of the most important aspects of the discovery. According to the preliminary assessment, the assemblage does not appear to represent a stock of bronze concealed for later recovery. The current interpretation instead suggests that the objects were deliberately deposited in a former wetland and that their deposition may have formed part of a ritual practice.

The hoard consists mainly of fragments of bronze tools. It includes eight deformed sickles, one complete sickle, part of a sword blade, fragments of ornaments and other bronze objects. Three ingots and two unfinished objects were also recovered. Archaeologists classify the assemblage as a mixed fragment hoard dominated by worn parts of tools.

Use-wear analysis, which examines traces of use preserved on the surfaces of artifacts, has provided crucial evidence. It confirmed that the bronze tools had been used before their deposition and also showed that some had been deliberately damaged. The sword fragment was separated by a single powerful blow, probably delivered with a chisel or an axe, while several of the sickles were intentionally deformed.

“We recorded traces of ordinary use as well as deliberate damage on the artifacts. These modifications were not caused during their practical use but appear to be connected with their deposition,” explains use-wear specialist Michael Kamarád.

The newly discovered Bronze Age hoard is not the only assemblage of metal objects found at the site. During the earlier rescue excavation, archaeologists uncovered an Early Medieval iron hoard deposited within a structure associated with craft production. According to the preliminary assessment, that assemblage was connected with the practical activities of an inhabitant of the settlement. The bronze hoard dates from an earlier period, and its deposition in a wet environment suggests a different motivation.

Deposits of bronze objects in watery or waterlogged settings are also known from other Bronze Age sites. In some of these cases, archaeologists have considered a possible connection with ritual practices. Further specialist analyses will help determine whether the Kojetín hoard had a comparable significance.

The bronze hoard is now undergoing conservation and specialist documentation. The results of further analyses will help clarify the circumstances of its deposition and its significance for understanding the lives of Bronze Age communities in central Moravia.

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The Bronze Age hoard from Kojetín after its recovery from the site and before conservation and specialist examination. The assemblage consists of several bronze objects and their fragments. Photo: Archaeological Centre Olomouc.

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Article Source: Archaeological Centre Olomouc news release.

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