„Seventy percent of all archaeology is done in the library“
July 29th was this year’s “Day of Archaeology” [external link] – a project aiming to “… provide a window into the daily lives of archaeologists from all over the world.” Following […]
Author: Oliver Dietrich
„Building big. Incentives for cooperative action of hunter-gatherers at early Neolithic Göbekli Tepe“. EAA Annual Meeting 2016
Upcoming: Between 31st August and 4th September, the 22nd Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologistzs will be held in Vilnius, Lithuania. The Göbekli Tepe project will participate in […]
Boars in Göbekli Tepe´s Enclosure C: just a story of hunters and prey?
Depictions and sculptures of boars predominate the imagery of Enclosure C. Pillar 12 for example has a very nice depiction of a boar with pronounced canine teeth. Next to this […]
How old is it? Dating Göbekli Tepe.
Dating sites and finds is the backbone of archaeology. Regarding Göbekli Tepe, we get lots and lots of questions about its chronology. These questions are absolutely legitimate (as actually really […]
Göbekli Tepe – The first 20 Years of Research
Part 1: A (Re-) Discovery (1994-1996) Göbekli Tepe was for the first time recognized as an archaeological site during a large-scale survey project conducted by the Universities of Istanbul and […]
Who built Göbekli Tepe?
Well, the short answer would be: Stone Age people with Stone Age tools. Nothing more needed, no aliens, no giants, as you can read here. For an answer to the […]
The current distribution of sites with T-shaped pillars
The characteristic element of Göbekli Tepe´s architecture are the T-shaped pillars. In the older Layer III (10th millenium BC) the monolithic pillars weigh tons and reach heights between 4 m […]
Losing your head at Göbekli Tepe
Just back from this year´s ICAANE in Vienna, where a very inspiring workshop on the “Iconography and Symbolic Meaning of the Human in Near Eastern Prehistory” was organized by Jörg […]
Upcoming: Trade Before Civilization Conference
Between May 27-29, 2016, a conference on „Trade before Civilization“ will be held at the University of Gothenburg. Our Contribution will be on „Long Distance Exchange of Goods and Ideas […]
To light or not to…
Photographs are far from objective. They suggest meaning through the selection of the scene, but also through a certain perspective, focal point, light. Everyone who has held a camera in […]
How did they do it? Making and moving monoliths at Göbekli Tepe
The T-shaped pillars discovered at Göbekli Tepe are big. The central pair of Enclosure D measure 5.5 m and weigh about 8 to 10 metric tons each. The surrounding pillars […]
10th ICAANE, Vienna
The 10th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East (ICAANE – external link) will be held between 25‒29 April, 2016, in Vienna. The Göbekli Tepe research team […]
Out for a beer at the dawn of agriculture
Ever since the so called Braidwood Symposium in 1953 (Braidwood et al. 1953), there has been a debate as to whether beer – and not bread – was the first product […]
Why did it have to be snakes?
Snakes are omnipresent at Göbekli Tepe. Even today you may have the luck to encounter a Levantine Viper when visiting the site (yes, they are poisonous, but just let them […]
