Cereal processing at Early Neolithic Göbekli Tepe, southeastern Turkey

Modified human crania from Göbekli Tepe provide evidence for a new form of Neolithic skull cult

Archaeological excavations at Göbekli Tepe, a transitional Neolithic site in southeast Turkey, have revealed the earliest megalithic ritual architecture with characteristic T-shaped pillars. Although human burials are still absent from the site, a number of fragmented human bones have been recovered from fill deposits of buildings and from adjacent areas. We focus on three partially preserved h...

New Evidence from Neolithic to Achaemenid Periods in North-Western Iran: Excavations at Kul Tepe (Hadishahr), Second Preliminary Report (2013)

The site of Kul Tepe is located near the city of Hadishahr, in Eastern Azerbaijan Province. It is an ancient multi-period mound, having an extension of about 6 hectares and rising 19 meters above the surrounding land. The second season of archeological excavations at the site, carried out in 2013, aimed at clarifying its chronology and its settlement organization. In the meantime it aimed at el...

Identifying the Volcanic Eruption Depicted in a Neolithic Painting at Çatalhöyük, Central Anatolia, Turkey

A mural excavated at the Neolithic Çatalhöyük site (Central Anatolia, Turkey) has been interpreted as the oldest known map. Dating to ∼6600 BCE, it putatively depicts an explosive summit eruption of the Hasan Dağı twin-peaks volcano located ∼130 km northeast of Çatalhöyük, and a birds-eye view of a town plan in the foreground. This interpretation, however, has remained controversial not least b...

Pulmonary hydatid disease in southeastern Anatolia, Turkey

Reconstruction of early Neolithic/Bronze Age population diversity in the Shamanka II cemetery at Lake Baikal using mtDNA polymorphism

Mitochondrial deoxyribonucleic acid (mtDNA) polymorphisms were examinedin bone samples of individuals buried inan early Neolithic (c. 5800–4900 BCE) hunter-gatherer cemetery, Shamanka II, located atthe southwestern tip of Lake Baikal, Siberia. The mainobjective was to compare the mtDNA polymorphisms observed at Shamanka II to those previously reportedfrom the Lokomotiv (early Neolithic) and Ust...