Archaeologists Found the First Intact Burials at Göbekli Tepe. But What About the Skull Cult at the 11,000-Year-Old Site?

Two graves suggest scattered human bones may owe more to erosion than ritual.

For years, the dead at Göbekli Tepe appeared mostly in pieces.

Archaeologists had recovered hundreds of human bone fragments from rubble around the site’s towering T-shaped pillars, including skulls carved with deep grooves. These peculiar remains have led some archaeologists to claim that the 11,600-year-old site was home to a distinctive Neolithic “skull cult.”

But the new study points to a more ordinary explanation for at least some of those scattered remains. The two newly documented subfloor burials show that people were buried within the settlement itself, and the bones in those graves bear many of the same signs of postmortem damage seen on the loose fragments found elsewhere at Göbekli Tepe.

In a new PLOS One study, Julia Gresky and Lee Clare of the German Archaeological Institute compared the two burials with 928 loose human-bone fragments from the site. The same damage repeatedly appeared: heavy fragmentation, calcium-rich crusts and occasional rodent gnawing. They argue that erosion and slope slides may have disturbed burials higher on the mound and carried their fragmented remains downhill into the monumental buildings below.

This doesn’t negate the evidence for unusual treatment of the dead. The weird skull carving still needs an explanation, but that’s not what the new study set out to do. Instead, it strengthens the case that at Göbekli Tepe, the famous “world’s first temple,” people buried their dead, as opposed to incinerating them, which was a widespread practice during that time. And not everybody’s skull was removed upon death, it seems.

Not Just a Place to Pass Through

Göbekli Tepe, in southeastern Türkiye, was active over roughly 1,600 years, from about 9,600 to 8,000 B.C.E., during one of the most consequential transitions in human history. Its builders lived at a time when people in the region were beginning to shift from mobile hunting and gathering toward more settled communities and, eventually, farming. Yet Göbekli Tepe was already monumental. People quarried, shaped and moved enormous limestone pillars, some rising more than 5 meters tall, and arranged them inside circular and rectangular buildings. Many pillars were carved with striking reliefs of wild animals such as snakes, foxes, boars and birds, along with stylized human figures. Some of the T-shaped pillars themselves are generally interpreted as highly abstract human forms.

Göbekli Tepe predates Stonehenge by several thousand years, and it was built before metal tools, pottery and fully developed agriculture became widespread in the region. For years, archaeologists therefore treated it primarily as a ceremonial center, imagining groups of hunter-gatherers periodically gathering there for feasts and rituals.

But that picture has become increasingly difficult to sustain. Excavations have revealed smaller buildings, evidence of everyday activities and now burials beneath floors. Rather than a temple standing apart from ordinary life, Göbekli Tepe increasingly looks like a place where domestic routines, communal gatherings, symbolic art and treatment of the dead were all woven together.

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Graves Beneath the Floors

One grave, found in 2017, was cut into a plaster floor. It held at least three people: a woman at least 35, a man between 20 and 30, and a girl between 11 and 14. The skulls had been gathered in one corner and other bones moved aside, probably as the grave was reopened for later burials. The researchers found no cut marks, so complete bodies had originally been placed there.

The second burial was discovered in 2012 and fully excavated in 2022. A woman about 20 to 30 years old lay curled on her left side, facing east, on fist-sized stones. Her skeleton remained largely in place, yet her long bones were badly fractured and coated with mineral deposits. Substantial damage occurred inside the grave without anyone intentionally smashing the bones, most likely due to some natural phenomena.

What Happened to the “Skull Cult”?

Not everything can be blamed on erosion.

A 2017 Science Advances study by Gresky, Clare and Juliane Haelm described three skulls with deliberate deep grooves. One had also been drilled. The new study says similarly modified remains are now known from five individuals.

But the loose bones are scattered across about 3,000 square meters and several meters of deposits, representing both sexes, all ages and many parts of the skeleton. Deliberately selected ritual deposits, the researchers argue, would more likely cluster in particular places.

The monumental enclosures sit in a depression below higher parts of the mound. Continued building, heavy rain and perhaps earthquakes could have destabilized slopes and swept soil — and buried remains — downhill.

At nearby Sefertepe, archaeologists found at least 21 skulls arranged in a chamber. At Çayönü, a “Skull Building” eventually held around 70. There clearly seems to be a great interest in human skulls throughout the Neolithic.

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The graves therefore do not disprove skull-focused rituals at Göbekli Tepe. They separate two questions that had become entangled: why some skulls were deliberately altered, and why so many other bones ended up scattered through the site.

Absolute dating will be needed to establish whether those practices even overlapped. For now, Göbekli Tepe looks less like a sanctuary standing apart from daily life and more like a place where the domestic, the monumental and the dead occupied the same ground.