Marc Young – Artefact replica assignment – ARCH1001

ARTEFACT:
Limestone totem pole from Göbekli Tepe, Turkey.
The top face of this 500kg, 1.92m tall totem pole, which was damaged in
antiquity, is thought to have likely been a bear or feline with a pair of arms,
which may be animal. These arms were holding another head, quite
possibly human, which was also damaged in antiquity. This head has a pair
of arms, below which the intact head of a small human is clearly visible.
The small human appears to be holding some kind of round object. On
either side of this human, there are snakes curling up the sides of where the
legs would be.
BACKGROUND:
Discovered during excavations at Göbekli Tepe in 2010, this mysterious
limestone totem pole was found incorporated into the wall of a rectangular
room of Layer II, which dates to approximately 8800BP.
HOW THE REPLICA WAS MADE:
Made by hand from a single sandstone block carved mainly with hammer
and chisel, with minimal use of power tools.
Marc Young
My artefact.

The artefact I replicated is a stone sculpture resembling a totem pole from Göbekli Tepe, a
megalithic site in Turkey dating to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic. It stands at 1.92 meters in
height, is approximately 30cm in diameter, and weighs up to 500kg. The artefact was broken in
antiquity, resulting in two of the three faces being damaged beyond recognition. Based on an
analysis of the sculpture (Köksal-Schmidt and Schmidt 2010), the top head which only has two ears
and part of an eye left, was likely once a bear or feline such as a leopard or a lion. It is possible based
on this that the top pair of arms are meant to belong to an animal rather than human based on
several depictions from Göbekli Tepe and nearby Nevali Çori. Based on these depictions, they further
speculated these depictions that the middle head, which has likewise been broken off, was
probably a human with a corresponding pair of arms. The third and smallest head has arms and
is holding something, which has been interpreted as a person giving birth. Either side of this human,
two snakes curl up the bottom half of the totem pole where the legs would be.

Who made the original artefact?

The artefact was produced by an unnamed culture of hunter-gatherers during the Pre-Pottery
Neolithic. The culture who built Göbekli Tepe are associated with many other sites throughout
south-eastern Turkey including, but not limited to: Nevali Çori, Sefer Tepe, Hamzan Tepe and
Karahan Tepe (Çelik 2011:241). Göbekli Tepe is unique among these other sites as there is no
evidence that people lived there (Fagan 2017:320; Schmidt 2010:246), while sites like Nevali Çori
contain evidence of a village settlement and may have been where the hunter-gatherers who built
Göbekli Tepe first settled, transitioning to a sedentary life. From these other sites, we
can determine that this culture was highly complex socially, with evidence of specialised workshops
separated from residential areas, along with open courtyards and special buildings for communal
gatherings including feasting and ritual ceremonies (Dietrich et al. 2012:675). Some view the notion
that Göbekli Tepe was a temple or other non-residential site as merely the projection of western
concepts onto ancient cultures (Banning 2011:624).

Dietrich et al. 2012 says to build such a large megalithic site as Göbekli Tepe: “there had to be a
means of bringing together groups from different areas and organising communal work”. They
believe this was facilitated by extensive feasting, where they most likely consumed alcoholic
beverages based on chemical evidence found on containers from several sites, including Göbekli
Tepe itself (Dietrich et al. 2012:687). There is an abundance of evidence suggesting a range of ritual
practices at Göbekli Tepe and associated sites. At least one structure at Göbekli Tepe was found to
have a limestone slab with a channel carved onto it leading to a basin, indicating the possibility of a
ritual involving liquid (Verhoeven 2002:241). Göbekli Tepe is also home to evidence of
a contextually unique form of ritual treatment of human skulls after death, sometimes referred to as
a skull cult, and most human bones found on the site are skull fragments (Gresky et al. 2017).

Göbekli Tepe and associated sites are all very rich in symbolism (Peters and Schmidt 2004). As
such, there will always be widely varying interpretations of what they could mean. It has been
proposed that these symbols were a form of proto-language pre-dating written language as a system
of preserving cultural knowledge, continually used for thousands of years (Dietrich et al. 2012:684).
Cultural anthropologist Trevor Watkins thinks this was possible because of a “supra-regional
network” of tribal groups (Watkins 2008; Watkins 2010). It is believed by some that the rich
symbolism of the culture may represent deep spiritual links between humans and animals (Busacca
2017).
Multiple papers suggest that Göbekli Tepe has astronomical alignments and may have had
applications as an observatory. At least one structure at the site is aligned with the cardinal points
(Belmonte et al. 2016:94). Three of the enclosures could be intended to track the star Sirius at
varying time periods, though this being true is reliant on establishing a firm chronology
of the structures (Magli 2016). Two engineers have used archaeoastronomy to interpret the symbols
of Göbekli Tepe as primarily astronomical in nature. Using a statistical analysis, they determined
with an accuracy that would allow the identification of a new particle in quantum physics (Sweatman
and Tsikritsis 2017a), that pillar 43, enclosure D, depicts a cosmic impact at the time of 12,800BP
(Sweatman and Tsikritsis 2017b). The archaeologists in charge of the site wrote a
rebuttal to the original paper (Notroff et al. 2017), which Sweatman and Tsikritsis responded to,
and their rebuttal was compelling (Sweatman and Tsikritsis 2017a). There is a lot of scientific
evidence unrelated to Göbekli Tepe that supports the notion of a cosmic impact at 12,800BP
(Wolbach et al. 2018a; Wolbach et al. 2018b), and it would undoubtedly have profoundly
influenced the human population across the globe.

Making the artefact.

The first thing I did was order a set of masonry chisels from eBay. They took about a week to arrive,
during which I shopped around at several landscaping suppliers trying to find limestone blocks. None
of the places I found sell limestone in the size I needed anymore, but the third one I went to said
they have a pallet of chipped sandstone blocks out the front and gave me one for
free. To use traditional techniques, I would have to learn how to knap stone tools, and I
unfortunately did not have the time, but I tried to use the chisels and avoid using power tools as
much as possible.

I’m not sure what level of preparation was done before starting a sculpture in the Neolithic, but I
started by drawing lines dividing the length of the block into four sections. I
used the lines to proportionally draw a rough outline of the artefact, so I could use a grinder to cut
off the excess material. After about twenty-five hours of chisel work, I was happy with the result,
and used a Dremel tool with several attachments to round off and define the features, and to
smooth off the whole surface of the stone. The people who built Göbekli Tepe did not use power
tools to do this, and I would have used sandpaper or a file, but I was running out of time. I also tried
washing it with diluted hydrochloric acid to achieve a rough, slightly weathered look to the stone,
but it did not have much of an effect.

Archaeological evidence.

Because the totem pole is made of stone, which is inorganic and therefore relatively un-dateable, we
have no way of knowing for sure when the sculpture was made, only when it was buried. The totem
pole was found incorporated within the wall of a rectangular building in Layer II, which is dated to
approximately 10,800BP (Dietrich et al. 2013:37). This is not necessarily the age of the totem pole,
however, as even the famous T-shaped pillars of Layer III that date to approximately 700 years
earlier (Dietrich and Schmidt 2010:82) may have been reused from previous structures. The fact that
the totem pole was found incorporated into the wall means it may have stood elsewhere for an
unknown duration before being used in the construction. These T-shaped pillars are also found at
other associated sites in the area from the same period which is just one line of evidence that might
suggest they were built by the same culture of hunter-gatherers. The only other known object that
resembles a totem pole from this period was found at Nevali Çori (Schmidt 2010:247-248), making
this artefact quite the enigma.
What can archaeologists learn from this artefact?

There does not seem to be much information published about totem poles beyond picture
books. Most of our knowledge of totem poles comes from the Northwest coast of North America
(Stewart 1990:9), with anecdotal examples found among indigenous cultures from Australia, South
America, and Polynesia among others. These have traditionally been made from wood and do not
survive the ages like stone does. Because ethnographers and anthropologists were able to gain first-
hand knowledge from indigenous tribes about what these totem poles mean to these people, we
may be able to apply this knowledge to the people who built Göbekli Tepe. I believe it is evident that
the people of Göbekli Tepe had a very significant spiritual relationship with animals, and the totem
pole could be an extension of that relationship. In the context of North America, totem poles served
to display tribal wealth, but there were also a variety of primary meanings and uses for different
types of totem poles. Some were for welcoming, some for warning, some had memorial or mortuary
purposes, while some shamed a rival tribe. Others were carved to represent the history and crests of
the social group who lived in a specific house (Stewart 1990:20-27). I believe it is possible the
rectangular building at Göbekli Tepe where the totem pole was found used to be a place of worship
for a specific group of people within the greater culture, and that the animal once depicted at the
top of the sculpture was the totem of this group, but it is unlikely we will ever know for sure.
References

Banning, E.B. 2011 So fair a house: Göbekli Tepe and the identification of temples in the Pre-Pottery
Neolithic in the Near East. Current Anthropology 52(5):619-660.

Belmonte, J.A., A.C. González-García, A. Polcaro, A Rodríguez-Antón and M. Shaltout 2016 Orientatio
ad sidera (OAS): Highlights of a decade of archaeoastronomical research in the Mediterranean
region and beyond. Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry 16(4):93-101.

Busacca, G. 2017 Places of encounter: Relational ontologies, animal depiction and ritual
performance at Göbekli Tepe. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 27(2):313-330.

Çelik, B. 2011 Karahan Tepe: A new cultural centre in the Urfa area in Turkey. Documenta
Praehistoria 38:241-254.

Dietrich, O. and K. Schmidt 2010 A radiocarbon date from the wall plaster of enclosure D of Göbekli
Tepe. Neo-Lithics 2:82-84.

Dietrich, O., E. Heun, J. Notroff, K. Schmidt and M. Zarnkow 2012 The role of cult and feasting in the
emergence of Neolithic communities. New evidence from Göbekli Tepe, south-eastern Turkey.
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Dietrich, O., Ç. Köksal-Schmidt, J. Notroff and K. Schmidt 2013 Establishing a radiocarbon sequence
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Fagan, A. 2017 Hungry architecture: Spaces of consumption and predation at Göbekli Tepe. World
Archaeology 49(3):318-337.

Gresky, J., J. Haelm and L. Clare 2017 Modified human crania from Göbekli Tepe provide evidence
for a new form of Neolithic skull cult. Science Advances 3(6).

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Alcántara, J.R. Johnson, D. Kimbel, C.R. Kinzie, A. Kurbatov, G. Kletetschka, M.A. LeCompte,
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Parlier, K.B. Tankersley, B.C. Thomas, J.H. Wittke, A. West and J.P. Kennett 2018b
Extraordinary biomass-burning episode and impact winter triggered by the Younger Dryas
cosmic impact ∼12,800 years ago. 2. Lake, marine, and terrestrial sediments. The Journal of
Geology 126(2):185-205.