By Dr. Birgül Öğüt (German Archaeological Institute (DAI), Orient Department,
“Everyday Life and Environment at Pre-Pottery Neolithic Göbekli Tepe, Turkey”
Tuesday 29 March 2022 at 05:30 PM
***This is an online event. To obtain Zoom link and password, please contact to the department.
Abstract
Pre-Pottery Neolithic Göbekli Tepe in south-eastern Turkey is predominantlyknown for its monumental round-oval buildings with monolithic T-pillars which provided the ground for speculations about ancient life, not only at this place, but also for the whole region. The undoubtedly special buildings were seen as innovations of a new way of life, and interpreted in connection with cultic activities such as (workers’) feasts and rituals, in which beer as well as possibly domesticated grain was attributed an important role. Previous research focused on these particular aspects and made an important contribution to gaining an understanding of the Neolithic world. But stimulated by scientific analyses, everyday life on the one hand and the embeddedness of this everyday life in the environment on the other hand are moving into the focus of new research directions. After an overview of the state of research at Göbekli Tepe, this lecture will present recent investigations and results, which give an insight into everyday life as well as the environmental conditions at Göbekli Tepe, in order to look at this important UNESCO World Heritage Site from a different perspective.
Bio
Birgül Ögüt received her Master’s degree in Near Eastern Archaeology from LMU Munich and completed her PhD at the Freie Universität Berlin, during which she increasingly turned her focus towards microarchaeology, especially microfossils and environmental archaeology. She has been involved in fieldwork in Germany, Iran, Central Asian Countries and Turkey, especially in south-eastern Turkey. In 2020 she joined the German Archaeological Institute team on the Göbekli Tepe project, where she is responsible for sample management and also works as a field supervisor.She is co-director of the excavations in Doliche, Gaziantep and is engaged in archaeo-environmental studies in various projects in Turkey and Iran.