Usage of concrete at Gobekli Tepe

Incredible, i love this topic
that is the main reason why i joined

reply to post by KilgoreTrout


Yep tribal or clan gatherings, Native Americans did the same thing in historic times. To keep themselves in food before herding and agriculture they lived apart but came together to share news, do events and find marriage partners.

reply to post by Kantzveldt



Except:

While there is no evidence of lime burning technology, there exists the strong possibility of soft marly limestone minerals (Marl is normally in the index 5-15% clays and 85-95% carbonates), in the climatic conditions, contemporary to construction, of marshy ground in the fo rested plains below. These soft marls when mixed with sands and aggregates would produce a type of concrete on drying, and this may have been the source of the terrazzo floors.

Thanks for finding that report some good info in it. DIA tends to be very thorough but slow on releasing reports - they studied Baalbek for over a century.

Pure speculation on my part.
Could it be the initiators of the site had the ability to pass down knowledge only by word of mouth? As the generations came and went the knowledge/expertise could get lost and rediscovered multiple times leading to an uneven building process.
The biggest unknown is why the drive to create the site continued generation by generation. Perhaps each Tower (T shaped pillar) was created by different groups. It might be that each group had different skill levels that could also explain the uneven expertise shown.
The function of the T pillars might have been to hold a crude roof overhead. Putting up supports without using them seems like a waste of effort. That imply a few other unknowable possibilities. Since the T pillars are flat on the top wouldn't the boards or split tree trunks have to be flat to span the distance? The begs the question on how they could split logs like this.
I'll stop speculation now. Thanks for putting up with my flights of imagination.

reply to post by KilgoreTrout


Yes i think the plastering they refer to is just their usual mix applied as a rendering, the trees are a bit of a puzzle as normally the last thing you want is them growing above any archaeology because of root damage and there have been large structures detected by scanning on the hill.

reply to post by datasdream


I think it is the case that subsequent generations made their own contributions to the site, perhaps even filling in the efforts of the former, in the sense of out with the old and in with the new, a need to make their own mark and pay their own respects as it were to what the site represented.

Kantzveldt
reply to post by KilgoreTrout

 

Yes i think the plastering they refer to is just their usual mix applied as a rendering, the trees are a bit of a puzzle as normally the last thing you want is them growing above any archaeology because of root damage and there have been large structures detected by scanning on the hill.

Yes, geophysicists have detected up to twelve more stone circles beneath the tepe, what is completely shocking though is that it is unlikely, at this stage, that they will ever be excavated. The land is privately owned, the olive trees having been planted by it's owner, Mahmut Yıldız. From what I can gather, Schmidt has signed an 80 year lease on the land currently being dug, but he has no permissions to extend the excavation. He has evidently struggled with the owner and Turkish authorities to even allow visitors to the site, as not only the tepe, but the surrounding land is privately owned with no public right of access. All things considered, it seems likely that once the lease elapses that the site will be filled back in and returned to agricultural use...unless someone with sufficient funds can persuade both the farmer, and the Turkish authorities to give over the land to be protected and preserved.

National Geographic dedicated an entire issue to this dig site. It's laying around here somewhere. I really need to clean my apt. I'll see if I can track it down and post the month of issue.

reply to post by Hanslune


Indeed. Such gatherings seem to have helped to reinforce wider societal conventions attached to hatching, matching and dispatching. The continuity of which can be supported by the anthropological studies of the 19th and 20th century which, while often imposed with Christian morality, give insight into the activities of these get togethers which apart from the eating, drinking, talking and dancing, often involved a great deal of that other activity that ends in '-ing'. In this way, reproduction could be more efficiently timed to ensure most births occurred in the spring, thereby improving infant survival rates.

datasdream
The function of the T pillars might have been to hold a crude roof overhead. Putting up supports without using them seems like a waste of effort. That imply a few other unknowable possibilities. Since the T pillars are flat on the top wouldn't the boards or split tree trunks have to be flat to span the distance? The begs the question on how they could split logs like this.
I'll stop speculation now. Thanks for putting up with my flights of imagination.

As evidenced by the use of very similar pillars at Qermez Dere, the pillars may well have provided additional support for the roof, it wasn't all that crude though, being comprised of a reed matting that was then plastered or covered in clay. The pillars also though seem to have other meanings too, their form is usually described in terms of 'truncated torsos', and may be comparable with xoanon found elsewhere and later in the meditteranean region, they were probably also representative of ancestor workship, with each having a totemic 'value' to the individual family clans that comprised the wider social affiliation.

reply to post by KilgoreTrout



Thanks for that info, it seems a ridiculous situation as the potential for the site as a tourist destination is enormous and would surely outweigh the profit from growing a bunch of olive trees on the poor soils, they've fully developed Catal Hoyuk as such so hopefully they'll see sense and pressure will be brought to bear.

Kantzveldt
reply to post by KilgoreTrout

 

Thanks for that info, it seems a ridiculous situation as the potential for the site as a tourist destination is enormous and would surely outweigh the profit from growing a bunch of olive trees on the poor soils, they've fully developed Catal Hoyuk as such so hopefully they'll see sense and pressure will be brought to bear.

I really do hope so...if for no other reason than I would love to go and see it myself at some point in the future. I suppose that it is a question of arguing the case for improved revenues from tourism against the loss of productive land.

datasdream

The function of the T pillars might have been to hold a crude roof overhead. Putting up supports without using them seems like a waste of effort. That imply a few other unknowable possibilities. Since the T pillars are flat on the top wouldn't the boards or split tree trunks have to be flat to span the distance? The begs the question on how they could split logs like this.
I'll stop speculation now. Thanks for putting up with my flights of imagination.

From a construction standpoint, I think you are correct. They seem entirely functional. though it is always possible that they had some other meaning as well. I don't think a culture that could quarry stones like that would have any trouble whatsoever squaring timbers though. My personal guess is that timbers were laid flat around the perimeter and the T-tops were just to extend the surface for the ends of the timbers. This would allow a 3-way timber intersection where a perpendicular timber would fit between the ends of the perimeter timbers and point toward the center of the structure radially for roof support. The huge T-posts also allow for 'sloppy' masonry between reducing the need for shaping and cutting smaller stones that were probably abundant. It may even be that the framework was from an entirely earlier time or that the in-between rubble-mortar walls were rebuilt over time.

KilgoreTrout
geophysicists have detected up to twelve more stone circles beneath the tepe, what is completely shocking though is that it is unlikely, at this stage, that they will ever be excavated.

For the protocol, I believe that 20 circles have been found so far in a 22 acre-sized area, of which four have been partially excavated. Perhaps more circles will be found, but probably not in the immediate vicinity of GT.

ZonedOut
Whatever the reasons they must have been fantastic to invest such time and effort and skill and resources for supposedly a ragtag bunch of nomadic wandering tribes with seemingly nothing more than that in common!

You said it. If we are to believe that the greatest monumental building known to us – in effect the Great Pyramid of Giza – catered to the megalomania of a single ruler, then what type of motivation did these people have? We can only speculate.

That said, I do not for a second believe these monuments were built by a roaming band of nomadic hunter-gatherers. The key word here is organisation. For the mere construction, we need unskilled labor, stone-workers, masons, carpenters, tool-makers, craftsmen and artists, for the planning of these monuments we need architects and engineers, and for conceiving them we need a highly organized culture that can sustain this type of hierarchy of workers. It speaks of a powerful, centralized leadership. If the reason why there are pyramids all over the world is that this is the logical way to construct large monuments, then this is the logical way to organize a large construction site, you can't really work yourself around it with a site the magnitude of GT.

Emphasis has been placed on the absence of agriculture and pottery at GT, as if these were necessary steps in a linear evolution of a complex society and civilisation. We now know this is wrong. Basket weaving was probably brought to perfection and filled almost all the functions of pottery, the food source to sustain a large, sedimentary population was clearly there, otherwise the people would not be there.

We also need to keep asking the returning questions within megalithic culture, why build in such a hard way when you could build with easier techniques and materials? Why build so large when you could build smaller and more functional? It's clearly built to impress, but who? Other tribes/nations, or supernatural beings/gods?

Heliocentric
For the protocol, I believe that 20 circles have been found so far in a 22 acre-sized area, of which four have been partially excavated. Perhaps more circles will be found, but probably not in the immediate vicinity of GT.

Yes, 20 have been identified in the area that Schmidt has leased, I was referring though to the area that has been planted with trees that Schmidt has not got permission to excavate and which is currently enclosed by a barb wire fence.

In correction to what I mentioned earlier, about the tourism aspect, further reading seems to suggest that the tide has shifted somewhat and the information I posted is out of date. Now the problem is containing the tourists, the owner having realised that such visitors are lucrative, and bus loads are arriving and trampling the site. Schmidt fears that the site will be turned into a 'Disneyland' and attempts are being made to divert tourism by producing reproductions of the pillars that can be positioned away a way where the tourists cannot do damage.

Heliocentric

ZonedOut
Whatever the reasons they must have been fantastic to invest such time and effort and skill and resources for supposedly a ragtag bunch of nomadic wandering tribes with seemingly nothing more than that in common!

You said it. If we are to believe that the greatest monumental building known to us – in effect the Great Pyramid of Giza – catered to the megalomania of a single ruler, then what type of motivation did these people have? We can only speculate.

That said, I do not for a second believe these monuments were built by a roaming band of nomadic hunter-gatherers. The key word here is organisation. For the mere construction, we need unskilled labor, stone-workers, masons, carpenters, tool-makers, craftsmen and artists, for the planning of these monuments we need architects and engineers, and for conceiving them we need a highly organized culture that can sustain this type of hierarchy of workers. It speaks of a powerful, centralized leadership. If the reason why there are pyramids all over the world is that this is the logical way to construct large monuments, then this is the logical way to organize a large construction site, you can't really work yourself around it with a site the magnitude of GT.

This seems to be the feeling of teams working the site too, they are talking about leadership and organised labour being an obvious factor. I don't think that there is any issue about the skills, they would have been well-developed by that point. Lithic technology was highly developed and since about 20,000 BC grinding stones for processing grains, are known to have been cut from cliff faces and the such like and then worked to produce a useable shape. Similarly, temporary seasonal huts had been built using timber, and contemporary to GT, such seasonal dwellings had begun to be built using stone and mud bricks. So each of the small groups that congregated at GT would have supplied their own team of skilled workers.

ZonedOut
Emphasis has been placed on the absence of agriculture and pottery at GT, as if these were necessary steps in a linear evolution of a complex society and civilisation. We now know this is wrong. Basket weaving was probably brought to perfection and filled almost all the functions of pottery, the food source to sustain a large, sedimentary population was clearly there, otherwise the people would not be there.

Absolutely, baskets were not only used to carry and store dry goods, but were lined with bitumen in order to transport liquids. Stone vessels were also probably used. Ceramics really only improved the variety of the diet, leading to what some call the 'culinary revolution', with the inclusion of soups, stews and porridge which enabled food to go farther.

A vast number of bones have been found at GT, primarily gazelle but the bulk of the meat would have come from wild cattle, given the weight for weight basis of the two animals. Wild pig, Onager and red deer bones are also amongst the debris left. This seems suggestive that the reason for getting together in that particular location may have been to combine forced in order to intercept migratory herds. And given the change in climate, at the end of the Younger Dryas period, it may also explain why the site was abandoned, when those migratory patterns changed.

ZonedOut
We also need to keep asking the returning questions within megalithic culture, why build in such a hard way when you could build with easier techniques and materials? Why build so large when you could build smaller and more functional? It's clearly built to impress, but who? Other tribes/nations, or supernatural beings/gods?

They were not built in one go, sometimes developing over thousands of years and reflecting changes within the social and ideological structure. At GT, each stone circle was used for a few years, then filled in and rebuilt a bit further along, so it was a constant cycle of refreshment and replenishment. What we see at the site today, is a poor reflection of how the site would have looked when in use. Similarly, places like Stone Henge evolved over time, beginning perhaps as just a semi-circle etched into the chalk bed with a few marker stones, eventually leading to the placement of the huge monoliths. We can only guess at the whys and the wherefores, I agree, but I would have thought that there were aspects of wanting to show the import and status of the ancestors being worshipped, possibly a little one up manship that sprung from a need to keep up with the Jones'. So, as you say, impressing each other, and the 'gods'.

KilgoreTrout
We can only guess at the whys and the wherefores, I agree, but I would have thought that there were aspects of wanting to show the import and status of the ancestors being worshipped, possibly a little one up manship that sprung from a need to keep up with the Jones'. So, as you say, impressing each other, and the 'gods'.

edit on 21-3-2014 by KilgoreTrout because: fix quotes

Yes, quite possibly the circles were dedicated to the ancestors, or the spirits that according to traditional shamanic beliefs inhabit nature, notably 'empowered' animals (in general wild, untamed animals). The standing stones are covered with these empowered animals, which could mean that their powers were transfered to the stones and the structures, a way of adding extra mojo to an already powerful building. Also according to traditional shamanism, a shaman's spirit can leave his body and invest the bodies of these animals. If their spirits are incarnated in the stones, then perhaps the shaman's spirit could enter the stones and empower the temple.

There's also the possibility that each circle was erected by a powerful ruler or dynasty. A circle represented a certain kingship, period or ruling elite, and when that dynasty ended it was buried, as you bury a human. We know all too well how Egyptian kings and pharaohs dealt with their predecessors, sometimes trying to rub out every trace of their existence, so that their memory would not taint their own glory. Ego could be the reason why they went through the effort of burying these sites.
Speculation apart, the sites that architecturally ressemble the GT circles are the Talaiotic edifices at the Mediterranean islands of Menorca and Majorca. There's clearly a strong link between GT and these cultures, even though they are separated in time by millennia (or are they?). I know Schmidt is eyeing the conclusions of the Menorcan archeologists, because his conclusions echo their conclusions. In short, the Taulas are now concidered to have been places of worship, with an accentuation on healing. Some Stonehenge archeologists theorize that Stonehenge was a place of healing (since so many sickly and deformed skeletal remains have been found around the site), and certain types of stone are said to have healing qualities. According to archeologist Michael Hoskin, the Menorcan taulas may have been part of an ancient healing cult.

Finally, there 's controversy among archaeologists whether the Menorcan Taulas had additional structures erected on top of the standing stones. They now seem to believe that there weren't any, but personally I would definitely have slapped some type of roof structure on top of the GT circles. Other early upper Mesopotamian sites show the inner walls were painted and decorated, and no roof means rain and ruined paintings.

Menorcan Tauals

reply to post by Heliocentric


In terms of the sites greater meaning and purpose i actually have a lot of time for Herschel's suggestion that this takes the form of an immense bull geoglyph, there are good reasons for that being the case as it was the pre-eminent motif of the age.



Taurus Geoglyph


The grouping most excavated he would equate with the Pleiades and there is supporting evidence from later Harappan culture that the grouping could have been represented very much in that interconnected fashion, when one considers the trefoil on the bulls shoulder below which represents the Pleiades, the leaves of the Bodhi or fig tree.



This symbolism of Arriving from the Pleades i'm quite certain will also relate to Gobekli Tepe, the Bodhi tree and it's association with the Pleiades can be perfectly seen below in the sense of it as a cosmic axis, the constellation itself is seen centre.





The relationship of the circles then one to the other i see as probably representing the Pleiades with a little artistic licence thrown in, the Hyades of course yet to be uncovered

Oannes
This also make me wonder about other ancient sites. Could it be that some of these monuments were actually poured into place? The blocks of the Great Pyramid of Giza almost look like artificially made cement.

I certainly agree with the theory the Pyramids at Giza were poured in place. IMO it is the only theory that makes sense.

Concrete Construction

Heliocentric
Yes, quite possibly the circles were dedicated to the ancestors, or the spirits that according to traditional shamanic beliefs inhabit nature, notably 'empowered' animals (in general wild, untamed animals). The standing stones are covered with these empowered animals, which could mean that their powers were transfered to the stones and the structures, a way of adding extra mojo to an already powerful building. Also according to traditional shamanism, a shaman's spirit can leave his body and invest the bodies of these animals. If their spirits are incarnated in the stones, then perhaps the shaman's spirit could enter the stones and empower the temple.

There's also the possibility that each circle was erected by a powerful ruler or dynasty. A circle represented a certain kingship, period or ruling elite, and when that dynasty ended it was buried, as you bury a human.

That is where I think that the 'totem' aspect most likely comes in, with each group or clan, having it's own spirtual animal, represented within the circle. The animal/shamanic union serves as the guide in hunting, but also enables the groups to have a pictorial or symbolic identity that differentiates it from the other groups.

The argument for kingship is difficult, societies were still fundamentally egalitarian by the time Catal Hoyuk was inhabited, leadership was therefore most likely still ascribed by strength and virility rather than material wealth, hence why I personally feel that it was more a question of inter-clan rivalry, which team you were on, rather than the social stratification that we see later on.

Heliocentric
We know all too well how Egyptian kings and pharaohs dealt with their predecessors, sometimes trying to rub out every trace of their existence, so that their memory would not taint their own glory. Ego could be the reason why they went through the effort of burying these sites.

I don't know. They display the same behaviour at Qermez Dere and other similar sites. Every few years, the communal dwelling is destroyed and rebuilt. I don't think it is ego and while ritual seems to be a factor, I suspect it is based on practicality as well. Disease prevention perhaps?

Heliocentric
Speculation apart, the sites that architecturally ressemble the GT circles are the Talaiotic edifices at the Mediterranean islands of Menorca and Majorca. There's clearly a strong link between GT and these cultures, even though they are separated in time by millennia (or are they?). I know Schmidt is eyeing the conclusions of the Menorcan archeologists, because his conclusions echo their conclusions. In short, the Taulas are now concidered to have been places of worship, with an accentuation on healing. Some Stonehenge archeologists theorize that Stonehenge was a place of healing (since so many sickly and deformed skeletal remains have been found around the site), and certain types of stone are said to have healing qualities. According to archeologist Michael Hoskin, the Menorcan taulas may have been part of an ancient healing cult.

I am not surprised that Schmidt is eyeing them. Thanks for the heads up!! If these sites are based around shamanic practices then the healing goes hand in hand with that. Stone was incredibly important in the Ancient World, and Baetyl worship was very widespread. The various ways in which different stones transmit energy, retain magnetism and release minerals, all could have been known, if not understood by the ancient peoples who utilised them at these sites. Speculation sure, but it is supported by much scientific study in the past couple of centuries. The other suggestion that it poses though is that while Shamanic healers may have been essentially isolated in their work much of the year, at those times that the clans congregated, it served as a university or college of sorts, that enabled the shamans to exchange knowledge and combine their efforts towards the more difficult problems that their people faced. Leadership and shamanism are intricately entwined of course, and the more complex societies became, the shamanic role evolved into the elite Priest-class that can almost be seen to co-rule.

Heliocentric
Finally, there 's controversy among archaeologists whether the Menorcan Taulas had additional structures erected on top of the standing stones. They now seem to believe that there weren't any, but personally I would definitely have slapped some type of roof structure on top of the GT circles. Other early upper Mesopotamian sites show the inner walls were painted and decorated, and no roof means rain and ruined paintings.

Put like that...it stands to reason really.

Excellent post all round, highly informative and insightful. Cheers

reply to post by totallackey


Actually they don't, take a look at images of the core stones.