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The sacred before writing
Ritual, symbols and burial before written sources.
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Original photograph
Study
Jericho’s Plastered Skulls: Faces of the Dead and the Limits of Ancestor Interpretation
From bone and plaster to imaging and facial reconstruction: evidence for mortuary treatment and hypotheses about memory, kinship and worship.
Plastered skull from Jericho, Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, displayed at the British Museum. An ancient modeled face on human remains, not a modern facial reconstruction
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Original photograph
Study
The Warka Vase and Head: When the Sacred Became Recognizable
Offerings, Inanna’s emblems and authority at Uruk, alongside a female face probably from a composite statue: what the objects establish and how far goddess, priestess and ruler can be identified.
Warka Head, white marble, about 21 cm high; late fourth millennium/ca. 3000 BCE. Eye and eyebrow inlays lost. Possibly Inanna; lighting warms the stone’s colour. Iraq Museum, photo, 2019
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Illustration
Study
Why Did People Elongate Their Children’s Skulls? From Neolithic Head Shaping to Ubaid Figurines
Head-shaping evidence from the Zagros, Jericho and Tell Zeidan, and possible identity, beauty and status motives: what bones establish and how far they explain Ubaid figurine heads.
Modern guide to vault growth, morphology and diagnostic limits. It gives no procedure for head shaping, represents no archaeological skull and reconstructs no site-specific equipment
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Illustration
Study
Houses and Ancestors at Çatalhöyük: When Architecture Became Memory
Subfloor burial, architectural continuity and the kinship of the dead: what the evidence reveals about memory and affiliation, and the limits of ancestor and descent interpretations.
Modern building-biography guide: construction, occupation, transformation and closure. Some sequences preserve rebuilding in place; memory is an interpretation to test, not a belief recovered from a plan
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Original photograph
Study
Living Above the Dead: Subfloor Burial Before Çatalhöyük
From Aşıklı and Balıklı to Boncuklu: burial, kinship and building continuity, and the limits of interpretations involving memory, ancestors and the underworld.
Boncuklu today: replica houses, visitor-centre interior, interpretative garden and pond, Figure 6 of the 2026 study. Modern facilities, not an excavation photograph or burial-ritual reconstruction
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Original photograph
Study
The Natufians: What Happened to Religion When People Began to Settle?
Houses, graves, ornaments, feasts and place memory before fully developed agriculture: Natufian evidence and its limits for reconstructing rituals, ancestors and gods.
Aerial view of Shubayqa 1, northeast Jordan, Figure 1 in Richter et al. (2017), with a location map. Natufian architecture; no specific religious function is established
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Original photograph
Study
Did Writing Appear Suddenly at Uruk?
From tokens, envelopes and seals to Uruk’s tablets: how proto-cuneiform emerged, and why fuller linguistic representation took centuries.
Grain account, Met 1988.433.2, ca. 3100–2900 BCE; probably from Uruk, not the first known tablet. Display copy removes empty background around the object
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Original photograph
Study
Eridu: Can We Watch the Temple Being Born?
From eighteen architectural levels to the evidence at XI: what does Eridu’s sequence reveal about temple formation, and where does architectural continuity stop short of identifying Enki?
Eridu ziggurat remains, photographed by David Stanley on 11 April 2016. The visible architecture postdates the Ubaid; it is not a photograph of its earliest temples or evidence of their deity’s identity
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Original photograph
Study
Ubaid Figurines: Why Do Their Faces Look Nonhuman?
Elongated heads, slit eyes and a nursing mother: how can we understand Ubaid figurines through artistic tradition, cranial modification and burial without turning a reptilian resemblance into an assumed identity?
Two female Ubaid figurines from Ur; British Museum, 122872 and 122873. At right, a nursing woman whose head is missing. Photograph: Zunkir, CC BY-SA 4.0; appearance alone does not establish identity
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Original photograph
Study
Ubaid Culture: The World Before Sumer’s Cities
Pottery, water, houses, networks and Eridu: how can we read the transformations preceding Sumer’s cities without assigning Ubaid communities an unproven language, state or divine names?
Ubaid bowl from Eridu cemetery, grave 136; mid-sixth–fifth millennium BCE. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 49.133.2. A specific archaeological object, not a representation of all Ubaid pottery
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Original photograph
Study
Çatalhöyük: Where Was the Sacred Without a Known Central Temple?
Houses, burials, horns, colour and memory: how can we interpret ritual life at Çatalhöyük, and what does the 2025 kinship study add, without turning archaeological remains into an unrecorded creed?
House remains in an excavated area of Çatalhöyük, photographed on 12 June 2013. Architectural layers are visible; the photograph does not identify this building as a temple or a “history house”
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Original photograph
Study
Göbekli Tepe’s T-Shaped Pillars: Humans, Ancestors or Gods?
Hands, dress, abstraction and the central pair: what do Göbekli Tepe’s pillars establish about human form, and what remains open about ancestors and gods? With Urfa Man and the 2025 Karahantepe announcement.
A carved arm beside a fox relief on a pillar in Building D at Göbekli Tepe, photographed in 2019. Human and animal features occur together; the photograph does not establish a divine identity
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Original photograph
Study
Göbekli Tepe: Temple or Social Centre?
How have domestic and food-processing evidence changed our understanding of Göbekli Tepe? Buildings, pillars, feasting and social networks reveal the possibilities and limits of interpreting ritual before writing.
Building D at Göbekli Tepe, photographed in 2019. Central and perimeter pillars show the building’s arrangement. The visible shelter and support braces are modern conservation measures, not a reconstructed ancient roof
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Original photograph
Study
Before We Knew the Names of Gods
What can burials, skulls, figurines and buildings tell us about early beliefs? A study of archaeological evidence and the boundary between observation and interpretation, from Jericho to Göbekli Tepe and Çatalhöyük.
Building C at Göbekli Tepe, southeastern Turkey, photographed in 2019. T-shaped pillars and communal architecture in a settlement with a ritual component; any proposed divine identities remain unknown. Some pillars have been restored
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