Many of you will already know a lot about the 11,600-year-old site of Göbekli Tepe, with its oval enclosures, its ornately-carved T-shaped pillars, and the fact we have an incredibly sophisticated settlement at the very beginning of the Holocene.
But many of you will not have heard about Enclosure F. It's something not often discussed, and that’s because until recently, it seems there wasn’t a lot published.
In 2023, Oliver Dietrich and Julia Wagner published a paper, titled “Early Neolithic imagery in flux. A case study on the reliefs of Building F at Gobekli Tepe, southeastern Turkey.”
So far, two-thirds of this enclosure have been excavated and eight pillars have been identified. Not only do these pillars tell us a great deal about the history of Göbekli Tepe, but one pillar in particular stands out.
It's known as Pillar 74, and on it is portrayed a man, whom I've called 'The Buried Man of Göbekli Tepe' - the only full-bodied human to be depicted on a T-shaped Pillar.
Watch this video to learn more about it, to learn about the importance of this enclosure and how it fits within the timeline of events in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic.