Abstract

At the throats of the monumental anthropomorphic paired central pillars of Enclosure D, the oldest Enclosure at Göbekli Tepe, are pictograms that both identify their respective pillars and connect them with the archaeology of Neolithic southwest Asia on the eve of the inception of agriculture. On one pillar is a bucranium; on the other, at the throat and on the belt, are two differing images of the moon, ancient symbol of the female. The bucranium and, in varying iterations, the two moon/woman symbols populate special purpose structures erected over many hundreds of years throughout Göbekli Tepe. They are likely the only pictograms at the site, and their specialized character, their ubiquity, and the fact that they relate the pillars as a pair bespeak their centrality. Taken as identifying markers for the pillars, the pictograms associate Göbekli Tepe with woman/bull iconography then extant in Upper Mesopotamia and supply a link in Jaques Cauvin’s theory of a psycho-cultural shift that leads in a direct line of symbolic development to the ensuing Bronze Age Great Mother/Son-Lover religions.