Description
Topic 2. The world of Gobekli Tepe
Gobekli Tepe is one of the most exciting, and mysterious, archaeological discoveries of the late 20th Century. And there has been much claimed for it – it was the site of humanity’s first temples, it was the original Garden of Eden and so on, it shows humanity’s fear of the wild. All archaeologists have their own ideas about what is going on here. But what is fact and what fiction?
Remote Resources: Google Earth, satellite imagery; excavation websites and published reports (some directly online, some available from library collections); nature documentaries and websites on animal evolution and behaviours; star maps (and I don’t mean celebrity houses in Hollywood).
The basic questions you need to start with:
Problem 1: Why is Gobekli Tepe located where it is? How did people survive there? What resources may have been available to its builders? Investigate the landscape of the upper Euphrates for its subsistence potential, research animal migrations.
Problem 2: How significant are the apparent correspondences in material culture and images with other sites, such as Jerf-alAhmar and Nevali Çori? Are our subjective impressions accurate? Is there a way to make an objective determination? Make data base of these correspondences between sites to assess statistical closeness.
Problem 3: Astrological/astronomical implications of GT – there is always great interest in the relationship between these sorts of structures and stargazing. You will test the validity of arguments seen in blogs and some scientific reports. You will plot the heavens and see if they match the animal images.
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Whatever your topic, this is your summation of the data you collected and your interpretation of it. Describe your process. What did you do to collect the data? Detail the data. What are the results? Analyze the data. How does this data address the big questions of concern for your topic? Does it substantiate prevailing views or does it raise questions about them? Do you have any alternative suggestions? Papers should be 6-8 pages long
All written work should be 1.5 spaced, 12 point, Times New Roman Font and only uploaded as doc or docx file. ANY WORK THAT IS NOT IN THIS FORMAT WILL NOT BE GRADED. DO NOT UPLOAD A PDF. IT WILL NOT BE GRADED.