12,000-year-old Göbeklitepe burials explain the mystery of hundreds of scattered human bones
by Dario Radley September 25, 2026
Archaeologists have found the first two intact burials at Göbeklitepe in Turkey, offering new clues about how people buried their dead at the site.
The burials date to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period, between 8,700 and 8,000 BCE. They help explain a long-standing puzzle at Göbeklitepe. Since excavations began in 1995, researchers have recovered hundreds of human bone fragments scattered through the site.
The study examined the two burials and compared their bones with the scattered remains from the monumental buildings. The results suggest many of those loose fragments came from ordinary burials elsewhere on the mound. Later erosion likely carried them downslope into the buildings.
One burial was found in a pit beneath the plaster floor of a rectangular building. It held the remains of at least three people. The group included a woman aged at least 35, a man aged 20 to 30, and a girl aged 11 to 14. A fourth person might also be represented by some bones.
The bodies were no longer in their original positions. The skulls lay together in one part of the pit, while other bones formed separate clusters. Small bones from the hands and feet were still present. Their presence suggests complete bodies, or complete limbs, had first been placed in the grave.
The researchers found no cut marks, heat damage, or traces of ochre on these bones. Some bones showed rodent gnawing. Many were broken after death, with several fractures caused by pressure or other changes in the burial soil.
A second burial held a young adult, likely a woman aged 20 to 30. The skeleton had been placed on its left side in a flexed position, facing east. Most of the skeleton stayed in place, but many bones were highly fragmented.
Calcareous deposits played a major role in the damage. The deposits covered parts of the bones and entered their structure, causing cracks and later breakage. Soil pressure also fractured larger bones. Rodent activity likely moved some smaller pieces.
These changes closely match those seen in the 928 human bone fragments recovered from the wider site. The match offers an explanation for why the fragments appear so widely scattered.
Earlier research had raised another possibility. Some human bones at Göbeklitepe show deliberate treatment, especially certain skulls with deep cuts. Cranial remains are also overrepresented, with 408 skull fragments compared with 283 fragments from other parts of the skeleton.
Such evidence suggests some people at Göbeklitepe received special treatment after death. Yet the scattered bones don’t show the pattern expected from a single organized burial practice. They cover about 3,000 square meters and occur through several meters of deposits.
The new study points to a different process for much of the assemblage. People were buried beneath floors in buildings on higher parts of the settlement. As the mound grew, soil and debris moved downhill through erosion and slope slides. Human remains were carried with those deposits and mixed with other material inside the monumental buildings.
This process would explain why isolated bones occur far from their original graves. It also explains why remains from people of different ages and sexes appear together.
The findings change the way researchers view the human remains at Göbeklitepe. The scattered bones don’t need to represent one unusual burial rite. Many likely came from normal subfloor burials that were later disturbed by the movement of the mound.
The study doesn’t rule out other burial customs. Some skulls show signs of deliberate modification, and other Neolithic sites in the region show different ways of handling human remains. Further bone studies and direct dating are needed to establish when these practices occurred at Göbeklitepe.
Publication: Gresky, J., & Clare, L. (2026). First burials give insights into mortuary rites at Göbeklitepe, Early Neolithic Türkiye. PloS One, 21(9), e0358979. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0358979
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