A terrific article by E.B. Banning in September's Current Anthropology discusses the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) site of Göbekli Tepe, interpreted by investigator Klaus Schmidt as a set of temples and covered with a gorgeous set of photos in National Geographic last summer.

Schmidt's categorizing these structures as temples arises from a long tradition of identifying some PPN buildings as shrines or shrine rooms, beginning in the 1940s with Jericho: Banning proposes that archaeologists should rethink our distinctions between shrines and domestic spaces.

Banning's main argument rests in the notion that modern people--particularly westerners--separate the sacred and the mundane in a way that may not relate, almost certainly doesn't relate to ancient cultures, where the domestic, everyday life seems to have been fused with the spiritual.

It's an interesting article, and I love the fact that it was published in Current Anthropology, where as is typical for CA, scholars were invited to comment and discuss Banning's argument in detail, the comments were published alongside Banning's article, and Banning was given an opportunity to respond, all published in the same place and time.

Accordingly, I've revisited my Göbekli Tepe photo essay from last summer and added in some of the relevant details of Banning's argument. That might give you a taste for the academic document, which is linked below.

• Göbekli Tepe - Early Cult Center in Turkey Photo Essay
• Guide to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic
• How Archaeologists Define Temples

Banning EB. 2011. So Fair a House: Göbekli Tepe and the Identification of Temples in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of the Near East. Current Anthropology 52(5):619-660. Commentary from Peter Akkermans, Douglas Baird, Nigel Goring-Morris and Anna Belfer-Cohen, Harald Hauptmann, Ian Hodder, Ian Kuijt, Lynn Meskell, Mehmet Özdogan, Michael Rosenberg, and Marc Verhoeven; and a reply from Banning.