The site of Göbeklitepe with the location of the two burials and the fragmented human bones from the main excavation area.

Since 1995, archaeologists have excavated hundreds of human bones from Göbeklitepe, an archaeological site in southeastern Türkiye. The ancient remains are around 10,000 years old and date to a time when humans were beginning to settle into permanent farming communities.

What makes the find unusual is that the bone fragments were scattered across the site, including in its monumental buildings. Why they ended up there has puzzled scientists. Did these ancient people scatter the remains as part of a ritual, or did natural processes move them over time?

The answers may finally be becoming clearer thanks to the discovery of the site's first intact human burials.

Over the last three decades, researchers have recovered 928 bone fragments from men, women and children of all ages, representing nearly every part of the human body. Some fragments bear marks that researchers have interpreted as evidence of ritual practices, but those findings are far from conclusive.

In a paper published in PLOS One, Julia Gresky of Georg-August University in Germany and Lee Clare of the German Archaeological Institute in Türkiye detail what they found at the two excavated burial sites. Their findings offer fresh insights into how the remains ended up where they did.

Individual from the burial in trench L09-65.

Two burials offer new clues

One grave contained the body of a young woman placed on a layer of stones. The second was a shared grave holding at least three individuals whose bones had been rearranged.

In the lab, the researchers examined the remains from both burials for signs of natural wear, such as fractures, rodent bite marks and thick mineral crusts. They found that these bones showed many of the same types of natural damage as the loose fragments scattered across Göbeklitepe. "This primary burial demonstrates that many of the observed alterations occurred within the burial context itself," wrote Gresky and Clare.

A mystery begins to unravel

This suggested to the study authors that many of the scattered bone fragments originally came from graves higher up the hill. Over time, erosion and landslides could have moved dirt and debris downhill, carrying the damaged bones from their original resting places into the lower buildings.

Although soil movement can explain many of the bone fragments, the researchers are not ruling out other possibilities, such as burial traditions. "While this offers a strong and plausible scenario, it does not exclude the possibility that additional mortuary practices—whether simultaneous or diachronic—were also taking place."

Publication details

Julia Gresky et al, First burials give insights into mortuary rites at Göbeklitepe, Early Neolithic Türkiye, PLOS One (2026). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0358979

Journal information: PLoS ONE