The equipment of processing food
Çakmaktepe has produced mortars and grinding stones — the heavy stone equipment used to pound and grind plant food, especially wild cereals. On their own these are ordinary tools, but in quantity and in an early context they tell an important story: intensive processing of wild plants was happening here, early in the Neolithic.
That matters because this region is central to the origins of farming. The wild ancestor of einkorn wheat grew nearby, and the intensive handling of wild cereals — grinding, storing, feasting — is part of the long road that led, over generations, from gathering toward cultivation.
Everyday life beside the monuments
The mortars are a useful corrective to a monuments-only picture of Taş Tepeler. Alongside the carved pillars and ritual deposits, people were doing the daily, essential work of turning wild plants into food — and doing it at a scale that hints at gatherings and at the slow intensification that fed the Neolithic revolution.
Common questions
What do the Çakmaktepe mortars show?
Mortars and grinding stones point to intensive processing of wild plant food, especially cereals — part of the long road from gathering toward farming in the region where einkorn wheat was first domesticated.
Sources & further reading3 references
- Dietrich, O., Heun, M., Notroff, J., Schmidt, K. & Zarnkow, M. (2012). The role of cult and feasting in the emergence of Neolithic communities. New evidence from Göbekli Tepe, south-eastern Turkey. Antiquity 86(333): 674–695.
- Clare, L. (2020). Göbekli Tepe, Turkey. A brief summary of research at a new World Heritage Site (2015–2019). e-Forschungsberichte des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 2020(2): 81–88.
- The Tepe Telegrams (official research blog of the Göbekli Tepe Project, DAI). The Tepe Telegrams. Deutsches Archäologisches Institut. link Accessible, authoritative running commentary from the excavation team.
Full bibliography: the Taş Tepeler reference library →