The possibility of archeaology of religion and Göbeklitepe

This study aims to investigate whether it is possible to put forward the archaeology of religion as an interdisciplinary field of study between the history of religion and archaeology. It adopts a critical approach to discuss the historical process of archaeology as a means for producing knowledge. In this regard, it tries to evaluate the historical status of archaeology both in Turkey and in the western world. It also examines the political, ideological and religious factors that shape archaeology as in many other disciplines of social sciences. From time to time, archelogy is used as an ideological means to narrate historical events from a materialistic perspective, which makes the argument of this study more crucial. The second chapter, whichestablishes a theoretical framework for the archaeology of religion as an interdisciplinary field, makes a critical review of the common concepts and terms of archaeology and history of religion such as primitive, religion, ritual, and shamanism. In this way, the chapter draws attention to the negative effects of these 19th-century concepts and terms on our understanding of history. The last chapter of the study analyses GöbekliTepe, one of the significant archaeological discoveries in recent times, within the scope of archaeology of religion. This chapter attempts to put the theoretical arguments of the first and second chapters into practice in the light of GöbekliTepe. Thus, the current study discusses how the animal depictions and abstract symbols on the T shaped pillars in GöbekliTepe should be understood from the perspective of archaeology of religion as an interdisciplinary area.