Ancient Architecture & Settlements

Site Profile

Structure AB

Structure AB is one of Karahan Tepe's most extraordinary excavated spaces. Archaeologist Necmi Karul describes the building as being created by cutting into the bedrock. Ten upright pillars were formed from the rock itself, with an additional stone element bringing the reported total to eleven.

Four especially prominent uprights stand approximately 1.6 to 1.7 meters high. A human head was also sculpted from the bedrock along the western side of the structure. The head faces toward the interior and the entrance stairs.

The Human Head

The sculpted head is not a loose statue placed inside the room. It was shaped from the bedrock itself. Excavation reports describe a projecting forehead, thick lips, and a beard beneath the chin. Its position in relation to the stairs and the row of uprights makes it one of the site's most unusual surviving features.

Was Structure AB Buried?

Here the evidence is particularly interesting. The excavation report argues that Structure AB was deliberately filled in a sequence of procedures. The fill remained confined within the structure, and the excavators interpreted the arrangement of deposits and large flat stones as evidence that the building boundaries were still visible while filling occurred.

That conclusion applies to this excavated structure and should not automatically be generalized to every buried monument in the region.

Engineering Questions

Karahan Tepe raises a different engineering question from monuments assembled entirely from transported blocks. Here, portions of the architecture were created by removing material from the bedrock until pillars, walls, channels, and sculptural forms remained.

The finished monument therefore records both construction and subtraction: stone was quarried and placed, while other features were carved out of the limestone beneath the builders' feet.

The Trilithon

The three famous blocks are not loose stones lying at the site. They form part of an enormous masonry course in the podium. That distinction is critical. Whatever methods were used, these blocks had to be extracted, moved from the quarry area, brought to the construction zone, aligned, and set into a massive architectural system.

Their existence therefore demonstrates successful heavy-stone engineering. It does not, by itself, identify the complete transport system, labor force, lifting sequence, or construction organization.

The Quarry

The quarry gives us the other half of the story. Here the visitor can see that ancient builders attempted blocks larger than those successfully installed. Some remained attached to or resting within the quarry and were abandoned before reaching the sanctuary.

That difference is valuable evidence. It suggests that ancient engineering had practical limits, setbacks, changing plans, or stone-quality problems just as large construction projects do today.

Older Occupation

Archaeological investigation beneath the later monumental sanctuary has revealed a long sequence of human occupation, including settlement remains extending into the Pre-Pottery Neolithic. Houses, paths, burials, and later occupation accumulated in the area over a very long span of human activity.

This makes Baalbek much more than a Roman temple site. People occupied this landscape long before the surviving monumental sanctuary took its familiar form.

Do Not Collapse the Layers

The presence of early settlement beneath Baalbek does not establish that the Trilithon or quarry megaliths were created during that earliest occupation. Archaeological layers represent different episodes of activity.

For our collection, the early settlement and the colossal masonry belong on the same page because they occupy the same remarkable place, but they remain separate lines of evidence.

How the Walls Were Built

The Maltese temple tradition used large upright slabs together with horizontal stone courses. UNESCO describes external walls built from larger blocks and internal chambers formed around monumental orthostats. Spaces between inner and outer wall faces were packed with stone and earth, binding the construction together.

The builders also selected different local limestones according to architectural need. Harder coralline limestone was particularly useful for exposed exterior construction, while softer globigerina limestone could be used in more sheltered or worked contexts.

Was It Roofed?

Surviving horizontal masonry courses are important because they support the interpretation that at least parts of the Maltese temples originally had corbelled roofs, probably completed with horizontal elements across the narrowing upper span.

Observed: upright slabs and surviving horizontal courses.
Interpretation: corbelled roofing.
Unknown: the complete appearance, height, and finishing of every original roof.

Sansuna's Rock

The giantess tradition extends beyond the temple walls. Heritage Malta identifies Il-Ħaġra ta' Sansuna, Sansuna's Rock, near Xagħra. The irregular coralline limestone slab is about four metres long and is partially supported at one end by smaller stones.

It has sometimes been proposed as part of a dolmen, but Heritage Malta notes that this interpretation has not been established through archaeological investigation. Its strongest connection to our exhibit is therefore folkloric rather than architectural.

The Child and the Stones

Versions of the Gozitan legend describe the giantess carrying enormous stones while also carrying a child. Other retellings emphasize her extraordinary strength and her movement of megaliths across the island. Details vary as folklore is retold, so the museum preserves the central tradition without treating every later embellishment as an independent historical fact.

Site Profile

The Circular Towers

Excavation identified five circular tower phases within the settlement sequence. Their dimensions and construction were not identical, demonstrating rebuilding rather than a single frozen architectural plan.

In one well documented pair, the older structure measured approximately 7.5 m in diameter with walls about 2.25 m thick. The younger structure above it measured about 6.6 m in diameter, with walls approximately 0.90 to 1.20 m thick.

The older wall incorporated large boulders, including massive upright stones within the wall core, with mud and pebbles filling intervening spaces.

Houses and Courtyards

Tell Qaramel also preserves ordinary architecture. Excavators documented oval and round houses made from combinations of mud, pebbles, flat stones, lime-rich material, and timber-supported roofing. Some houses were subdivided into two rooms. Mud-plastered courtyards, hearths, storage pits, benches, platforms, and postholes reveal spaces designed for repeated daily use.

A Settlement Rebuilt Again and Again

Structures repeatedly appear above earlier structures. The excavators describe successive occupational levels in which houses, work areas, hearths, and monumental circular structures were rebuilt or replaced. That vertical sequence is physical evidence for repeated occupation and architectural change, regardless of what absolute calendar age is assigned to it.

What Was Found Around Them?

The towers were embedded in a wider settlement containing houses, animal bone, flint, heavy stone tools, hearths, storage areas, and work spaces. One domestic building was approximately 3.5 by 2.4 m and divided into two rooms. Another round house measured about 2.6 m in diameter. Other excavated structures reached approximately 5 m across.

This matters because Tell Qaramel is not simply a mysterious circular monument. It provides an architectural landscape in which monumental and domestic construction can be compared.

Material Oddities and Breadcrumbs

As this collection expands, visitors will encounter other unusual ancient objects and constructions beyond the main architectural exhibits: megalithic chambers and dolmens, carved stone spheres, standing stones, subterranean spaces, quarry scars, polished stone objects, unusual alignments, and artifacts whose original meanings are under study.

These references are included as research breadcrumbs. Their presence does not mean they share one builder, one period, or one explanation. Some deserve exhibits of their own; others are simply invitations to investigate further.

The Neolithic Monumental Complex

The Stone Tower

The tower is one of the most striking surviving pieces of architecture at Tell es-Sultan. Its internal passage and staircase demonstrate that this was not simply a heap of stone or retaining mass. It was a deliberately constructed architectural space that people could enter and move through.

The structure required quarrying or collecting large quantities of stone, transporting and placing the material, planning the circular mass, and constructing the internal stairway. Whatever its original function, the surviving tower demonstrates coordinated labor and substantial architectural knowledge.

The Archaeological Mound

A tell is created as communities repeatedly occupy, build upon, alter, abandon, destroy, level, and rebuild the same location. Tell es-Sultan therefore does not preserve one frozen city. It preserves a vertical record of different settlements and architectural episodes.

This is why a wall found in one archaeological layer cannot automatically be combined with a tower, house, rampart, or destruction horizon from another layer to create a single reconstructed city.

The Modern City

The name Jericho still belongs to a living community. Ancient Tell es-Sultan lies northwest of present-day Jericho in the Jordan Valley. The adjacent spring continues to function as a water source, linking the landscape occupied today with the landscape that drew communities to this location in antiquity.

For the museum visitor, Jericho therefore offers something unusual: an ancient architectural landscape beside a city whose name and human occupation continue into the present.

Why Build Here?

The spring of 'Ain es-Sultan is one of the most important physical facts in understanding the site. A dependable water source in the Jordan Valley made this location unusually attractive for repeated settlement. The architecture should therefore be viewed together with the landscape: water, fertile ground, access routes, defensive possibilities, and the surrounding valley.

Beyond the Architecture

Jericho's archaeological record includes more than walls and houses. Finds such as specially treated human skulls and anthropomorphic figures have contributed to interpretations of ritual and social life. As elsewhere in this collection, the objects themselves are evidence; the beliefs or ceremonies reconstructed from them remain interpretations.

A Settlement, Not Just a Monument

Nevalı Çori contained substantial domestic architecture. Long rectangular buildings were constructed on thick stone foundations, with repeated internal divisions and spaces interpreted as living and storage areas. The site therefore gives us something different from a stand-alone monument: ordinary settlement life beside unusual monumental architecture.

Excavation documented several architectural levels, showing that buildings were rebuilt and the settlement changed through repeated occupation.

The Special Building

A semi-subterranean stone structure stood apart from the ordinary houses. Its interior included a broad stone bench, a hard lime-based terrazzo floor, T-shaped limestone pillars set around the perimeter, and two larger freestanding pillars toward the center.

The building was rebuilt in multiple architectural phases. Archaeologists have frequently described it as a cult or special building, but the exact activities that took place inside remain an interpretation rather than a written fact left by its builders.

Sculpture and Human Imagery

Nevalı Çori produced important limestone sculpture, including anthropomorphic pieces and a large sculpted human head. The combination of human imagery, T-shaped pillars, and monumental stone architecture connects the site visually with the wider monumental tradition seen at other southeastern Anatolian sites.

Clay Before Pottery

The phrase Pre-Pottery Neolithic does not mean people did not understand fired clay. Large numbers of small clay objects and figurines were recovered at Nevalı Çori. What is absent from the classification is the established tradition of ordinary ceramic pottery vessels that characterizes later periods.

1. Grill-Plan Architecture

The grill-plan buildings are immediately recognizable from above. Parallel stone foundation walls create long narrow spaces beneath parts of the structure. The preserved masonry demonstrates that the builders were not merely outlining a room at ground level. They were deliberately constructing a foundation system before the upper building was completed.

Exactly why this arrangement was chosen continues to be studied. Air circulation, moisture control, raised flooring, structural support, storage, and combinations of these functions have been discussed. The parallel stone foundations themselves are observed; their complete purpose is interpreted.

2. Cell-Plan Architecture

In the cell-plan buildings, substantial stone foundations create multiple rectangular compartments. These lower cells supported an upper occupied level in archaeological reconstructions, demonstrating a more vertically organized building system than a simple one-room ground plan.

The change from grill-like foundations to compartmentalized substructures is one of the clearest examples of architectural experimentation preserved at Çayönü.

A Deliberately Finished Floor

The structure known as the Terrazzo Building differs from ordinary domestic architecture. Its floor was manufactured from crushed stone set into a lime-based matrix and then carefully finished and polished. The surviving surface demonstrates deliberate control of material preparation and finishing rather than an untreated earth floor.

The term terrazzo describes the construction technique. It should not make us imagine a later Roman mosaic floor. Çayönü's surface is its own architectural technology.

Special, Public, Ritual?

Researchers have called the Terrazzo Building and several other unusual Çayönü structures special buildings, public buildings, or in older literature, cult buildings. Those labels reflect the buildings' unusual plans, construction, contents, and separation from ordinary houses.

What the builders themselves called these structures is unknown. A communal or ritual role is plausible, but the architecture does not preserve a written explanation of the activities that occurred inside.

Early Copper Working

Çayönü is also important in discussions of early copper technology. Native copper objects and evidence of deliberate working of copper are part of the site's technological record. The material demonstrates experimentation with a substance very different from ordinary chipped stone.

For this museum, the significant point is technological rather than chronological: the same settlement that preserves changing architectural systems also preserves evidence of experimentation with copper.

Architecture as Evidence

No inscription tells us who designed these buildings. No surviving manual explains the grill foundations. No text identifies the Skull Building or Terrazzo Building by name. Yet the foundations themselves preserve decisions: dimensions were chosen, walls aligned, surfaces prepared, rooms divided, structures replaced, and specialized spaces constructed.

Çayönü therefore gives us exactly the kind of evidence this collection is designed to examine: what people physically built before we decide what their buildings meant.

Architecture Built in Earth

Aşıklı Höyük reminds us that monumental stone is not the only architecture capable of preserving sophisticated organization. Much of the settlement was constructed from mudbrick and other earthen materials. Rectangular buildings formed dense groups, with interior spaces organized around recurring domestic activities.

Because earthen architecture erodes dramatically, surviving walls should not be mistaken for their original height. Roof forms, upper walls, doors, ladders, and complete exterior appearances require reconstruction.

How Did People Enter?

Many buildings do not preserve obvious conventional ground-level doorways. This has contributed to archaeological reconstructions proposing entry from above, possibly through roofs.

Observed: preserved plans frequently lack clear ground-level entrances.
Interpretation: roof access may have been used.
Unknown: the exact form of every entrance, roof, ladder, and circulation route.

Obsidian

Central Anatolia provided access to rich sources of obsidian, and Aşıklı Höyük preserves extensive evidence for working this sharp volcanic glass. Cores, flakes, blades, tools, and manufacturing debris allow researchers to examine how raw material was selected, worked, used, and discarded.

Sheep, Goats, and Settlement Life

Animal remains from successive occupation levels have been used to study changing relationships between people, sheep, and goats. Researchers see evidence for increasingly intensive human management rather than a single sudden change. Keeping animals near a settlement also affected space, waste, movement, food, labor, and daily organization.