The role of cult and feasting in the emergence of Neolithic communities: New evidence from Göbekli Tepe, south-eastern Turkey

Oliver Dietrich, Manfred Heun, Jens Notroff, Klaus Schmidt, and Martin Zarnkow, Antiquity 86, no. 333 (September 2012): 674–695 — the principal peer-reviewed scholarly article articulating the "cult and feasting" interpretation of Göbekli Tepe and its substantial implications for the Neolithic revolution. The authors argue from the substantial faunal evidence (large quantities of wild aurochs and gazelle bone), the substantial vessel evidence (large-scale stone vessel capacities suggestive of fermented beverage production), and the architectural-iconographic context that Göbekli Tepe operated as a regional gathering site whose substantial collective labour requirements may have driven, rather than followed, the Neolithic transition to settled agriculture.