The skull cult appears to reflect a belief in the continued presence or power of the ancestors, whose remains were kept within the community and potentially served as objects of veneration or communication.

The scattered and modified human bone at Göbekli Tepe may reflect practices related to this broader PPN mortuary tradition.

If the site was associated with excarnation — the exposure of bodies for defleshing — it would represent a stage in a multi-phase mortuary process in which the dead were brought through a sequence of treatments before reaching their final disposition.

The vulture imagery at the site would then be directly connected to the practical reality of excarnation, not merely as general symbolism of death and transformation but as specific reference to the actual birds that participated in the defleshing process.

The incorporation of human remains into the fill deposits of the site, whether as deliberate inclusions or as incidental accumulation, connects the dead to the process of architectural transformation that characterized Göbekli Tepe’s history.