The site was a place where these diverse connections converged.

The Social Structure of PPN Communities

The broader question of how Pre-Pottery Neolithic communities were socially organized — and specifically what kinds of authority, hierarchy, or decision-making structures existed — is one that the evidence from Göbekli Tepe contributes to without fully resolving.

The traditional model of hunter-gatherer social organization emphasized egalitarianism: mobile foraging groups, it was argued, had few mechanisms for maintaining persistent social hierarchy, because the conditions of mobile life — the need for cooperation, the limits on accumulating property, the social leveling mechanisms like sharing obligations — worked against the concentration of authority and prestige in specific individuals or lineages.

More recent scholarship has substantially complicated this picture.