Ricarda Braun

Ricarda Braun is an Advisor for International Exchange at the German Archaeological Institute, Germany. She has also held academic roles at Free University of Berlin, Germany, Christian-Albrechts University of Kiel, Germany, and the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) teaching environmental modeling and GIS. Braun's dissertation is based on the assumption that today's perception of the landscape of the Neolithic site, Göbekli Tepe (southeast Turkey), arose through a semantic transfer of the singularity attributed to the place to the landscape, but is not based on research into the landscape. Various aspects that shape the current narrative about Göbekli Tepe, and especially its landscape, are seen as a reflection of recent ways of thinking and perception. In her work, she therefore carried out verifiable landscape analyzes and examined patterns of perception of landscape, space and archeology against the background of cultural-historical reflection. With the help of this approach, which combines archaeological and geographical working methods in an interdisciplinary manner, Göbekli Tepe was reinterpreted. The site is not seen, as has previously been assumed, as driving Neolithization forward, but rather as a backward-looking place where the Paleolithic way of life was retained. It is shown that the choice of location was not based on the most commonly cited reasons of desired control, efficiency or prominence. Instead, the architecture and location of Göbekli Tepe can be interpreted as an expression of the uncertainty that the transformation process from an appropriative to a productive way of life triggered in the early Neolithic.