Chapter Three (“Religions Deemed Monotheistic”) discussed the importance of “deeming” with regard to scholarly conceptualizations of “monotheism” and “polytheism.” In order to examine the data concerning buildings deemed religious, it is vital to acknowledge the difficult work of interpreting archaeological evidence. Although the language of this chapter is framed using Taves’ Building Block Approach, a search for “buildings deemed religious” in the literature is fruitless. As suggested in Taves’ argument for her methodology, the terminology used by various scholars across time is neither consistent nor clear. Though a reader might apprehend differences among the referents for terms like “shrine,” “temple,” “temple complex,” “sanctuary,” “house of god,” or “sacred precinct,” it is difficult to avoid concluding, from the literature, that each definition of these concepts appears to be specific to the scholar using the word. 

The issue with terminology seems, in part, to be the result of differences among builders: buildings deemed religious from different cultures may look different. These differences can be useful (as well as misleading) as evidence for scholarly interpretation of archaeological finds. A brilliant parody of archaeology (and the difficulty of interpretation) is illustrated by David Macaulay in his 1979 book Motel of the Mysteries.¹ The hit-and-miss reading of a 1980’s motel room as a cultic center, by protagonists Howard Carson and Harriet Burton, highlights the challenge of understanding how artifacts would have been regarded by the societies in which they functioned. The pattern of Carson and Burton deeming things religious, in Macaulay’s book, reflects some of the history of archaeology in the 19^thand 20^thcenturies: what cannot be readily identified may be deemed “cultic.” This is important to understanding processes of deeming buildings religious that contribute to the determination of evidence available for scholarship.

The chronological distance between artifact and interpreter appears to play a role in the information available for deeming buildings religious or otherwise. Macaulay’s work, though a parody, suggests that a certain amount of time (more than 2000 years in the case of Motels of the Mysteries) would have to pass for hilariously absurd mis-interpretations of modern artifacts. A clear example of the effect of time can be found in the difficulty scholars have in understanding archaeological finds at Göbekli Tepe in southern Turkey. In “Göbekli Tepe: A Neolithic Site in Southeastern Anatolia” Klaus Schmidt notes that the 8,000 – 10,000-year-old monumental pillars and sculpted animal shapes inspire more questions than answers about the site.² As with other monumental products of ancient and pre-historic societies, Göbekli Tepe challenges assumptions about the capabilities, motivations, and interests of people in the past. Schmidt writes, “Though only partially excavated, it has become increasingly obvious that the findings from Göbekli Tepe may contribute significantly to our understanding of the transition from a subsistence pattern based exclusively on hunting and foraging at the end of the Pleistocene to the appearance of agriculture and animal husbandry in the course of the early Holocene.”³ Schmidt’s comments are pertinent to this chapter, in particular, because of the implications of a monumental (and apparently religious) structure discovered outside of a more obviously settled context. Despite various similarly enigmatic megalithic (frequently deemed religious) structures elsewhere in the world, the historical preponderance of “built” things deemed religious found in association with “built” settlements makes a site like Göbekli Tepe unusual rather than typical.