Main types of public constructions for religious worship at the Northern Mesopotamia sites dating to the aceramic Neolithic

The published materials from excavations intensely conducted in Northern Syria and Southeastern Turkey in recent 10-15 years provide an opportunity to study the area, typology, emergence and evolution of architecture for religious worship in Northern Mesopotamia during the Early Neolithic. Depending on specific features of the sources, context analysis seems to be important for identifying material remains of public constructions for religious worship. In identifying main types of public constructions for religious worship at the Northern Mesopotamia sites from the Aceramic Neolithic period, morphological, technical design, figurative and compositional as well as functional features of such constructions are particularly emphasized. The types identified are not cut in stone, sometimes their characteristics vary strongly; some constructions could be characterized by a combination of several types. It is highly interesting that not only accompanying objects, elements of interior decoration but also, in some cases, architectural constructions for religious worship themselves exhibit sustained images of key symbolic elements related to the world view of the occupants of Early Neolithic sites (archaic dwellings, bucrania and, possibly, others). Functionally, various types of public constructions for religious worship had certain specialization correlated with their morphological and technical design features starting from the developed PPNA.