Human History from Scratch
Arkeopolitics is an transdisciplinary approach that treats human history not merely as a narrative of the past, but as a means of understanding the present. In this framework, archaeological evidence is reinterpreted through the analytical lenses of political science and law, opening new ways to think about how societies have been organized over time.
Rethinking 50 Millennia of Human History
Arkeopolitics is an transdisciplinary approach that goes beyond recounting the past. It seeks to reinterpret archaeological evidence of both historical and contemporary relevance through the analytical frameworks of modern political science and law.
This approach aims to reopen fundamental questions about the long-term political organization of human societies, the dynamics of power, and the processes through which norms are produced. It operates in a dual direction: on the one hand, it develops an archaeology of politics, and on the other, it makes visible the politics of archaeology itself.
In doing so, it invites us to reconsider concepts such as the state, law, and social order not solely through modern categories, but through the plurality of experiences embedded in humanity’s deep past.
Articles
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Is Turkey’s Megalithic Archaeological Site Göbeklitepe A Temple?
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While shooting a documentary at Göbeklitepe, I encountered strikingly different historical interpretations of the site. An international group of New Age seekers seemed to be searching for extraterrestrial connections there, but when I pointed out that the enclosures had originally been roofed, they recast the T-shaped pillars as traces of humanity’s mystical past. Representatives of an NGO…
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The Mirror of Neolithic Art: How Çatalhöyük Confronts the Hubris of the Modernist Perspective
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Illustrated by Asya Denk The theme for an exhibition that opened on June 4, 2026, at Ankara University’s Faculty of Political Science (Mülkiye), World’s First City Plan/Map, as part of my Arkeopolitics initiative, was met with reservations by a group of students from the Middle East Technical University’s faculty of architecture. They questioned how the map—exhibited in the Çatalhöyük section…
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Arkeopolitics: Unearthing Politics
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Standing in the dust of Çatalhöyük—a 9,000-year-old Neolithic site known to archaeology since the 1960s, yet virtually non-existent in discussions about political science and law—a question haunted me: “How come no one told us about it?” My training at Ankara University’s Faculty of Political Science (Mülkiye) was defined by a dominant doctrinal paradigm: that wherever households…
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