The site of Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey keeps fascinating archaeologists as it is being exposed. The excavation since 1995 has been accompanied by a lively discussion about the meaning and implications of its remarkable early Neolithic megalithic architecture, unprecedented in its monumentality, complexity and symbolic content. The building history and the chronological relations between the different structures (enclosures), however, remain in many ways a challenge and open to further analysis. The study presented here is an attempt to contribute in this direction by applying a preliminary architectural formal analysis in order to reconstruct aspects of the architectural design processes involved in the construction of the monumental enclosures. This is done under the premise that such investigation would shed light on the chaîne opératoire of the enclosures' construction and their history, thus enabling a fresh look as well as an evaluation of past suggestions regarding these structures and the people who built them. Indeed, the results of the analysis brought to light an underlying geometric pattern which offers a new understanding of the assemblage of architectural remains indicating that three of the stone-built large enclosures were planned and initially built as a single project.

In the past 25 years since the reconstruction of Shelter 131 of Eynan was suggested by Francois Valla, its image has become almost iconic—a highly cited symbol of early sedentism constituting a significant part of our knowledge on early stone constructions and the people behind them. A new look at the architectural remains and the stratigraphy resulted in an alternative reconstruction, essentially different than the one we have come to know. We used spatial (architectural-geometrical) analysis in order to study the relationships between the different architectural elements and to test our hypothesis that the series of postholes may have not pertained to the upper floor 131 of Layer IV as suggested by Perrot and Valla, but rather to the successive occupational and architectural episode. The association of the postholes with Wall 51 of Layer III sheds new light on the architectural remains revealing their geometric design, an important characteristic of Early Natufian Architecture, the meaning and implications of which we shortly discuss.

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The small, Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B site (tenth millennium cal BP) of Nahal Yarmuth 38 in central Israel consists of a unique series of rectilinear structures with plastered floors, beneath which multiple interments were found. The nature of the finds combined with existing knowledge of burial customs of this period make Nahal Yarmuth 38 an ideal site for investigating designated burial sites in the Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B.