Carved Ox Skull or Bucranium, Letoon, Turkey (photo)

Bucranium, plural Bucrania (Latin, from Greek βουκράνιον, referring to the skull of an ox) The name is generally considered to be a reference to the practice of garlanding sacrificial oxen, the heads of which were displayed on the walls of the temples, a practice with a long history reaching back to the sophisticated Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in eastern Anatolia, where cattle skulls were overlaid with white plaster. The Letoon (Λητῶον), sometimes Latinized as Letoum, was a sanctuary dedicated to the three national deities of Lycia - Leto and her twin children Apollo and Artemis. It was one of the most important religious centres in the region. The site is located south of the village Kumluova in the Fethiye district of Antalya Province, Turkey. Archaeological finds date back to the late 6th century BC. During the Archaic and Classical periods (7th-5th century BC) the site was sacred to to the cult of an earlier mother goddess (Eni Mahanahi in Lycia), which was later superseded by the worship of Leto.