Bucranium

Bucranium (plural bucrania; Latin, from Greek βουκράνιον, referring to the skull of an ox) was a common form of carved decoration in Classical architecture used to fill the metopes between the triglyphs of the frieze of Doric temples. A bas-relief or painted decor consisting of a series of bucrania draped or decorated with garlands of fruit or flowers was a Roman motif drawn from marble altars, which have survived in some number; the motif was also later used on Renaissance, Baroque and Neoclassical buildings. 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.