Skull carving on top of the Engineer structure

thats what i assumed. it reminded me of the structures nuclear engineers on this planet wanted to construct around our radioactive waste dump sites, so that thousands of years from now, people that know nothing of our modern society wont stumble into something hazardous they werent supposed to find.

Look at the rest of it. Then look at the Alien from Alien... back when the top of the head was slightly transparent. This says EXACTLY what the problem is, to their fellow Space Jockeys.

[img]http://www.fanboy.com/archive-images/giant-alien-kubrick.jpg[/img]

Because multi-contextual base of this movie, i think its link and tribute to unused idea of harkonnen palace from jodorowsky's version of Dune that was made by h. r. giger. In fact, many stuff around that idea of "lets make Dune movie" is linked to Alien universum - Mobius sketches of Space jockeys, worms etc. And because of just one shoot in whole movie, it could be seen as tribute to their first confrontance. sorry for my language - not born english speaker, just alien.

and afterwords, were thinking about very very ancient civilization. so i thing this isnt warning, its just statement. like "we are here". think about idea, that space jockeys are kind of rebels. just geneticaly made puppies to spread dna. what now? maybe it was revolution that we saw in those memoholographs.

http://cache.jezebel.com/assets/images/8/2007/12/medium_dune_palais_harkonnen_version_alejandro.jpg

wow, that dune/giger picture is a striking resemblance

@Yautja; They are the Harkonnen domes that Giger designed for the movie DUNE. Linked a couple convos for you. :) Click-->[url=http://www.prometheus-movie.com/community/forums/topic/2801]Sure he's not making a Dune movie ...[/url] Click-->[url=http://www.prometheus-movie.com/community/forums/topic/3001]Harkonnen Temple, a Symbol of Intemperance & Brutality[/url]

a) Note that the skull is elongated, xenomorph-style. It's clearly seen from the side as they approach in the vehicles. b) Another possible interpretation is that the skull marks a tomb.

@skoobie; I think it means danger, like an alien version of the skull and crossbones. Traditional warning for many cultures, it is a weapons of mass destruction facility after all.

The backstory in Alien is that the SJ had a temple where they sacrificed animals to alien hosts on a plinth. This seems to be what the dome represents if we follow the same concept RS had for Alien. One issue is that it describes the SJ as temple builders, which is not exactly how they're portrayed in Prometheus.

Saw a concept drawing on this site today that showed the skull as just being a regular head like the one inside. So I'm guessing erosion is to blame.

Looks like the head of the one from the end of alien 4 that as human dna.

A couple of insightful people here have said that it's like a tamper seal on a jar. Once disturbed it changed: Danger - do not enter.