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Description: A key challenge for neurobiological models of social cognition is to elucidate the function of brain regions and whether they are specialised for that domain, or more general in nature. In recent years, the involvement of the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) has become clearer, but discussion surrounding the nature of its function, and the relationship with conceptual-level knowledge, epitomises this debate. In the present study we used ATL-optimised fMRI to map the contribution of different ATL structures to both social cognition and semantic cognition. In doing so, we addressed hypotheses that stipulate the ATL comprises a domain-specific social function on one hand, versus a domain-general semantic function on the other. Using a set of conjunction analyses, we revealed activation of a ventrolateral region of the ATL that was common to a variety of tasks that have previously been used to probe neural correlates of theory of mind. The same region was activated by a nonverbal semantic association task. These findings support recent claims that semantic cognition is key requisite for successful social interactions and that engagement of the ventrolateral ATL in theory of mind reflects retrieval of conceptual-level representations.