Many of these pillars are richly decorated with abstract anthropomorphic details, clothing, and reliefs of wild animals, providing archaeologists rare insights into prehistoric religion and the particular iconography of the period.
The 15 m-high, 8 ha (20-acre) tell also includes many smaller rectangular buildings, quarries, and stone-cut cisterns from the Neolithic, as well as some traces of activity from later periods.
The site was first used at the dawn of the Southwest Asian Neolithic period, which marked the appearance of the oldest permanent human settlements anywhere in the world. Prehistorians link this Neolithic Revolution to the advent of agriculture, but disagree on whether farming caused people to settle down or vice versa. Göbekli Tepe, a monumental complex built on the top of a rocky mountaintop, with no clear evidence of agricultural cultivation produced to date, has played a prominent role in this debate.
The site’s original excavator, German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt, described it as the “world’s first temple”: a sanctuary used by groups of nomadic hunter-gatherers from a wide area, with few or no permanent inhabitants. Other archaeologists have challenged this interpretation, arguing that the evidence for a lack of agriculture and a resident population was far from conclusive. Recent research has also led the current excavators of Göbekli Tepe to revise or abandon many of the conclusions underpinning Schmidt’s interpretation.
First noted in a survey in 1963, Schmidt recognised the site as prehistoric in 1994 and began excavations there the following year. After his death in 2014, work continued as a joint project of Istanbul University, Şanlıurfa Museum, and the German Archaeological Institute, under the overall direction of Turkish prehistorian Necmi Karul.
Göbekli Tepe was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2018, recognising its outstanding universal value as “one of the first manifestations of human-made monumental architecture”. As of 2021, less than 5% of the site had been excavated.
Göbekli Tepe was built and occupied during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN)—the earliest division of the Neolithic period in Southwest Asia—which is dated to between 9600 and 7000 BCE. Beginning at the end of the last Ice Age, the PPN marks “the beginnings of village life”, producing the earliest evidence for permanent human settlements in the world.
Archaeologists have long associated the appearance of these settlements with the Neolithic Revolution—the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture—but disagree on whether the adoption of farming caused people to settle down, or settling down caused people to adopt farming. Despite the name, the Neolithic Revolution in Southwest Asia was “drawn out and locally variable”.
Elements of village life appeared as early as 10,000 years before the Neolithic in places, and the transition to agriculture took thousands of years, with different paces and trajectories in different regions.
The Pre-Pottery Neolithic is divided into two subperiods: the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A, to which the early phases of Göbekli Tepe belong, is dated to between 9600 and 8800 BCE; the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, to which the late phases of Göbekli Tepe belong, is dated to between 8800 and 7000 BCE. It was preceded by the Epipalaeolithic and succeeded by the Late Neolithic.
Evidence indicates that the inhabitants were hunter-gatherers who supplemented their diet with early forms of domesticated cereal and lived in villages for at least part of the year. Tools such as grinding stones and mortar & pestle, found at Göbekli Tepe, were analyzed and suggest considerable cereal processing. Archaeozoological evidence hints at “large-scale hunting of gazelle between midsummer and autumn.
PPN villages consisted mainly of clusters of stone or mud brick houses, but sometimes also substantial monuments and large buildings. These include the tower and walls at Tell es-Sultan (Jericho), as well as large, roughly contemporaneous circular buildings at Göbekli Tepe, Nevalı Çori, Çayönü, Wadi Feynan 16, Jerf el-Ahmar, Tell ‘Abr 3, and Tepe Asiab.
Archaeologists typically associate these structures with communal activities which, together with the communal effort needed to build them, helped to maintain social interactions in PPN communities as they grew in size.
The T-shaped pillar tradition seen at Göbekli Tepe is unique to the Urfa region, but is found at the majority of PPN sites there. These include Nevalı Çori, Hamzan Tepe, Karahan Tepe, Harbetsuvan Tepesi, Sefer Tepe, and Taslı Tepe.
Other stone stelae—without the characteristic T shape—have been documented at contemporary sites further afield, including Çayönü, Qermez Dere, and Gusir Höyük.
Chronology
Radiocarbon dating shows that the earliest exposed structures at Göbekli Tepe were built between 9500 and 9000 BCE, towards the end of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) period.
The site was significantly expanded in the early 9th millennium BCE and remained in use until around 8000 BCE, or perhaps slightly later (the early Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, PPNB). There is evidence that smaller groups returned to live amongst the ruins after the Neolithic structures were abandoned.
Schmidt originally dated the site to the PPN based on the types of stone tools found there, considering a PPNA date “most probable”. Establishing its absolute chronology took longer due to methodological challenges. Though the first two radiocarbon dates were published in 1998, these and other samples from the fill of the structure dated to the late 10th and early 9th millennium – 500 to 1000 years later than expected for a PPNA site.
Schmidt’s team explained the discrepancy in light of their theory that this material was brought to the site from elsewhere when it was abandoned, and so was not representative of the actual use of the structures.
They instead turned to a novel method of dating organic material preserved in the plaster on the structure’s walls, which resulted in dates more consistent with a PPNA occupation, in the middle or even early 10th-millennium BCE.
Subsequent research led to a significant revision of Schmidt’s chronology, including the abandonment of the theory that the fill of the structures was brought from elsewhere, and a recognition that direct dates on plaster are affected by the old wood effect. Together with new radiocarbon dates, this has established the site’s absolute chronology as falling in the period 9500 to 8000 BCE – the late PPNA and PPNB.
Architecture
Göbekli Tepe follows a geometric pattern. The pattern is an equilateral triangle that connects enclosures A, B, and D. A 2020 study of “Geometry and Architectural Planning at Göbekli Tepe” suggests that enclosures A, B, and D are all one complex, and within this complex there is a “hierarchy” with enclosure D at the top, rejecting the idea that each enclosure was built and functioned individually as less likely.
