Two Sites in One Day - Gobeckli Tepe

Wow!  Two amazing sites today, so I am splitting the blog into two – one for Gobeckli Tepe, and the second for Karahan Tepe, a new site for us!

 

But first, the day.  Up about 6, as the site opens at 8:30 am and I wanted to be there then … most of you “know how I am …”.  It is possible (although I’m definitely knocking wood here, that I may be recovering from one of the worst cases of jetlag I’ve ever experienced, and I did manage to mostly sleep through the night!). Fabulous soak in my bathtub first, and then down for breakfast at 7, which was OK, but not super-terrific.  (I think I’m getting picky in my old age!)  Out to the car by 7:35 am, and just around the corner to an entire spread of ATM’s, as it was time for $$.  Unlike Bogazkale, we were able to get 8,000 TL, which equates to something like $232.80 at one time!  Yay!  Then, on to the highway and heading to Gobeckli Tepe!

 

R's breakfast

Two views from our room

This was our third visit there, and boy, have things changed!  On our first trip there, in 2012, there was no signage whatsoever, and the incredible site wasn’t even fenced in!  Driving to the site was driving in open country over dirt roads.  There was a 24-hour watchman, and you could park right next to the excavations.  The watchman would show you around, let you take pictures and accept a tip at the end.  And that was it!  Just us, the guard and Gobeckli Tepe!  Unreal!

 

The second time we visited, in 2014, they were just in the process of fencing in the site – which made us happy, as we had been concerned about vandalism.  That time, though, rather than just being able to arrive at any hour of the night or day, you had to wait until a real metal gate opened up, around 7:30 am, as I recall.  Then, you paid a few Turkish Lira, and you were in.  Additionally, though, at that time, someone had started constructing some sort of cover over the place to protect it from the weather (a good idea, in itself), and it was AWFUL!  There were huge posts in the way of everything, and you just couldn’t see what you wanted to see!  We were aghast and appalled!  

 

This time (2024), however, the entire WORLD it seems has discovered Gobeckli Tepe!  First of all, as you approach Sanliurfa the city, the city symbol is an image of Gobeckli Tepe and the T-shaped pillars!  They’re everywhere and on everything!  By now, Sanliurfa has grown some much that the site is almost in the city.  And when we got to the parking lot, there must have been at least four HUGE tour buses already there!  And we arrived at 8:25 am!!  However, there weren’t too many individual cars in the parking lot, and we entered the Visitor Center (brand new also since our time…).  I had purchased our tickets last night on-line, and managed to discover that if we had our tickets already, we just had to head out to the shuttle buses (a fleet of small mini-vans) that drove you up the hill to the site.

 

Countryside around the site

New protective covering and walkway

T-shaped pillars

Note snake carvings up and down pillar

Bull carving

Bull, fox and vulture

As it seems that Turks don’t really queue – they sort of mill around in small groups – we were able to get on a bus really quickly, and were taken up the hill and dropped off.  A walk up the re-constructed pathway and under the cover of the new, incredibly well-done roof that replaced the initial covering we had seen 10 years ago – thankfully!  This was a metal roof that was suspended over the excavations, and enabled people to get close – but not too close – to the on-going work.  (Again, as it’s getting on towards winter, no active excavation is being done now, but in the summer, it is a very active site!)

Carvings above tunnel

Everything done without metal, I might add!

 

Lots of people; very large site!

Fox carving

Another fox

So – Gobeckli Tepe, the story.  Initially, the site was surveyed by an archaeologist from the University of Chicago (one of R’s alma mater’s) who determined that the shards were medieval and not worth investigating … flash forward about 20 years, and a German archaeologist took another look, and basically said:  Dig HERE!  And, voila, discovered what basically has revolutionized archaeology in this century!

 

Vulture heads

Covering over an upcoming excavation 

T-pillars with bench

Gobeckli Tepe is pre-pottery neolithic – basically, approximately 12,000 years old – older than the pyramids and Stonehenge.  The people who built it were hunter-gatherers, and this was an age before agriculture had even been thought of.  This area of the world – the northern end of the Fertile Crescent, was then heavily wooded, with many animals, fish and birds inhabiting its woods and streams.  There was no need for the people to continually move, as in most hunter-gatherer populations – they had everything they needed right here.  Instead, not having the need to follow herds or migrations to maintain a constant food supply, they collectively decided to build.  This is undoing what we all were taught: That settlements came when early people turned to agriculture (instead of hunter-gathering).  Here we seem to have hunter-gatherers who were not nomads but people who settled into more or less fixed communities.

 

The initial German archaeologist here insisted that people just “came together” and built these huge circles and then left, and that it was entirely religious.  However, since his death in 2014, his successor has resurveyed the area, and is now convinced that there is strong evidence of living quarters and food preparation areas that belie that thought, and that everyday people lived at Gobeckli Tepe over a span of at least 1,000 years.

 

One of the most interesting things about Gobeckli Tepe, though, is that once the people here had finished with the site, they basically filled it in and moved on.  Why they filled it in – and why they moved on, is one of the major archaeological mysteries of our day!  However, the evidence seems clear that the site wasn’t just abandoned – that it was deliberately filled in, first with a lower level of “virgin” soil that had to be imported from some distance away, and then some of the T-pillars were knocked over and damaged, and fill from the site laid on top of it.  

 

There are currently several circles that have been or are being excavated, but ground penetrating LIDAR has shown that there are at least 12 more right in the immediate area!  It is going to take many, many years for Gobecki Tepe to be fully excavated – if it ever is!

 

Robert and I were just so happy to see that so much attention is being paid to the site, and that there are so many people coming to see it!  We still have our memories of seeing the site by ourselves, but we both feel that these sites really do belong to the world, and the more interest people have in them, the better for everyone!

 

So, that’s today’s Gobeckli Tepe lecture!  I will post this one first, and then start on the even longer explanation of 1) getting to Karahan Tepe, and 2) what that relatively “new” site is all about!  (And as a hint … on those roads, trust me, ain’t gonna find no buses yet, that’s for sure!

 

More later,

m

xxx