The Field Log. Dated and sourced.

Karahan Tepe status unclear: forum reports limited access during roof works

A Tripadvisor forum post says only Göbekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe are open on the Taş Tepeler circuit, with Karahan Tepe visitors able to see only two structures while roof works continue. The Ministry’s muze.gov.tr page listed Karahantepe as ‘Kapalı’ (closed) when checked on 18 Oct 2026. Phone the Şanlıurfa Museum (+90 414 313 15 88) before driving out.

Summer opening hours end at Göbekli Tepe and the Şanlıurfa Museum

Extended hours of 08:30–19:00 (ticket office until 18:30) ran from 25 April to 1 October 2026. The Ministry pages now list 08:30–17:30, with the ticket office closing at 17:00. If you’re visiting in winter, plan to reach Göbekli Tepe by early afternoon.

Minister Ersoy: Taş Tepeler now counts 20 Neolithic sites, 8 not yet named

Speaking to journalists in Kahramanmaraş, Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy said that besides the 12 publicly announced Neolithic sites there are 8 more that have not been disclosed, for 20 in total. He added that older finds than Göbekli Tepe’s are ‘not scientifically out of the question’. The names and locations of the 8 sites have not been published.

Ersoy also said the ‘Geleceğe Miras’ (Heritage for the Future) programme covers 261 excavations in 67 provinces in 2026, and that the Taş Tepeler arc runs from Şanlıurfa towards Mardin and further south. The figure of 20 is the Minister’s verbal statement as reported by TGRT and Türkiye Gazetesi. We found no Ministry list or press release.

New foreign-visitor tariff published; it takes effect on 1 April 2027

Under board decisions of 27 Aug and 4 Sep 2026, the Göbeklitepe + Karahantepe (Taş Tepeler) ticket rises to €22, the Şanlıurfa Museum + Haleplibahçe Mosaic Museum ticket to €11, and the Göbeklitepe Visitor Centre/replica to €5. A new combined Göbeklitepe + Karahantepe + Visitor Centre ticket costs €23 and is valid for 72 hours. None of this applies yet: the current DÖSİMM list still shows €20 / €10 / €3.

Karahan Tepe: 11,000-year-old statue of a person seated on a leopard

A 70 cm composite sculpture shows a human sitting on a leopard’s back, a style the Minister called unprecedented. It was found on a bench running along the wall of a 3 m-wide building with a floor of flat slabs. It is the reverse of an earlier Karahan Tepe sculpture of a human carrying a leopard on their back.

Plan to turn Sayburç into an open-air museum and village museum

After the sixth season exposed about 70 structures over roughly 2,700 m², Minister Ersoy said the Ministry plans to turn the Neolithic settlement into an open-air museum and the traditional village houses into a ‘village museum’. This is a plan: no opening date, ticketing or access arrangements have been published, so Sayburç cannot be visited yet. In the same post Ersoy said Karahan Tepe holds the earliest known stairs, windows and true ‘corners’ in architecture.

Göbekli Tepe: first excavation on the mound’s northern side finds rectangular houses

For the first time, digging began in an area of about 80 × 70 m north of the shelter roofs, cleared after the olive trees were moved. Rectangular buildings from the site’s second phase (9th millennium BC) appeared just below the surface and are first read as houses. Conservation continues at the same time: the last fragments of a Structure C pillar face were refitted, Structure D’s walls and central-pillar footings were strengthened, and pillars are being secured with steel cables against tremors.

Necmi Karul told AA that about 1,500 m² was opened this season and that the walls are badly eroded but floors were reached quickly. Survey and geomagnetic data suggest large public buildings, rectangular buildings and huts in this northern zone. Work continued in the GT1 and GT2 areas under the two roofs at the same time. The Minister said renewed walkways that take the new excavation zones into account would open to visitors ‘soon’.

Yoğunburç: China’s first excavation in Türkiye begins (started 16 July 2026)

A team led by Prof. Gan Caichao of China’s National Cultural Heritage Administration archaeology centre, working with the Şanlıurfa Archaeology Museum, began the first-ever excavation at Yoğunburç (Karaköprü district) on 16 July. The 22-person team, 7 of them Chinese, has so far recovered beads, flint tools and a wild-boar tusk from a mound of about 22 decares. No buildings or dates have been published yet.

Göbekli Tepe walkways widened, made step-free and roughly doubled in length

The provincial culture and tourism directorate says the walkways have been widened and made accessible, and the route is now about twice as long, with new viewpoints over the Harran Plain. The single-lane access road is being converted to a dual carriageway. Expect a longer, more spread-out visit than the old loop under the main roof.

Karahan Tepe 2026 season: team plans to open a room sealed with stone slabs

In its 7th season Karahan Tepe’s excavation focused on one part of the mound. The team planned to lift the large flat capstones of a room inside a rectangular special-purpose building found in 2025, because its doorway opens onto only about 1 m of fill and can’t be entered. Karul said the area would be put under a protective roof at the end of the season (October), and that a research centre at the site was nearly finished.

Karahan Tepe has more than 250 T-shaped pillars so far. As of 19 Oct 2026 we found no published result from the sealed room. Watch for an end-of-season announcement.

Japanese team for Ayanlar Höyük and first Chinese team for Yoğunburç announced

Project coordinator Necmi Karul said Japanese colleagues, who have already built an excavation house, would soon start long-term work at Ayanlar Höyük. A Chinese team would begin the first-ever dig at Yoğunburç. He said the project now involves 36 academic institutions (15 Turkish, 21 foreign) and that about 200 archaeologists worked in 2025.

Karahan Tepe reported reopened after a rain-damage closure

Local agency Urfabir reported that Karahan Tepe reopened after about 10 days of closure caused by damage from heavy rain. The site is open-air and on bare limestone, so wet weather can close it at short notice.

Mendiktepe 2025 report: a very large PPNA site with buildings of different roles

The BIAA’s Heritage Türkiye report on the University of Liverpool dig, led by Douglas Baird, says Mendiktepe (15 km SW of Şanlıurfa) dates to the PPNA, about 10,000–9,000 cal BC, and covers at least 4 ha, which is unusually large for that period. Small buildings may have been kitchens or stores, mid-sized ones homes, and large, carefully built ones ritual spaces. The site may be earlier than most of what has been dug at Göbekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe.

Göbekli Tepe received about 781,000 visitors in 2025

Anadolu Agency reports ‘781 bin’ (781 thousand) visitors in 2025. Provincial director Aydın Aslan said the target for 2026 is more than 1 million across Göbekli Tepe and the other dig sites. Expect crowds at the shelter at midday in spring and autumn.

Archaeology Magazine names Karahan Tepe one of the top 10 discoveries of 2025

The AIA’s Archaeology Magazine put Karahan Tepe on its cover. It cited the first T-pillar with a sculpted human face and a nested-vessel group of tiny animal figures that may be the world’s oldest three-dimensional narrative.

New Göbekli Tepe welcome centre, car park and café built about 2.5 km below the site

Because the old car park and visitor area had become too small, a new welcome centre with parking and a café was built about 2.5 km downhill. Visitors then travel up through the natural landscape. Officials said it would open in 2026. Walkways were widened and made accessible.

Taş Tepeler 5th anniversary: 30 new finds shown, including a ‘stitched-mouth’ statue

At the Karahantepe welcome centre, Minister Ersoy presented 30 new finds. They include a Sayburç statue with a stitched-looking mouth, read as a dead person, and two carved human faces on a stone platform at Sefer Tepe, one in high and one in low relief, in a style unlike the other sites. Also shown were a black serpentine bead carved with two faces from Sefer Tepe and the Göbekli Tepe statue set into a wall as an offering. He said the project now runs at 12 sites and described the region as the ‘Neolithic capital of the world’.

The 12 sites named were Göbeklitepe, Karahantepe, Sayburç, Sefertepe, Harbetsuvan, Çakmaktepe, Yenimahalle, Söğüt Tarlası, Mendiktepe, Yoğunburç, Gürcütepe and Ayanlar. Sayburç excavator Eylem Özdoğan told Hürriyet the ‘stitches’ may be traces of skull defleshing linked to a death ritual, and dated the piece to about 8600–8300 BC.

Karahan Tepe: a 17 m building with tiered benches ‘like an odeon’

In the building where the 2.3 m statue was found in 2023, excavators reached bedrock across the whole roughly 17 m structure. They found human heads set into walls, seated human statues, and three wide tiers of benches facing a focal point, which Karul compared to an amphitheatre. Karul says Karahan Tepe’s settlement runs from about 9400 BC into the 8000s, in three phases: round, then rounded-rectangular, then truly cornered buildings.

Karul argues these buildings were mainly for bringing people together rather than ‘temples’ in a narrow sense. A separate 9 × 7 m rectangular communal building with walls up to about 3.5 m high and preserved plaster was reported next to it (Türkiye Today, 28 Nov 2025).

Geophysics at Göbekli Tepe shows many more buildings, including likely houses

After the olive trees covering most of the mound were moved, geomagnetic, ground-penetrating radar and lidar surveys found traces of more large monumental buildings and many rectangular structures thought to be houses, mainly east and south of the dug areas. Karul said eight monumental structures have been uncovered so far. The Austrian Archaeological Institute (Barbara Horejs) leads the geoarchaeology.

First T-shaped pillar with a carved human face, found at Karahan Tepe

T-pillars have long been read as stylised people because of their carved arms and hands, but none had a face until now. The face on this pillar has sharp features, deep eye sockets and a blunt nose, matching Karahan Tepe’s human statues. The Ministry said 2025 excavations were running at 10 separate sites.

Göbekli Tepe: human statue found built into a wall; Structure C restoration completed

A human statue, missing its feet, was found lying on its back inside a room wall between Structures B and D. It is interpreted as an offering and left in place because it forms part of the wall. It is the first statue of this kind from Göbekli Tepe; similar ones were known from Karahan Tepe. On the same day the restoration of Structure C, the site’s largest, with pillars up to about 6 m, was formally completed in the presence of Princess Akiko of Mikasa. About 1,000 olive trees had been moved off the mound.

Ayanlar Höyük excavation launched with Japan’s Princess Akiko

Minister Ersoy and Princess Akiko of Mikasa ceremonially started digging at Ayanlar Höyük, about 20 km northwest of Şanlıurfa. The work is run by the Chiba Institute of Technology and the Japanese Institute of Anatolian Archaeology. Ersoy called it the project’s 12th site and said surveys suggest it was occupied for the longest time of any. Japan was also handed an excavation house; the same team has worked at Harbetsuvan since 2022.

Sayburç: more than 50 Neolithic buildings, T-pillars inside ordinary houses

Excavation director Eylem Özdoğan (Istanbul University) reports more than 50 buildings. Most are houses, with hearths, platforms, benches and work areas, and 5 are special or communal buildings. Houses usually contain a single T-pillar, while special buildings have pillars along the walls plus one or two central ones. The site was used without a break for about 300 years and shows the shift from round to rectangular buildings.

Mendik Tepe, possibly older than Göbekli Tepe, under excavation by Liverpool team

Mendik Tepe, in Payamlı (Eyyübiye district), was found by Çakmaktepe excavator Fatma Şahin. It has been dug since 2024 by Douglas Baird (University of Liverpool) with the Şanlıurfa Archaeology Museum and BIAA. Baird said Mendik and Çakmaktepe ‘seem earlier than at least most of what’s been excavated at Göbeklitepe and Karahantepe’.

Karahan Tepe: tiny fox, vulture and boar figures in a nested vessel, possibly the oldest 3D story

A small stone vessel set inside a larger one held figurines of a fox, a vulture and a wild boar, each head set in a limestone ring. Excavator Necmi Karul calls it the earliest known three-dimensional narrative. The figurines are only a few centimetres tall and about 11,500 years old.

NPR: Göbekli Tepe conspiracy theories go mainstream via Joe Rogan

NPR reported that claims by Graham Hancock and others that archaeologists are hiding discoveries or digging slowly on purpose have spread through Joe Rogan’s podcast. DAI field director Lee Clare explained that slow excavation is deliberate: every layer must be documented before it is destroyed forever.

Antiquity: 307 ‘desert kite’ hunting traps around the Harran Plain

Fatma Şahin and Michele Massa mapped 307 desert kites, large drive-and-trap walls for gazelle hunting, around Şanlıurfa, 34 of them newly identified, and checked 14 on the ground in 2021–22. They argue some may date to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (about 9500–7000 BC), linking mass hunting to the monument builders. A corrigendum corrected the size of associated round structures to 20–30 m.

DAI’s Lee Clare: ‘charismatic leaders’ and a hunter-gatherer crisis at Göbekli Tepe

In Documenta Praehistorica 51, Göbekli Tepe field director Lee Clare argues that charismatic figures such as storytellers, hunters and ritual specialists may have emerged during an early-Holocene ‘hunter-gatherer crisis’, helping to keep traditional values alive as people settled down. It belongs to the shift from reading the site as a pure ‘temple’ to seeing it as a settlement.

Excavators restate that Göbekli Tepe was not an observatory and Pillar 43 is not a star map

Türkiye Today brought together rebuttals from Necmi Karul and DAI’s Jens Notroff to the Sweatman ‘observatory/comet’ and Hancock ‘star map’ readings of Pillar 43. Their points: the buildings were probably roofed and later filled in, wooden roof traces have been found, and the carvings are better read as myths and death ritual, such as vultures and skull cult, than as constellations.

Flint Dibble explains why Göbekli Tepe undercuts the ‘lost Ice Age civilisation’ idea

In a New Scientist interview after his 2024 Joe Rogan debate with Graham Hancock, archaeologist Flint Dibble said that the animal bones and seeds at Göbekli Tepe all come from wild species. In his view that shows hunter-gatherers built it, not survivors of an advanced lost civilisation. It’s a useful short read if visitors arrive with Ancient Apocalypse-style questions.

Karahan Tepe: running wild donkey carved into a hut’s stone floor

A carving of a running wild ass, about 20 cm long, was found on the slab floor of a hut next to grinding stones. It is the first moving wild animal found carved into a floor at the site.

Sweatman paper claims Pillar 43’s V-symbols are a 365-day lunisolar calendar

Edinburgh engineer Martin Sweatman argues in Time and Mind that the V-shaped marks on Pillar 43 (the ‘Vulture Stone’) count 12 lunar months plus 11 extra days. He also reads 11-pillar enclosures, a Karahan Tepe pool structure and V-necklaced statues as calendar or ‘time-god’ symbols, and ties all of it to the contested Younger Dryas comet-impact hypothesis. The excavators reject astronomical readings of the site.

This follows Sweatman & Tsikritsis (2017), which drew a published rebuttal from the Göbekli Tepe team (Notroff et al. 2017, ‘More than a vulture’). The 2024 paper got wide press attention. We found no formal peer-reviewed rebuttal of the 2024 paper itself. The rebuttals on record are the excavators’ statements: Karul in July and December 2024, and Notroff via Türkiye Today.

Excavation head rejects ‘aliens’, ‘time portal’ and ‘observatory’ claims

Responding to viral social-media claims, Necmi Karul said there is no evidence that Göbekli Tepe was an observatory, because the buildings were roofed and wooden roof traces were found in 2023. He said Graham Hancock ‘cheated by incorporating what we said into his fiction’. Karul reads the carvings as shared myths and memory.

Göbekli Tepe’s painted wild boar and Karahan Tepe’s 2.3 m seated statue

A life-size limestone boar (1.35 m long, 0.70 m high, Early PPNB, about 8700–8200 BC) found in Structure D still had red, black and white pigment, with a red tongue. It is the first clear proof that the site’s sculptures were painted. It stands on a bench between Pillars 43 and 78 that is carved with an H-symbol, a crescent, snakes and three faces. At Karahan Tepe a 2.3 m seated human statue with emphasised ribs and spine, suggesting a dead person, was found fixed into a bench, with a vulture sculpture set in the wall nearby.

6 February 2023 earthquakes: Göbekli Tepe reported undamaged

After the Kahramanmaraş earthquakes, the Ministry said no damage was found at Göbekli Tepe. Later drone and site checks reported no shifting of the T-pillars. Since 2026, pillars in Structure D are being secured with steel cables as a precaution.

Sayburç relief published in Antiquity as the earliest known narrative scene

Eylem Özdoğan published the 3.7 m bench relief found in 2021. It shows a high-relief man holding his phallus between two snarling leopards, and a second human facing a bull. The figures interact with each other, so she argues it is the earliest known depicted ‘story’, from the 9th millennium BC.

Çakmaktepe found on satellite images and excavated the same year

Çakmaktepe, about 20 km southwest of Şanlıurfa, was found in the first year of the ŞAYA survey and dug from 2021 by Çukurova University and the Şanlıurfa Museum, joined by Japan’s University of Tsukuba from 2022. El-Khiam points date it to the very start of the PPNA (about 10,000–9500 BC), earlier than most of Göbekli Tepe.

Taş Tepeler (Şanlıurfa Neolithic Research Project) launched

The Ministry presented the project during events from 21 to 27 September 2021, with a symposium on 23 September. Seven sites were under research: Göbeklitepe, Karahantepe, Gürcütepe, Sayburç, Çakmaktepe, Sefertepe and Yeni Mahalle. Five more were to follow in the 2021–2024 first phase: Ayanlar, Yoğunburç, Harbetsuvan, Kurttepesi and Taşlıtepe. The ‘Karahantepe and Neolithic Human’ exhibition opened at the Şanlıurfa Archaeology Museum the same day.

Sayburç: Neolithic pillars spotted re-used in village garden walls

In May 2021, during a visit by the Şanlıurfa Archaeology Museum and project members, T-pillars were noticed built into garden walls in Sayburç village, about 20 km southwest of Şanlıurfa. Excavation by Istanbul University and the museum began that year. Much of the site lies under the modern village, which dates from 1949.

Karahan Tepe excavations begin; Istanbul University’s Necmi Karul takes over Göbekli Tepe

Excavations at Karahan Tepe, discovered in 1997 in the Tek Tek Mountains National Park, began in 2019 under Istanbul University. Since 2019 the Göbekli Tepe excavation has also been led by Prof. Necmi Karul, with Lee Clare as the DAI’s field and research director since autumn 2014.

‘Year of Göbeklitepe’: President Erdoğan opens the site and its visitor centre

2019 was declared the ‘Year of Göbeklitepe’, and on 8 March 2019 President Erdoğan officially opened the site’s visitor and welcome centre. Visitor numbers rose quickly afterwards, according to the provincial tourism director in 2026. The 2019 complex has since been outgrown, which led to the new centre 2.5 km downhill (2025–26).

Göbekli Tepe inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List

At its 42nd session in Manama, the World Heritage Committee inscribed Göbekli Tepe (no. 1572) under criteria (i), (ii) and (iv): 126 ha with a 461 ha buffer zone. UNESCO describes monumental round-oval and rectangular megalithic structures built by hunter-gatherers between 9600 and 8200 BCE, with pillars up to 5.5 m tall.

Two permanent protective roofs completed over Göbekli Tepe’s main excavation

The two shelter roofs that visitors walk under today were finished in 2017, a year before the UNESCO listing. Excavation areas GT1 and GT2 still lie under them.

Harbetsuvan Tepesi: three rescue seasons after heavy looting

Found in a 2014 museum survey, Harbetsuvan was dug in 2017–2019 by the Şanlıurfa Museum under Bahattin Çelik to record what looters had left. Finds included T-pillars and a seated male statue like those from Göbekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe. It is read as a small PPNB cult centre, and since 2022 Japanese teams have worked there.

Şanlıurfa Archaeology Museum and Haleplibahçe Mosaic Museum open

President Erdoğan opened the new Şanlıurfa Archaeology Museum complex, which holds key Göbekli Tepe, Karahan Tepe and Nevalı Çori finds and the Urfa Man statue, together with the Haleplibahçe Mosaic Museum. It’s the best place to see the statues, since most original sculptures are not at the sites.

Klaus Schmidt, who identified Göbekli Tepe’s significance, dies aged 60

The DAI prehistorian who had led excavations since 1995 died suddenly on 20 July 2014. From 2014 the excavation permit passed to the Şanlıurfa Museum, working with the DAI, and Lee Clare became DAI field director that autumn.

Sefer Tepe registered as an archaeological site after a student’s tip

A Harran University student told lecturer A. Cihat Kürkçüoğlu about a similar site near his home. Pillar tops had been seen there in 2000–2003 surveys, and in 2013 it was registered as a 2nd-degree archaeological site. Excavation began in 2021, with Istanbul University and the Şanlıurfa Museum.

Karahan Tepe identified in the Tek Tek Mountains

Karahan Tepe was discovered in 1997 and published by Bahattin Çelik from 2000, with the tops of many T-pillars visible at the surface. Çelik’s surveys put the site at about 110 decares, larger than Göbekli Tepe’s 80. It wasn’t excavated until 2019.

Excavations at Göbekli Tepe begin (DAI with the Şanlıurfa Museum)

Harald Hauptmann and Klaus Schmidt of the DAI began digging with the Şanlıurfa Museum in 1995, and Schmidt directed the work until 2014. Over the next two decades the famous round enclosures A–D with their carved T-pillars were exposed, including Pillar 43, the ‘Vulture Stone’, in Enclosure D. Later layers have smaller rectangular buildings.

Klaus Schmidt recognises T-pillars at Göbekli Tepe

Revisiting Neolithic sites from the literature after the loss of Nevalı Çori, Schmidt reached the mound in October 1994. He found the slopes ‘glittering’ with flint artefacts, and a field-clearance pile held the T-shaped head of a pillar ‘of the Nevalı Çori type’. Stones earlier mistaken for Islamic gravestones turned out to be Neolithic pillars.

‘Urfa Man’ (Balıklıgöl statue) found in Şanlıurfa’s Yeni Mahalle

A life-size male statue was found by chance during building work in the Yeni Mahalle district near Balıklıgöl. Rescue excavations later found a Pre-Pottery Neolithic settlement with terrazzo floors about 100 m away. The statue, often cited as the oldest life-size human sculpture, is in the Şanlıurfa Archaeology Museum.

Nevalı Çori excavated, then flooded by the Atatürk Dam reservoir

Harald Hauptmann’s rescue excavations (1983–1991) uncovered houses and a unique cult building with T-pillars and monumental sculpture. It was the first site of this culture to be dug, and it inspired Schmidt’s search that led to Göbekli Tepe. The site now lies under the reservoir; its sculptures are in the Şanlıurfa Archaeology Museum.

Istanbul–Chicago survey records Göbekli Tepe, but misses its significance

The joint Istanbul and Chicago Universities prehistoric survey led by Halet Çambel and Robert Braidwood recorded Göbekli Tepe. Peter Benedict described reddish mounds littered with flint and identified the material as Neolithic. The team mistook the pillar tops for Islamic graves and didn’t follow up. The same survey found Söğüt Tarlası–Biris Mezarlığı.