Karahan Tepe: Göbekli Tepe's Neolithic Sister Site in Turkey

Karahan Tepe is a prehistoric site in south-eastern Turkey where people of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, between about 9400 and 8000 BC, carved chambers into the bedrock and raised T-shaped limestone pillars. Located about 35 km east of Göbekli Tepe, it has produced striking rock-cut rooms, carved human heads and statues since excavations began in 2019. The site shows that Göbekli Tepe was not an isolated wonder but part of a wider culture of monument builders in upper Mesopotamia.

Location and discovery

Karahan Tepe lies in the Tektek Mountains, a range of low limestone hills east of the city of Şanlıurfa. The landscape today is dry and stony, but in the early Holocene it supported open woodland, grassland and abundant game.

The site was recorded in 1997 by the archaeologist Bahattin Çelik of Harran University, during survey work in the region. Çelik noted the tops of many T-shaped pillars protruding from the ground, as well as stone tools, and published descriptions that compared the site with Göbekli Tepe and Nevalı Çori.

Systematic excavation began in 2019 under Necmi Karul of Istanbul University, working with the Şanlıurfa Museum. Since 2021 the work has formed part of the Taş Tepeler (“Stone Hills”) project of the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

The rock-cut structures

The most remarkable feature of Karahan Tepe is that several of its buildings were not built up from the ground but cut down into the limestone bedrock. The builders hollowed out spaces in the rock and left parts of it standing as pillars and benches.

Structure AB, often called the Pillar Shrine, is a chamber roughly 7 by 6 metres. About ten pillars, carved out of the living rock, rise from its floor. A human head with a long neck projects from one wall, facing the pillars, and snake-like forms have been reported on the walls. An opening like a porthole connects the room to the larger Structure AD next door.

Structure AD is a large, roughly oval building whose benches and walls held T-shaped pillars in the manner of Göbekli Tepe’s enclosures. Like the rock-cut rooms, it appears to have been deliberately filled in at the end of its use, which helped preserve it.

Carvings and statues

Survey reports by Çelik counted well over 200 pillar tops at the site, though many are still unexcavated. Some pillars carry carvings of animals, including a fox, snakes and other creatures similar to the bestiary of Göbekli Tepe.

Excavators have also found human sculptures. Besides the head in the Pillar Shrine, several stone heads and figures have come to light. In 2023 the excavators announced a human statue about 2.3 metres tall, with ribs, spine and shoulder blades carved in relief. Such finds suggest that human figures played a greater role at Karahan Tepe than at Göbekli Tepe, where the human form is mostly expressed through the abstract T-shaped pillars.

The site has also yielded stone vessels, beads and engraved plaques, as well as many flint tools. Some carvings, including depictions of male figures and phallus-shaped pillars, have been interpreted as relating to ideas of masculinity, fertility or ancestry, but their meaning is uncertain.

Who built it?

The builders of Karahan Tepe lived at a time when farming was only beginning. In the tenth and ninth millennia BC, communities in upper Mesopotamia still relied heavily on hunting gazelle, wild cattle, wild boar and wild sheep, and on gathering wild cereals, legumes, nuts and fruit. At the same time, some groups in the region were starting to cultivate cereals and live in larger, more permanent settlements.

Carving rooms out of bedrock and shaping multi-tonne pillars demanded planning, skill and many hands. Work on this scale implies that people could gather in substantial numbers, feed themselves while they worked and agree on shared goals. Many archaeologists think that communal building projects and the feasts that probably accompanied them helped bind communities together and may have encouraged more intensive food production.

Whether Karahan Tepe was also a place where people lived permanently is still being investigated. As at Göbekli Tepe, where houses and cisterns have been found in recent years, researchers increasingly see such sites as part of a lived-in landscape rather than as isolated ritual centres, but the evidence at Karahan Tepe is still being published.

What the T-shaped pillars mean

The T-shaped pillars of Karahan Tepe and Göbekli Tepe are generally interpreted as stylised human or human-like figures. The horizontal top represents the head and the vertical shaft the body, a reading supported at Göbekli Tepe by pillars carved with arms, hands and belts.

Who these figures represented is unknown. Suggestions include ancestors, spirits, mythical beings or leaders of the community. At Karahan Tepe the presence of realistic human heads and statues alongside the abstract pillars suggests that people moved easily between different ways of depicting the human form.

Dating and relationship with Göbekli Tepe

Karahan Tepe’s main period of use is usually placed between about 9400 and 8000 BC, in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A and early B. This overlaps with Göbekli Tepe, whose largest enclosures date from about 9600 to 8800 BC. Full radiocarbon sequences for Karahan Tepe are still being published, so the exact chronology may be refined.

The two sites share T-shaped pillars, benches, animal carvings and the practice of filling in buildings. They differ in emphasis: Karahan Tepe makes more use of bedrock and of realistic human imagery. Researchers see them as related expressions of a single regional culture, rather than as a “mother” site and its copy. The popular label “sister site” captures this connection.

The Taş Tepeler project

The Taş Tepeler project brings together around a dozen Neolithic sites in the Şanlıurfa region, including Göbekli Tepe, Karahan Tepe, Sayburç, Sefer Tepe, Hamzan Tepe and Harbetsuvan Tepesi. At Sayburç, a carved relief showing human figures with leopards and a bull was announced in 2021.

The project has transformed understanding of the region in the tenth and ninth millennia BC. Instead of a single monumental centre, the evidence now points to a network of communities with shared symbols and building traditions, at the same time as people in the Fertile Crescent were beginning to cultivate cereals, part of the wider Neolithic Revolution.

Myths and facts

Karahan Tepe is sometimes presented as being much older than Göbekli Tepe, or as evidence of a lost advanced civilisation. Neither claim is supported. The dates so far show broad overlap with Göbekli Tepe, and the finds belong to a Stone Age society that used flint tools and had no metal, pottery or writing.

Timeline

• c. 9400 BC: Main use of Karahan Tepe begins (dates still being refined).
• c. 8000 BC: The site falls out of use; buildings are filled in.
• 1997: Bahattin Çelik records the site during archaeological survey.
• 2019: Excavations begin under Necmi Karul of Istanbul University.
• 2021: The Taş Tepeler project is launched to coordinate research across the region.
• 2023: Excavators announce a large human statue with carved ribs and spine.

Why it matters

Karahan Tepe shows that monumental building and complex symbolism were widespread among the early Neolithic communities of south-eastern Turkey. Together with Göbekli Tepe, it challenges the idea that such achievements required farming, cities or states, and it continues to produce discoveries that reshape the picture of the world’s first monument builders.