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Göbekli Tepe
Date: 6 September 2011
Photo: Teomancimit
Permission: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licence.
Halet Çambel, co-discoverer (together with Peter Benedict) of Gӧbekli Tepe was born in Berlin in 1916. Her mother was Remziye Hanım, the daughter of ambassador İbrahim Hakkı Paşa, and her father was Hasan Cemil Bey, who was an attache in Berlin at the time of their daughter's birth. The Çambel family returned to Turkey in 1924, after living in Switzerland and Austria following the First World War. Having graduated from Arnavutköy American College for Girls in İstanbul in 1935, Halet started her archaeology education at Sorbonne University in Paris with a scholarship she received from the French Government. In 1938, Çambel began her doctoral studies at the Sorbonne. She participated in the large regional prehistoric surveys in which Göbekli Tepe was first noted in 1963. However its monumental significance was not understood until its rediscovery in 1994. Halet Çambel was also an Olympic fencer and led major excavation and heritage work in Turkey.
Peter Benedict was affiliated with the University of Chicago anthropology department as a doctoral student. He conducted ethnographic work in Turkey alongside researchers like Michael Meeker and June Starr.
Photo: archivecenter.bogazici.edu, Bogazici Archive and Documentation Centre
Text: Adapted from arsivmerkezi.bogazici.edu.tr/en/collections/halet-cambel.php and various other sources including Wikipedia.
The site was initially noted during a joint survey in 1963 by the University of Chicago and Istanbul University. Anthropologists Peter Benedict and Halet Çambel recorded the presence of flint tools and limestone slabs but misidentified the mound as a medieval cemetery and largely dismissed its importance.
In 1994, German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt recognised the site's true prehistoric significance while conducting his own survey of the region. He identified the surface stone fragments as Neolithic T-shaped pillars similar to those he had seen at Nevalı Çori.
Official excavations began in 1995 under Schmidt's direction in collaboration with the Şanlıurfa Museum and the German Archaeological Institute (DAI).
Following Schmidt's death in 2014, the project continued under the leadership of Lee Clare and eventually Turkish prehistorian Necmi Karul.
Text above: Various sources
Photo: AA Photo
Reference: Schmidt (2000)
Location of Gӧbekli Tepe
Photo: Bjoertvedt
Permission: GFDL
Göbekli Tepe, the excavated areas, circa 1999.
Photo: Schmidt (2000)
Göbekli Tepe was built by hunter-gatherers from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period (around 9600-8200 BCE), a significant discovery showing that these early people, not just settled agricultural communities, were capable of complex monumental architecture for social and ritual purposes. Archaeological evidence suggests nomadic groups gathered to construct the large, T-shaped pillars and enclosures using stone tools, challenging the idea that complex societies only arose after farming.
The fact that there is evidence like wild animal bones, showing none of the signatures of domesticated aniimals, and the lack of domesticated plants confirms they lived off the land and did not have any of the characteristics of people who had adopted agriculture.
To build Göbekli Tepe required cooperation, planning, and a social structure beyond simple family units, indicating sophisticated social organisation according to the UNESCO World Heritage Centre and the Smithsonian Magazine.
The builders came from the surrounding region of Upper Mesopotamia, carving the massive pillars from the local limestone. The structures were probably used for communal gatherings, rituals, and possibly funerary rites, with carvings depicting wild animals reflecting their beliefs, according to Britannica and Quora users.
In essence, these prehistoric people demonstrated advanced technical skills and complex spiritual lives long before the dawn of agriculture, challenging conventional narratives about the origins of civilization, according to the BBC.
Text above: Various sources.
Aerial view of Göbekli Tepe in 2013
Photo: © DAI, Göbekli Tepe Project
Source: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1572/
Cereal 'Domestication' (Distribution of wild wheats) and Markers of the ritual community of Göbekli Tepe.
Photo: © GIS and Layout: Th. Götzelt, DAI
Source: Archaeonomy, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAeTGTgLg8g
Enclosure A in 1997 (Photo: M. Morsch, copyright DAI).
The ground plan of Enclosure A appears more rectangular than round. First radiocarbon data suggest that it may be a little younger than other Enclosures, C and D, and maybe the rectangular shape already could indicate the transition to the later, rectangular, Layer II building type. The existence of different outer walls may as well hint at a longer building history and possible alteration over toime. However, Enclosure A is still not entirely excavated, so any description must remain preliminary as of yet
Photo: © M. Morsch, copyright DAI
Source and text: Tepe Telegrams, www.dainst.blog/the-tepe-telegrams/2017/01/05/enclosure-a-a-short-overview/
Pillar 1 in Enclosure A shows a net-like pattern formed of snakes and a ram.
Photo: C. Gerber © DAI
Proximal Source and text: https://tepetelegrams.wordpress.com/2016/10/06/current-state-of-research-at-gobekli-tepe-interviewed-by-arkeofili-com/
Pillar 2, Enclosure A, Göbekli Tepe. Showing reliefs of aurochs, fox, and crane.
The crane has an extraordinary, un-bird like leg anatomy.
This unique, stylised carving likely represents a ritual, possibly an animal masquerade or 'crane dance' that blended human and animal, or perhaps represented a mythological being.
During the first field season at Göbekli Tepe in 1995 one of the landowners had started to clear his field in the southeastern depression of stones that hindered ploughing. He dug out the heads of two large T-shaped pillars and had already started to smash one pillar with a sledgehammer. Fortunately he could be persuaded to stop, and in the 1996 work started in this area. What came to light here was the first of the monumental buildings of Göbekli Tepe’s older layer (Layer III), later called Enclosure A.
Photo: O. Dietrich © DAI
Proximal Source and text: https://tepetelegrams.wordpress.com/2016/10/06/current-state-of-research-at-gobekli-tepe-interviewed-by-arkeofili-com/
References
- Schmidt K, 2000: Göbekli Tepe, Southeastern Turkey. A Preliminary Report on the 1995-1999 Excavations, Paléorient, Année 2000 26-1 pp. 45-54
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