Mendik Tepe, believed to predate Gobeklitepe, being unearthed in southeastern Türkiye
SANLIURFA, 29 August (BelTA — Anadolu) — As part of a project by
Türkiye’s Culture and Tourism Ministry, excavations at Mendik Tepe,
believed to be older than Gobeklitepe and Karahantepe, are bringing to
light remains from the Neolithic era.
Located in the rural
Payamli neighborhood of the Eyyubiye district of southeastern Sanliurfa
province, Mendik Tepe was discovered by Cakmak Tepe excavation director
Fatma Sahin.
The excavations at the site, launched in 2024 under
the leadership of Douglas Baird, a professor at the University of
Liverpool’s Department of Archaeology, are underway in cooperation with
the Sanliurfa Archaeology Museum and with the support of the British
Institute of Archaeology, as part of the Turkish Culture and Tourism
Ministry’s «Tas Tepeler (Stone Hills) Project.”
Functions of excavated buildings being investigated
Speaking
to Anadolu, Baird said that structures of various sizes had been
uncovered at the site and that they were working to understand their
functions.
“Last year, we put some trenches in, one behind me,
for example, and we started to discover buildings immediately. And we
noticed these buildings were of different sizes. There were some quite
small ones, about 3 meters (9.8 feet) diameter, some slightly bigger
ones, four or five, and then some much bigger ones,” he said.
“So, our plan for this year was to try and understand these different buildings and why they were of different sizes,” he added.
Baird pointed out that they believe Mendik Tepe dates back to the very beginning of the Neolithic era.
“Mendik
Tepe seems to be at the very beginning of the Neolithic, when people
are making the transition to sedentary life, and perhaps not long after
the beginnings of plant cultivation. So, we’re interested in those even
bigger questions of how and why people gave up mobile foraging and
settled down and started to cultivate plants,” said Baird.
He
said that Cakmak Tepe, also being excavated by Sahin, is probably from
the same period, adding: “These two sites together seem earlier than at
least most of what’s been excavated at Gobeklitepe and Karahantepe
sites, so it’s earlier than those bigger sites.”
“We expect
exciting discoveries. I think one of the interesting things we’re
starting to see already is that this site isn’t exactly the same as the
sort of things we get at Gobekli or Karahan,” he said.
“For
example, here we see Gobekli and Karahan is famous for the pillars in
the buildings with their carvings of animals and humans, namely,
animals. Those pillars are T-shaped pillars.
«Here, we seem to
have pillars, but they’re smaller and they’re not T-shaped. So, already
there’s interesting features of the architecture there that are a bit
different,” he noted.
The famed 12,000-year-old remains of
Gobeklitepe ancient site were discovered in 1963 by researchers from
Istanbul and Chicago universities, and it has been on the UNESCO World
Heritage List since 2018.
