Göbekli Tepe — the Stone Age Sanctuaries: New results of ongoing excavations with a special focus on sculptures and high reliefs
Klaus Schmidt's primary excavation reports on Göbekli Tepe, a hilltop site in southeastern Turkey (Şanlıurfa Province) that Schmidt directed for the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) from 1995 until his death in 2014. The site contains at least 20 circular enclosures — four fully excavated — with T-shaped monolithic limestone pillars up to 5.5 m tall and weighing up to 10–20 tonnes, decorated with high-relief carvings of animals (foxes, snakes, boars, aurochs, vultures, scorpions) and abstract symbols. The enclosures are stratified and the lowest (Layer III) date by AMS radiocarbon to approximately 9600 BCE, making Göbekli Tepe the earliest known monumental architectural complex by several millennia — predating Stonehenge by approximately 6,000 years. No evidence of permanent residential structures, storage pits, hearths, or agricultural activity has been found within the site; large quantities of faunal remains (wild game) and grinding stones are interpreted as evidence for communal feasting by aggregating hunter-gatherer bands. Schmidt himself coined the phrase "First the temple, then the city" to describe the implication that symbolic/ritual motivation preceded, and may have driven, sedentism and agriculture.
"Göbekli Tepe is a paramount example for the expression of religious ideology by hunter-gatherers using stone monuments…The site is not a settlement." (Schmidt 2010, p. 241)
The T-shaped pillars are argued to be stylised anthropomorphic figures — belt and loincloth carvings on some pillars (Layer II) support this reading. The central paired pillars in each enclosure may represent specific individuals or supernatural agents.
Faunal assemblages (Peters and Schmidt 2004, Documenta Praehistorica) show wild cattle, gazelle, red deer, and equids — all hunted, not domesticated — implying the site was active before regional agriculture. Early domesticated wheat (Einkorn) appears genetically closest to wild populations on the slopes of the adjacent Karaçadağ mountains, raising the hypothesis that Göbekli feasting created demand that drove cultivation.
Schmidt interprets repeated deliberate backfilling of enclosures (Layer III buried under Layer II deposits) as intentional ritual closure — not abandonment — indicating sustained, organised ceremonial practice over centuries.
Schmidt is the discoverer and principal excavator; his interpretations are authoritative but not uncontested. Critics (e.g., Banning 2011, Current Anthropology "So Fair a House") argue that the absence of obvious domestic debris may reflect preservation bias or functional specialisation within a larger settled landscape rather than purely non-residential ritual use — some post-Schmidt excavations have identified plaster floors and possible domestic contexts in adjacent areas. The "temple before agriculture" narrative has been popularised beyond what the evidence strictly supports; the site shows ritual aggregation clearly, but whether it causally drove agriculture (rather than co-occurring with early cultivation) remains debated. Radiocarbon dates are robust and replicated.
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