Karahan Tepe

Karahan Tepe in depth

A sister site, dug in our own time

Karahan Tepe lies about 35 kilometres east of Göbekli Tepe, in the Tektek mountains of Şanlıurfa province. It was recorded in a survey in 1997, but its importance only became clear when large-scale excavation began in 2019 under Necmi Karul of Istanbul University. Since 2021 it has been a flagship of the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism's Taş Tepeler research program.

That timing matters. Where Göbekli Tepe was dug across earlier decades, Karahan Tepe is being uncovered now, with modern recording, dating, and conservation — which is why its discoveries arrive with unusual precision and keep making headlines.

Carved into the living rock

Karahan's signature is rock-cut architecture. Rather than only building up from the ground, its makers carved rooms, pillars, and channels down into the bedrock itself. The most famous space is a sunken chamber — often referred to as Structure AB — in which a cluster of tall, phallus-like pillars rises from the bedrock floor, watched over by a human head that projects from the wall and turns toward the entrance stairs.

Carved channels connect this room to a neighbouring chamber, hinting at movement, water, or ritual sequences that are still being studied. The effect is sculptural and theatrical in a way that sets Karahan apart even from Göbekli Tepe.

The finds

Beyond the watching head and the pillared room, Karahan has produced some of the most striking Neolithic sculpture ever found: a life-sized human statue — the 'Karahan man' — shown with its ribs, seizing its own phallus, apparently rising from a bench; multiple carved human heads and faces; and animal imagery including the predators whose bones were also recovered on site, handled with conspicuous care.

Together these make Karahan the great Neolithic place of the human figure and the human face, and a key site for the region's imagery of the body, fertility, and death.

Chronology, and what's still uncertain

Karahan Tepe belongs to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic — the same broad horizon as Göbekli Tepe, on the order of 11,000 years old. Because intensive excavation is recent, its detailed internal phasing is still being worked out and published (Karul 2021 and continuing reports). Rather than asking whether it is older or younger than Göbekli Tepe, it is more accurate to picture a connected world of related communities across several centuries.

Much remains to be dug. Karahan is a live excavation, and its story is still being written season by season.