Mendik

Mendik in context

A new name on the map

Mendik Tepe sits in the Payamlı area of the Eyyübiye district, southwest of Şanlıurfa and about 5 km from Çakmaktepe. It was spotted by Fatma Şahin, director of the Çakmaktepe dig, and full excavation began in 2024 under Prof. Douglas Baird of the University of Liverpool, working with the Şanlıurfa Archaeology Museum and the British Institute at Ankara. Baird has said he expects to dig here for about five more years.

Until very recently it was just a low mound among many. What is coming out of it is starting to matter.

Smaller stones, and a settlement

One clear difference from its famous neighbours is the stonework. Where Göbekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe are defined by their great T-shaped pillars, Mendik Tepe has smaller standing stones that are not T-shaped — an architectural signature the excavators find genuinely distinctive.

The second season exposed buildings of varying sizes: small structures of around three metres for storage or food preparation, mid-sized buildings of four to five metres that look like dwellings, and a few larger, carefully built structures that may have had a ceremonial role. That mix suggests Mendik was a place where everyday life and ritual sat side by side, rather than a purely ceremonial centre.

Possibly older than Göbekli Tepe

The claim drawing attention is chronological. The excavators interpret Mendik Tepe as belonging to the very beginning of the Neolithic — potentially earlier than Göbekli Tepe (dated to around 9600 BCE), with early comparisons drawn to nearby Çakmaktepe. If it holds, Mendik joins the sites pushing the region's story back before its most famous monument.

It is worth being careful here: these age claims rest on interpretation and comparison, not yet on a published set of radiocarbon dates, so 'older than Göbekli Tepe' should be read as a promising hypothesis the team is still testing. Because Mendik is being dug now, from the first trench, it is a rare chance to read an early Neolithic site from a blank page.