Göbekli Tepe: The ‘’unexcavated mound’’

Göbekli Tepe, situated in Southeast Anatolia’s Germuş mountain range, lies some 15km northeast of the modern town of Şanliurfa and 2.5km east of the Örencik village. The site is comprised of a star-shaped, natural limestone plateau, upon which an artificial mound or ‘tell’ has accumulated. The site lies in Upper Mesopotamia, between the upper and middle reaches of the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, in the foothills of the Taurus Mountains, in the region generally known as ‘the Fertile Crescent’.
Göbekli Tepe is a regional landmark. The tell itself is 15m high, corresponding to an elevation of 785 metres above sea level, making it the highest point of the Germuş mountain range. As such, it stands above the Harran Plain, which extends to the south towards Syria, and overlooks the plains extending to the east and the north around the site. Looking to the northeast, the mountain area of Karacadağ is frequently visible on the horizon, and to the north the Taurus Mountains can often be discerned in the distance. To the west of the site, the landscape is dominated by near-by mountain ridges.
Göbekli Tepe translates into English as ‘potbelly hill’, a name which describes its physical appearance: A large hill with a quasi-alternating sequence of mounds and hollows on an otherwise flat limestone plateau. The mound of Göbekli Tepe is comprised of megalithic stone structures, as well as many other non-monumental buildings, constructed by groups of hunter-gatherers from some 11.000 years ago (10th/9th millennium BC) in the Early Neolithic. Since the beginning of excavations in 1995, several large, stone-built monumental buildings with their characteristic T-shaped pillars have been partially excavated.