Göbekli Tepe’s circular temples

Göbekli Tepe, was first recognized as a place of archaeological significance in the frame of a joint survey project conducted by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago and the University of Istanbul (Robert Braidwood and Halet Çambel) in the early 1960s. In his survey-report Peter Benedict (1980, 179) describes the place as a “… complex of round-topped knolls of red earth with slight depressions (…) littered with flint artefacts.” At the time of its first discovery, the extraordinary scientific significance of Göbekli Tepe was not apparent and attention turned instead to the Neolithic site of Çayönü.