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Karahan Tepe settlement was first discovered in 1997, but was surveyed in 2000 and again in 2011 within the course of the Sanlıurfa City Cultural Inventory. The settlements are located within the boundaries of Sanlıurfa (ancient name Edessa), a city in southeast Turkey. The settlement lies on a plateau known as the Tektek Mountains (Tektek Dagları) 63km east of Sanlıurfa. Like Göbekli Tepe, Hamzan Tepe and Sanlıurfa Yeni Mahalle PPN (Pre- Pottery Neolithic period) settlements located around the Harran Plain in the Urfa Region, Karahan Tepe is also a PPN settlement located on a high plateau foot on the eastern side of Harran Plain.

Karahan Tepe lies some 63 km east of Sanliurfa (Urfa), southeastern Turkey in an area called Tektek Daglan (Tektek Mountains). Some 266 in situ pillars were observed in the fields on the northern and eastern slopes of the hill. Since this area, which was discovered by the author in 1997, was not named on the maps, it was thought to be suitable to name the site "Karahan Tepe" after a hill nearby (Footnote 1) Geomorphologically, the Tektek Mountain area in the vicinity of the Karahan Tepe settlement in the southeast part of Harran plain is more of a range of high hills rather than mountains (Giizel n.d.: 170-171).