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The Göbekli Tepe Research Project is an interdisciplinary long-term project addressing the role of early monumentality in the origins of food production, social hierarchisation and belief systems as well as questions of early subsistence strategies and faunal developments in Neolithic Anatolia, Turkey. Excavations and archaeological research in the frame of this project are conducted by the Orient and Istanbul Departments of the German Archaeological Institute in close cooperation with the Şanlıurfa Haleplibahçe Museum. The archaeobiological part of the project is conducted by the Institute of Palaeoanatomy, Domestication Research and the History of Veterinary Medicine, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich.

Recent Discoveries and New Interpretations Te most famous Pre-pottery Neolithic site of Anatolia, Göbekli Tepe, since 1994 has been the subject of intensive studies due to its peculiar characteristics, linked to the presence of both circular buildings and the so-called anthropomorphic T-shaped pillars. It was supposed that its discovery would have been one of a kind, but in the next ew years scholars revealed the existence of similar settlements in the area of Şanlıurfa Province. Tese sites, still far from being investigated,share with Göbekli Tepe the same archaeological evidences, including chronological features, size and architectural and iconographic traits. Te aim o this article is to focus on the new available data, which

A brief summary of research at a new World Heritage Site (2015–2019) Göbekli Tepe (~9.500–8.000 calBC) is a prehistoric site in Southeast Turkey that dates back to an early stage in the transition from hunter-gathering to farming economies in the Near East. Research undertaken in the period 2015–2019 has included the excavation of deep-soundings and the re-evaluation of some two decades of excavation records. This work is leading to a revision of former interpretations of the prehistoric site which still fuel the popular media image of Göbekli Tepe as home to the »World’s First Temples«.

We have demonstrated that all of the fine stone vessels at Göbekli Tepe are highly fragmented and that those fragments were possibly kept to be reworked into beads or other implements. There are only two exceptions to this rule: vessel fragments too large and retaining too much of the original vessel´s curvature to be used as raw material (Nr. 8 and Nr. 9). But in general, it should be kept in mind that by analyzing the spatial distribution of vessel fragments at Göbekli Tepe, we are most likely not tracing the actual use of vessels at the site, but in fact the distribution of raw material meant for

The mound, with a height of 15 metres and an area of about 9 hectares, is completely man-made – covering what has to be considered the earliest yet known cult architecture constructed by man, raised by intentionally burying it about 10,000 years ago. These buildings represent monumental enclosures constructed by hunter- gatherer groups during the so-called Pre-Pottery Neolithic (or in short: PPN) period after the last Ice Age – architecture even predating the invention of pottery.