موقع قوبقلي تبة في جنوب الأناضول ( اورفة ) : 9000 سنة ق.م
Photography certainly is an important tool for documentation in archaeology. For me personally, it is also a hobby (you can find me on Flickr here: external link). Going through the loads of photos the digital age produces and often readily forgets, I found some images of Göbekli Tepe that I wanted to share here. The collection is not finished and the post will be expanded as I dig deeper into my archives.
Göbekli Tepe is situated at the northern periphery of the fertile crescent, on the highest point of the Germuş mountain range overlooking the Harran plain. The site lies on an otherwise barren limestone plateau.The tell has a diameter of around 300 m and is characterized by several mounds divided by depressions. At the highest point, Göbekli Tepe has about 15 m of stratigraphy. This is a view of the tell from the south, with the excavation camp. Taken in 2007, during my first field season at the site with the late Klaus Schmidt.
Work starts early at Göbekli Tepe (usually around 6 am), so there are lots of opportunities to catch the special morning light. Images of the tell seen from the southeast from 2007 and of the main excavation area seen from the southeastern hilltop, in 2012.



There is a clear hierarchy of pillars inside the enclosures. The central pillars are up to 5,5 m high, they have the already described anthropomorphic elements. The surrounding pillars are smaller, but more richly decorated with animal reliefs than the central ones. They are always „looking“ towards the central pillars, and the benches between them further amplify the impression of a gathering of some sort. Richly decorated pillars from Enclosure D, 2012.
Decoration of the pillars is not arbitrary. There are marked differences between the animal species depicted inside each enclosure. It could well be that the dominant species are connected to certain groups, in the sense of emblematic, or totemic symbols related to their identities. Foxes are the animal most frequently depicted in Enclosure B. The images are close-ups of the depictions on the central pillars.



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