This weblog is designed to give an insight into ongoing excavations and archaeological research at the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (10th-9th-millennium BC) site of Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey. Our research is part of an interdisciplinary long-term project addressing (among other things) 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. Our programme, which features three sub-disciplines (archaeology, bioarchaeology and physical geography), is currently funded by a long-term grant from the German Research Foundation. Staff members are based at the German Archaeological Institute (Istanbul and Orient departments), at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, Institute of Palaeoanatomy, Domestication Research and the History of Veterinary Medicine and at the Freie Universität Berlin Institute of Geographical Sciences, Physical Geography.

Our research programme is implemented under the umbrella of the Göbekli Tepe Culture and Karahan Tepe Excavations project headed by Prof Necmi Karul from Istanbul University, Department of Prehistoric Archaeology, in collaboration with the Şanlıurfa Haleplibahçe Museum. We are grateful to the General Directorate of Cultural Assets and Museums of the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism for their kind permission to work at this important site..