Karahan Tepe is an archaeological site in

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Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...

. The site is close to

Göbekli Tepe Göbekli Tepe (, "Potbelly Hill"; known as ''Girê Mirazan'' or ''Xirabreşkê'' in Kurdish languages, Kurdish) is a Neolithic archaeological site in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey. Dated to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, between 9500 ...

and archaeologists have also uncovered T-shaped

stelae A stele ( ),Anglicized plural steles ( ); Greek plural stelai ( ), from Greek , ''stēlē''. The Greek plural is written , ''stēlai'', but this is only rarely encountered in English. or occasionally stela (plural ''stelas'' or ''stelæ''), whe ...

there. According to ''

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'', "The excavations have uncovered 250

obelisk An obelisk (; from grc, ὀβελίσκος ; diminutive of ''obelos'', " spit, nail, pointed pillar") is a tall, four-sided, narrow tapering monument which ends in a pyramid-like shape or pyramidion at the top. Originally constructed by Anc ...

s featuring animal figures" . The site is located near Yağmurlu and roughly 46 kilometers east of

, which is often called its sister site. It is part of the Göbeklitepe Culture and Karahantepe Excavations project. The area is known as “Keçilitepe” by local people. It is part of a region of similar sites now being uncovered known as the Taş Tepeler.

History

The ancient structures at Karahan Tepe were discovered in 1997 by "researchers near the Kargalı neighborhood in the Tek Tek Mountains National Park." Necmi Karul, an archeologist at

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, told

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in 2019, “Last year, excavation work restarted in Karahantepe ectepe– around 60 km from where Göbeklitepe is located – and we encountered traces of special structures, obelisks, animal sculptures, and descriptions as well as similar symbolism”. The site was filled with dirt and rubble at some point, preserving T-topped columns carved into bedrock. These structures have been described as 'phallic totems'.

Site

In Karahantepe, the archaeological fills cover an area of almost 10 hectares, which increases by another five hectares if the quarries for the T-shaped columns are included.

History

Site

References

Further reading