Coordinates: 37°13′22.81″N 38°55′20.51″E / 37.2230028°N 38.9223639°E / 37.2230028; 38.9223639 Göbekli Tepe (Turkish for "Hill with a Navel") is a hilltop sanctuary built on the highest point of an elongated mountain ridge about 15 km northeast of the town of Şanlıurfa (Urfa) in southeastern Turkey. The site, currently undergoing excavation by German and Turkish archaeologists, was erected by hunter-gatherers in the 10th millennium BC (ca 11,500 years ago), before the advent of sedentism. Together with the site of Nevalı Çori, it has revolutionised understanding of the Eurasian Neolithic.

Göbekli Tepe had already been noted in an American survey in 1964, which recognized that the hill could not entirely be a natural feature, but assumed that a Byzantine cemetery lay beneath. Since 1994 excavations have been conducted by the German Archaeological Institute (Istanbul branch) and Şanlıurfa Museum, under the direction of the German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt (1995-2000: University of Heidelberg; since 2001: German Archaeological Institute). Schmidt says that the stone fragments on the surface of the tell made him aware immediately that the site was prehistoric.

Before then, the hill had been under agricultural cultivation; generations of local inhabitants had frequently moved rocks and placed them in clearance piles; much archaeological evidence may have been destroyed in the process. Scholars from the Hochschule Karlsruhe began documenting the architectural remains. They soon discovered T-shaped pillars, some of which had apparently undergone attempts at smashing.

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