The big periods, in plain terms
Archaeologists divide this stretch of the Neolithic in south-eastern Anatolia into a few named blocks. The Epipalaeolithic (before roughly 9600 BCE) is the tail of the Ice Age world of mobile hunter-gatherers. The Pre-Pottery Neolithic A, or PPNA (roughly 9600–8800 BCE), is when the great round monuments appear — still no farming, still no pottery. The Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, or PPNB (roughly 8800–7000 BCE), sees architecture turn rectangular, domestication take hold, and villages spread. Pottery only arrives afterwards.
All dates here are calibrated calendar years BCE, derived from radiocarbon. They are ranges, not pinpoints, and active excavation continues to refine them.
Where the sites sit
Göbekli Tepe spans the turn from PPNA into PPNB. Its oldest monumental buildings — the great round enclosures of what excavators call Layer III — belong to the PPNA, around 9500 BCE. Its later, smaller, more rectangular buildings (Layer II) belong to the early PPNB. The hill was built on and returned to across more than a thousand years.
Karahan Tepe belongs to the same broad Pre-Pottery Neolithic horizon; because large-scale excavation there only began in 2019, its detailed phasing is still being published. Sayburç dates to the mid-ninth millennium BCE — squarely PPNB — which is why its narrative relief is so important for that later moment. Çakmaktepe holds some of the earliest ground in the region; Gürcütepe sits later, as the world shifted toward settled villages.
Why the sequence matters
Reading Taş Tepeler as a timeline, rather than a single 'oldest temple,' changes everything. It lets you watch ideas move: from the round PPNA enclosures with their towering central pillars, through the rectangular PPNB rooms cut into bedrock at Karahan, to the domestic villages that followed. The monuments come first, farming comes during, and the whole thing unfolds over a span longer than the distance between us and the Roman Empire.
Anyone who flattens that into one date is missing the actual story — which is one of change.
Common questions
What does PPNA and PPNB mean?
Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (roughly 9600–8800 BCE) and B (roughly 8800–7000 BCE) — the two main phases of the early Neolithic before pottery, defined by changes in architecture, tools, and subsistence.
How long was Taş Tepeler active?
The sites span nearly two thousand years across the Pre-Pottery Neolithic. Göbekli Tepe alone was in use for well over a thousand years.
Are the dates certain?
They're calibrated radiocarbon ranges, well constrained but not pinpoints, and still being refined as excavation and dating continue.
Sources & further reading
- Dietrich, O., Heun, M., Notroff, J., Schmidt, K. & Zarnkow, M. (2012). The role of cult and feasting in the emergence of Neolithic communities. New evidence from Göbekli Tepe, south-eastern Turkey. Antiquity 86(333): 674–695.
- Clare, L. (2020). Göbekli Tepe, Turkey. A brief summary of research at a new World Heritage Site (2015–2019). e-Forschungsberichte des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 2020(2): 81–88.
- Schmidt, K. (2012). Göbekli Tepe: A Stone Age Sanctuary in South-Eastern Anatolia. Berlin: ex oriente. The foundational monograph by the site's first excavator.
- Karul, N. (2021). Buried Buildings at Pre-Pottery Neolithic Karahantepe. Türk Arkeoloji ve Etnografya Dergisi 82: 19–29.
- Özdoğan, E. (2022). The Sayburç reliefs: a narrative scene from the Neolithic. Antiquity 96(390): 1599–1605. doi:10.15184/aqy.2022.125
Full bibliography: the Taş Tepeler reference library →