What was found
On the eastern and southern slopes of the Göbekli Tepe mound, excavators have exposed rectangular-planned buildings — a different shape from the great round enclosures with their T-shaped pillars. They belong to the site's later phase and sit just below the modern surface, where erosion had already stripped the tops of the walls, so plans and in places floor levels came up quickly.
These structures hold fewer standing pillars than the monumental buildings, and their layout looks more like somewhere people lived than somewhere they only gathered. Excavation director Prof. Necmi Karul put it carefully: 'Our first impression is that they were used as residences' — while stressing that walls alone cannot prove what a building was for.
Why it is a big question
For most of its modern life, Göbekli Tepe has been read as a gathering place, not a village — a sanctuary people travelled to and then left. The apparent absence of ordinary houses was central to that picture.
Rectangular buildings that look domestic complicate it. If floor analysis confirms everyday activity — cooking, tools, refuse — then ritual architecture and ordinary life may have stood side by side at Göbekli Tepe, and the old sharp line between 'temple' and 'home' softens.
This is the same debate our own page on whether people lived at Göbekli Tepe lays out. The new buildings are the strongest physical prompt yet to revisit it.
What is uncertain
Everything hinges on the floor samples, which the team is still analysing. Karul is explicit that a rectangular plan is a hint, not a verdict. Prof. Barbara Horejs of the Austrian Archaeological Institute, whose team ran the geophysical survey, said the work 'will continue next year to refine the data and guide excavation strategy.'
Treat this as a promising lead in an active investigation, not a settled reversal of the sanctuary reading.