Körtik Tepe

Common card · No. 351398

Körtiktepe or Körtik Tepe is the oldest known Neolithic settlement in Turkey, occupied from around 10,400 BC at the end of the Epipaleolithic, throughout much of the Younger Dryas, and during the early Pre-Pottery Neolithic A, to around 9250 BC, when it was abandoned. Together with Tell Abu Hureyra and Mureybet in Raqqa, Syria, Körtik Tepe is one of the only three securely dated sedentary sites in Upper Mesopotamia during the droughts and cold period of the Younger Dryas, and one of the earliest known settled sites by hunter-gatherers, complete with trade, art, food production, religious ritual, and social complexity. The site was fully excavated from 2000 to 2018, in the context of salvage operations before flooding by the Ilısu Dam. The ruins were backfilled before the flooding, but the analysis of recovered items continues to this day.

Read on Wikipedia · Image Mehmet Özdoğan, CC BY-SA 4.0