Karahantepe Archaeological Sitevisitor guide.

Karahantepe is situated approximately 55 km from Şanlıurfa provincial center, perched upon one of the prominent limestone elevations within Tek Tek Mountains National Park. The Tek Tek Mountains present the appearance of an extensive 60-kilometer-long low plateau situated between the fertile Harran and Viranşehir plains, reaching 761 meters above sea level at its highest elevation in the north and gradually sloping southward below 500 meters. Bedded plate-like limestone outcrops provided both building materials and the vital raw stone required for carving monumental T-shaped megalithic stelae at Karahantepe and contemporary Neolithic sites. Systematic surface surveys and geomagnetic measurements identify four distinct sectors at Karahantepe. The first encompasses the West and East Terraces, where the tops of T-shaped monolithic pillars appear on the surface and circular planned structures of various dimensions defined by pillar alignments are discernible. The Southern Plain designates the sector devoid of upright pillar remains, where domestic artifacts such as grinding stones are concentrated. The Stone Quarries sector designates the workings on terraces descending south and west from the western cone, where monolithic T-shaped pillars were quarried from bedrock. While spatial divisions of Karahantepe are based primarily on archaeological surface data, local topography and bedrock morphology corroborate this classification. NEARBY MUSEUMS ŞANLIURFA CASTLE GÖBEKLİTEPE ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE ŞANLIURFA ARCHAEOLOGY MUSEUM HARRAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE HALEPLİBAHÇE MOSAIC MUSEUM