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Even though the monuments at Gobeklitepe were not on such an enormous scale, one had to make similar suppositions about the culture which had produced and erected these T-shaped menhirs. The relief carvings of animals on the stones were astonishingly beautiful, and must surely have been executed by a craftsman who had devoted his life only to this work. So the Gobeklitepe culture must have had a food production system which enabled them to feed specialists and workers without difficulty.
Away
from the excavation site we looked at hundreds of finished and unfinished
flint tools scattered on the ground, illustrating every stage of stone
tool production. This was undoubtedly the site of a flint workshop which
produced axe heads and knife blades. At the tool and artefact park just
below the excavation area we were met by one of the Turkish members of
the archaeological team, Cigdem Koksal. Here we saw stone vessels of various
sizes laid out over an area as large as a basketball pitch. One might
assume from this that the people who had lived at Gobeklitepe had made
artefacts of basalt alone, but in fact this was only because leather and
wood are perishable, whereas stone can survive indefintely.
Over
the past twenty to thirty years archaeology has made incredible strides.
Sites like Gobeklitepe are proving that human history is far more colourful,
far more complex, and far more ancient than we had ever imagined. Archaeological
excavation over the next century will certainly throw light on the ancient
past to an extent we can hardly envisage today. Who knows what fascinating
cultures will be revealed. As I returned from Urfa to Gaziantep, I looked
at the ancient mounds scattered over the landscape in every direction,
and wondered what they have to reveal about the people who lived there.