Sources & Method

We think a research site should be judged the way a paper is: by its sources and its honesty about them. Below is the record we draw on, in rough order of authority, and the method we use to keep fact, interpretation, and open question apart.

Primary excavation record

• Karul, N. (2021). Buried Buildings at Pre-Pottery Neolithic Karahantepe. The foundational published account of Structures AA, AB, AC and AD — dimensions, architecture, the carved head, the pillars, the channels and the deliberate fill. Most structural detail in this archive traces to this report.
• Prof. Necmi Karul & the excavation team — subsequent season reporting and interviews (Istanbul University), covering the 2023–2025 finds: the Ribbed Man, the human-faced T-pillar, the Structure BF vessel scene, the Western Terrace buildings (AZ, BD, BH), and the human skull fragments.

Project & institutional sources

• The Taş Tepeler project — the Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Culture and Tourism programme coordinating Karahan Tepe and eleven other Neolithic sites; the official Karahantepe pages and project reporting.
• Şanlıurfa Archaeology Museum — home of the movable finds: the Ribbed Man and other statues, the carved and double-headed figures, the leopard and vulture sculptures, and "Urfa Man." Several museum objects in this archive were photographed on site by researcher Dakota Wint.

Comparative & contextual literature

• Göbekli Tepe — the neighbouring, securely-dated PPN site used throughout for comparison (enclosures, T-pillars, detachable heads, the Vulture Stone).
• Çayönü, Nevalı Çori, Sayburç, Sefertepe, Çakmaktepe and the wider Taş Tepeler — for regional parallels in architecture, human imagery and skull treatment.
• The Levantine Pre-Pottery Neolithic — Jericho, ʿAin Ghazal, Nahal Hemar and others — for the plastered-skull and "skull cult" horizon and the ʿAin Ghazal two-headed statue (~6500 BCE).

Current reporting

For discoveries as they break, we draw on excavation announcements and reputable coverage (for example Türkiye Today, The Art Newspaper, the Jerusalem Post, The Collector's interview with Prof. Karul, and Archaeology Magazine), always distinguishing a reported claim from a peer-reviewed one, and updating pages as the formal record catches up.

Our method — how we label

At every point we separate three things:

• Fact — what the excavation has documented (a dimension, a feature, a find). Stated plainly.
• Interpretation — what a find may mean (a fertility reading, an initiation theory, an ancestry symbolism). Always flagged as interpretation, and attributed where it belongs.
• Open question — what is genuinely unresolved. Kept on the Open Questions register rather than papered over.

Behind the site sits a structured fact registry that tags each claim by category and confidence and holds "needs-review" and reporting-grade items separately from confirmed facts — so that interview-level details are never quietly promoted to settled truth. Where our own researcher draws a new connection across sites, we say so and label it interpretation, as with the double-head thread.