Göbekli Tepe — Enclosure Atlas · Proxy Models

Enclosure

Field notes

§01 · Reading the mound

Göbekli Tepe is an artificial mound roughly fifteen metres high on a limestone ridge above the Harran plain — the oldest known monumental enclosures on earth, raised in the tenth millennium BC by people who had not yet taken up farming.1

Its older Layer III is defined by large curvilinear enclosures: rings of T-shaped pillars, three to four metres tall, set in a stepped-back wall whose lower course forms a bench, each ring around a pair of much larger central pillars — up to 5.5 metres — facing one another like a gateway.1

§02 · One plan, three enclosures

The centre points of Enclosures B, C and D — each the midpoint between the front faces of its two central pillars — sit almost exactly on the vertices of an equilateral triangle about 19.25 metres to a side, a fit within roughly one-and-a-half percent.2

That precision suggests B, C and D were laid out as a single geometric project, with Enclosure D at the head of the hierarchy. Enclosure A, square in tendency and dated later, reads as a step toward the rectangular rooms of Layer II.1,2

§04 · Beyond the main four

Others are known: Enclosure F, a small western satellite whose bench was capped with slabs; Enclosure H, whose toppled eastern central pillar (P51) lay near the surface; and Enclosures E and G, more fragmentary still.1,3 As their plans are published they drop in as new specs — the same factory builds them.

§05 · Method & sources

On the dimensions. Full per-pillar measurement tables are not published openly. This atlas reports at two honest levels: enclosure figures (diameters, wall/bench heights, counts, radiocarbon) from excavation and formal-analysis reports, and pillar-class figures — centrals at their published heights, peripherals at the documented 3–4 m range.1,2

Ring positions are proxy placements. Whiteboxing means crude geometry, never invented measurement — swap in digitised site plans before treating anything here as record.

Haklay, G. & Gopher, A. (2020). Geometry and Architectural Planning at Göbekli Tepe. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 30(2), 343–357.
Haklay & Gopher (2020) — the equilateral-triangle layout and B–D hierarchy.
Dietrich, O. (2017). Enclosure A / B, short overviews. The Tepe Telegrams, DAI.
Dietrich et al. (2013). Radiocarbon sequence for Göbekli Tepe. Neo-Lithics 1/13.
Piesker, K. (2014). Bauforschung in den Anlagen C und E. ZOrA 7, 14–54.
Schmidt, K. (2012). Göbekli Tepe: A Stone Age Sanctuary. Ex Oriente.

Central pillars (rust)

Ring · walls · floor

Survey rod · 5 m · 1 m ticks

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