Çayönü
archaeological site in Ergani, Diyarbakır, Turkey
Çayönü Tepesi is a Pre-Pottery Neolithic B settlement in southeastern Turkey which prospered from around 8630 to 6800 BC. It is located in Diyarbakır 40 kilometres northwest of Diyarbakır, 140 kilometers northeast of Şanlıurfa, at the foot of the Taurus Mountains. It lies near the Boğazçay, a tributary of the upper Tigris River and the Bestakot, an intermittent stream. It is an early example of agriculture.
Çayönü Tepesi belongs to the "Taş Tepeler" monumental tradition of Göbekli Tepe, a style found in all the Pre-Pottery Neolithic sites of the Urfa region. There are some variations though, such as using decorated stelae, but without the characteristic T-shape of Göbekli Tepe.
Settlement
At first, Cayonu represented single room structures that were round or had rounded corners. On top were built wattle and daub constructions. The next phase consisted of grill-plan buildings. This refers to a type of the building foundation.
"The grills were composed of a series of parallel linear stone foundations, carefully built of small stones and no more than 15 cm high (Schirmer 1990), which supported an elevated plastered floor, keeping it insulated, ventilated and dry."
Archaeology
The site was excavated for 16 seasons between 1964 and 1991, initially by Robert Braidwood and Halet Çambel and later by Mehmet Özdoğan and Aslı Erim Özdoğan.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q272720. VIAF identifies the subject as 239196578. Authority coordinates are 38.216, 39.725. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1990, 1964 and 1991.
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This entry incorporates text from “Çayönü” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.