Klaus Schmidt (archaeologist)

Klaus Schmidt (December 11, 1953 – July 20, 2014) was a German archaeology professor who led the excavations at Göbekli Tepe from 1996 to 2014. He was born in Feuchtwangen. Gobekli Tepe is a site about ten miles away from Sanlıurfa, Turkey. This site was originally found by other archaeologists in the 1960s. They quickly labeled the area as a simple abandoned cemetery and moved on. Klaus Schmidt was not so dismissive. Having come to Turkey in 1978 for research, Schmidt had already been working on his own sites in the region. It was not until 1994 that Schmidt’s attention was caught by the report. A short time later, Schmidt’s team uncovered evidence that the area was not used as a settlement. Schmidt has suggested the possibility of the site being a burial ground with the dead placed along the hillside, and could have potential insights to hunter-gatherer groups. ^[1]

In 1995, Schmidt purchased a house in a nearby city called Urfa which has been the base of operations.^[2] As of 2008, Klaus Schmidt had been working with a team of German archaeologists. His schedule consisted typically of two months of excavation in the spring and two months in the fall. In 2011, Schmidt was interviewed and revealed that roughly five percent of the site has been excavated.

He studied Prehistory, Classical Antiquity, Classical Archaeology and Geology at the Heidelberg University and the University of Erlangen.^[3]

He died in Germany on July 20, 2014, of a heart attack.^[4][5]

References

External links

• Literature by and about Klaus Schmidt in the German National Library catalogue
• Homepage at the DAI
• Homepage at the University of Erlangen
• excavation projects with the German Archaeological Institute
• Interview with Klaus Schmidt on findings at Göbekli Tepe in the Eurasian Magazine