Going with the Flow of the Ancient Rivers: Upper Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent

This 10-day tour focuses on earliest Neolithic sites (e.g., Göbekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe) in southeastern Turkey, and includes impressive sites of all periods.

Important information

Tour Dates: October 6-16, 2026

Registration Deadline: July 6, 2026

Total Price (double occupancy): 10-15 people: $6190, 16-19 people: $5530, 21-25 people: $5330, 26-30 people: $5150. Single supplement: add $1025.

Registration fee: $1,500 to ALI by registration deadline of July 6, 2026. This amount is included in the total price above. Taking reservations now!

Costs not included: Personal travel insurance, airfare to and from Istanbul, gratuities for service providers (such as waiters, drivers, maids), alcoholic beverages, lunches, and all but two dinners.

What IS included: What IS included: All lodging, breakfasts plus Welcome and Farewell dinners, private ground transportation, all entry fees, archaeologist tour leader (Dr. Richard Pettigrew), local guides, and transportation from and to Istanbul airport.

An educational tour designed and organized by Archaeological Legacy Institute (ALI).

Guided by an experienced Turkish expert in the region, this 10-day tour will focus on the region of southeastern Anatolia, between the Tigris and Euphtrates rivers, that was the original heartland of the Neolithic Revolution, where the earliest-known farmers and herders appeared in the archaeological record around 10,000 B.C. After a short stay in Istanbul and visits to such important sites as the Ancient Hippodrome and the Hagia Sophia, we fly off to Gaziantep, just north of the Syrian border, to visit an amazing collection of sites important in human history.

This region is at a major crossroads of the Middle East, so we will begin our agenda there with visits to key sites such as Zeugma (Hellenistic, and known to the Romans as Commagene) and Carchemish (dating back to 2400 BC, and the site where the Babylonians defeated the 26th-Dynasty Egyptians in 605 BC. We’ll visit the partially submerged old city of Halfeti via a boat ride on the Euphrates River.

Day 4 brings us to the historic city of Şanlıurfa, normally called Urfa and once the city named Edessa, and according to legend the hometown of Abraham. Nearby, in AD 260, the Sasanian Persians under Shapur the Great defeated the Roman at the Battle of Edessa and captured the Roman emperor Valerian and his entire army of 70,000 soldiers. It is the center of the locality now famous for its Pre-pottery Neolithic sites going back to 9,000 BC or more. Among our exciting activities there, we will tour the town and the Şanlıurfa Archaeology and Mosaic Museum, which houses an incredible variety of artifacts of many different periods, notably including important collections from Göbekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe.

Day 5, a day many of us looks forward to, is when we pay our visits to Göbekli Tepe, Karahan Tepe, and the early Neolithic Sayburç reliefs. Also of note is our visit to Harran, founded by Sumerian traders from Ur as early as 2500 BC, and which rapidly became a major Mesopotamian cultural, commecial and religious center. After more than 3 millennia as a major urban center, it met its end by Mongol conquest in AD 1260 before is modern re-emergence.

The remaining days of the tour offer a wonderful diversity of experiences covering the long ancient history of the region. We’ll see religious sites such as the Syriac Orthodox monastery of Dayrulzafaran; the 12,000-year-old Epipaleolithic site of Boncuklu Tarla, which may be older than Göbekli Tepe; Diyarbakır Archaeology Museum, with extensive collections representing practically every historic and prehistoric culture of the region; Mount Nemrud and the stunning mountain-top temple-tomb of Nemrut Dag, built by the late Hellenistic King Antiochos I of Commagene (69-34 B.C.) as a monument to himself; and the ancient city of Perrhe, one of the five major cities of the Kingdom of Commagene. These are just a sample of the many intriguing sites we will visit.

On Day 9, we will fly back to Istanbul and spend the night, before going our separate ways the next day.