Klaus Schmidt was a German archaeologist and prehistorian who led the excavations at Göbekli Tepe from 1996 to 2014.
Education
Klaus Schmidt studied preand protohistory, as well as classical archaeology and geology at the universities of Erlangen and Heidelberg. He completed his doctorate in 1983 at the Heidelberg university under the direction of Harald Hauptmann.
Career
He received a travel stipend from the German Archaeological Institute from 1984 to 1986. From 1986 to 1995 he received a research stipend from the German Research Foundation and was employed at the Institute of preand protohistory of the Heidelberg university, working on various projects with the German Archaeological Institute and the Heidelberg university. In 1995 he became the leader of the excavations at Gürcütepe and Göbekli Tepe in Southeast Turkey.
He received his habilitation in 1999 from the University of Erlangen and became in 2000 Privatdozent in Preand Protohistory at the Institute for Preand Protohistory of the University of Erlangen.
In 2007 he became adjunct professor at the University of Erlangen. In 1995, Schmidt purchased a house in nearby Urfa, which became his base of operations.
His team of archaeologists typically excavated the site of Göbekli Tepe during two months in the spring and two months in the fall. In a 2011 interview, Schmidt estimated that roughly five percent of the site had been excavated.
Klaus Schmidt was married to Turkish archaeologist Çiğdem Köksal-Schmidt.
He died of a heart attack while swimming in Germany on July 20, 2014.
Membership
German Archaeological Institute]
Starting 2001 he became the referent in prehistoric archaeology of the Oriental division of the German Archaeological Institute, and from 2007 was corresponding member of the Institute.