Kilise Tepe is a
mound
A mound is a heaped pile of earth, gravel, sand, rocks, or debris. Most commonly, mounds are earthen formations such as hills and mountains, particularly if they appear artificial. A mound may be any rounded area of topographically higher ...
in
Mersin Province
Mersin Province ( tr, ), formerly İçel Province ( tr, ), is a province in southern Turkey, on the Mediterranean coast between Antalya and Adana. The provincial capital and the biggest city in the province is Mersin, which is composed of f ...
,
Turkey
Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula in ...
, just west of the
Göksu River
The Göksu ( Turkish for "sky water" also called ''Geuk Su'', ''Goksu Nehri''; la, Saleph, grc, Καλύκαδνος, translit=Calycadnus) is a river on the Taşeli plateau (Turkey). Both its sources arise in the Taurus Mountains—the norther ...
, lying 20 kilometers from
Mut
Mut, also known as Maut and Mout, was a mother goddess worshipped in ancient Egypt and the Kingdom of Kush in present-day North Sudan. In Meroitic, her name was pronounced mata): 𐦨𐦴. Her name means ''mother'' in the ancient Egyptian l ...
and 145 kilometers from
Mersin. It was initially known as Maltepe which is actually the name of a site on the other bank of the river about four kilometers to the west. The original name of the mound is not known and Kilise Tepe in Turkish means "church-hill" referring to a church ruin. The site is thought to have been part of the land of
Tarḫuntašša, formed when
Muwatalli II
:''See also Muwatalli I''
Muwatalli II (also Muwatallis, or Muwatallish) was a king of the New Kingdom of the Hittite empire c. 1295–1282 (middle chronology) and 1295–1272 BC in the short chronology.
Biography
He was the eldest son of Murs ...
moved the Hittite capital.
History
![Kilise Tepe findings](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Kilise_Tepe_findings.jpg)
The earliest settlement is dated to third Millennium BC during the Early Bronze Age. During the
Hittite Empire
The Hittites () were an Anatolian people who played an important role in establishing first a kingdom in Kussara (before 1750 BC), then the Kanesh or Nesha kingdom (c. 1750–1650 BC), and next an empire centered on Hattusa in north-centr ...
era, it was used to control the road between the Hittite lands in
Central Anatolia
The Central Anatolia Region ( tr, İç Anadolu Bölgesi) is a geographical region of Turkey. The largest city in the region is Ankara. Other big cities are Konya, Kayseri, Eskişehir, Sivas, and Aksaray.
Located in Central Turkey, it is borde ...
and the
Mediterranean
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western Europe, Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa ...
ports. At the end of the
13th Century BC
In music or music theory, a thirteenth is the note thirteen scale degrees from the root of a chord and also the interval between the root and the thirteenth. The interval can be also described as a compound sixth, spanning an octave ...
, the settlement was burnt down by
Sea peoples
The Sea Peoples are a hypothesized seafaring confederation that attacked ancient Egypt and other regions in the East Mediterranean prior to and during the Late Bronze Age collapse (1200–900 BCE).. Quote: "First coined in 1881 by the Fren ...
,
like much of Anatolia at the time. In its wake, a reconstruction began, but this too was destroyed in the middle of the
12th Century BC.
Mycenaean LHIIIC pottery from Cyprus and Crete was found in this layer, dating from 1200 to 1150 BC. During a two century break between the Iron Age and Hellenistic Period the site was unoccupied. Settlement resumed during the
Hellenistic period
In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in ...
, but there is no indication of a settlement during the
Roman period. The ruined
Byzantine
The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...
church (single chamber with cemetery) is a circa 11th century replacement for a destroyed earlier 5th century Cilician three-aisled basilica (with side chambers and a passage to the east of the apse).
Excavations
The site was first report in 1958 by J. Mellaart who noted large amounts of pottery from the 3rd, 2nd, and 1st Millenniums BC. It lies on a 200 meter north to south promontory and is 100 meters by 120 meters in extent with a height from 10 to 12 meters with the northern portion somewhat higher.
In response to dam construction, excavations began in 1994 as a joint effort between
Cambridge University
The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III of England, Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world' ...
and
Newcastle University and continued until 1997. The work began with a fiull mapping survey in 1994. In the Late Bronze layer (Level III) some timbers were recovered which gave a dendrochronology date of 1380 BC. Level II produced 4 lentoid stamp seals typical of 13th century BC Hittite Empire. One is of an official reading, in hieroglyphs, "Tarhunta-piya, the charioteer". After a pause the excavations resumed in 2007 focusing on Late Bronze Age and later levels. The Cambridge team is headed by
Nicholas Postgate and is responsible for the
Iron Age
The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age ( Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age ( Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostl ...
excavations. The Newcastle team is headed by Mark Jackson and is responsible for the Byzantine excavations. This work continued until 2011.
[Christina Bouthillier et al, Further work at Kilise Tepe, 2007-2011: refining the Bronze to Iron Age transition, Anatolian Studies, vol. 64, pp. 95-161, 2014] The Turkish collaborators were
Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University
Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University (informally ''ÇOMÜ'') is a Turkish public research university located in Çanakkale (Dardannelles) province (near Gallipoli) and its surrounding towns. It is a member of the Balkan Universities Network, the ...
in the 2010–2011 term and
Bitlis Eren University
Bitlis Eren University ( Turkish:''Bitlis Eren Üniversitesi'') is a university located in Bitlis, Turkey. It was established in 2007.
Affiliations
The university is a member of the Caucasus University Association Caucasus University Association ...
in later terms. The findings are exhibited in
Silifke Museum.
See also
*
Cities of the ancient Near East
The earliest cities in history were in the ancient Near East, an area covering roughly that of the modern Middle East: its history began in the 4th millennium BC and ended, depending on the interpretation of the term, either with the conquest by ...
Notes
Further reading
*Debruyne, Sofie. “Tools and Souvenirs: The Shells from Kilise Tepe (1994—1998).” Anatolian Studies, vol. 60, 2010, pp. 149–60
*C. K. Hansen and J. N. Postgate, The Bronze to Iron Age transition at Kilise Tepe, Anatolian Studies, vol. 49, pp. 111–122, December 1999
*Jackson, M., “Medieval Rural Settlement at Kilise Tepe in the Göksu Valley,” in Archaeology of the Countryside in Medieval Anatolia, ed. T. Vorderstrasse and J. J. Roodenberg (Leiden: NINO, 2009), 71–83
*J. N. Postgate, The Chronology of the Iron Age seen from Kilise Tepe, Ancient Near Eastern Studies, vol. 45, pp. 166–187, 2008
External links
Cambridge University Archaeology Kilise Tepe pageBritish Institute at Ankara Kilise Tepe Excavations page
{{Mersin Province
Tells (archaeology)
Mounds
Mut District
Archaeological sites in Mersin Province, Turkey