Alaca Höyük
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Alacahöyük or Alaca Höyük (sometimes also spelled as ''Alacahüyük'', ''Euyuk'', or ''Evuk'') is the site of a
Neolithic The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Ancient Greek, Greek 'new' and 'stone') is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Mesopotamia, Asia, Europe and Africa (c. 10,000 BCE to c. 2,000 BCE). It saw the Neolithic Revo ...
and Hittite settlement and is an important
archaeological site An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or recorded history, historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline ...
. It is situated near the village of Alacahüyük in the Alaca District of
Çorum Province Çorum () is a province in the Black Sea Region of Turkey, but lying inland and having more characteristics of Central Anatolia than the Black Sea coast. Its area is 12,428 km2, and its population is 524,130 (2022). Its provincial capital ...
,
Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...
, northeast of
Boğazkale Boğazkale ("Gorge Fortress") is a town of Çorum Province in the Black Sea region of Turkey, located from the city of Çorum. It is the seat of Boğazkale District.Hattusa Hattusa, also Hattuşa, Ḫattuša, Hattusas, or Hattusha, was the capital of the Hittites, Hittite Empire in the late Bronze Age during two distinct periods. Its ruins lie near modern Boğazkale, Turkey (originally Boğazköy) within the great ...
of the
Hittite Empire The Hittites () were an Anatolian peoples, Anatolian Proto-Indo-Europeans, Indo-European people who formed one of the first major civilizations of the Bronze Age in West Asia. Possibly originating from beyond the Black Sea, they settled in mo ...
was situated. Its Hittite name is unknown: connections with
Arinna Arinna was the major cult center of the Hittite sun-goddess known as dUTU URU''Arinna'' or " Sun-Goddess of Arinna", who is also sometimes identified as ''Arinniti'' or as ''Wuru(n)šemu''. Arinna was located near Hattusa, the Hittite capital. ...
, Tawiniya, and Zippalanda have all been suggested.


History

The mound ( Turkish '' höyük'') measures 310 meters by 275 meters with a height of about 14 meters. The mound features cone like rises at the south and northeast ends. It has 14 occupational layers with 9-14 being Chalcolithic, 5-8 being Early Bronze Age (royal tombs), and 2-4 being Hittite. The uppermost layer shows elements of Phrygian, Roman, and Ottoman times.


Chalcolithic

Layers 14-9: Alacahöyük was a scene of settlement in a continuous sequence of development from the
Chalcolithic The Chalcolithic ( ) (also called the Copper Age and Eneolithic) was an archaeological period characterized by the increasing use of smelted copper. It followed the Neolithic and preceded the Bronze Age. It occurred at different periods in di ...
Age, when earliest copper tools appeared alongside the use of stone tools.


Early Bronze

Layers 8-5: During the
Early Bronze Age The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...
, the mound was the center of a flourishing culture connected to the Anatolian Trade Network. It has been continuously occupied ever since, until today's modern settlement in the form of a small village. Fourteen shaft-grave "Royal Tombs" (2850–2450 BC) date to the same period as the Royal Tombs of Ur and the
Troy Troy (/; ; ) or Ilion (; ) was an ancient city located in present-day Hisarlik, Turkey. It is best known as the setting for the Greek mythology, Greek myth of the Trojan War. The archaeological site is open to the public as a tourist destina ...
excavation level II. The tombs of typical shaft design, about 1.5 meters in depth, sealed by wooden beams, They contained the dead with folded legs facing west. The heads and legs of bulls were placed on platforms and the dead were richly adorned with gold
fibula The fibula (: fibulae or fibulas) or calf bone is a leg bone on the lateral side of the tibia, to which it is connected above and below. It is the smaller of the two bones and, in proportion to its length, the most slender of all the long bones. ...
e, diadems, and belt buckles and repoussé gold-leaf figures. Seven metal figurines were found in the tombs with four being made of bronze and 3 of silver. *Tomb H - (8 meters by 3.4 meters), female. Contents included "a golden diadem, two copper mace heads, a bronze sun standard, the statuette of an animal, small ornaments made of gold and silver, vessels made of gold and clay, metal artefacts, two axes, five pairs of twin idols made of gold, and three female figurines". *Tombs A - (5 meters by 2.3 meters), adult female. Besides a golden diadem contents included "four sun standards, an animal statuette, several metal ornaments, pieces of an iron object, and two metal anthropomorphic figurines ". Many of the artefacts discovered at Alacahöyük, including magnificent gold and bronze objects found in the Royal Tombs, are housed today in the
Museum of Anatolian Civilizations The Museum of Anatolian Civilizations () is located on the south side of Ankara Castle in the Atpazarı area in Ankara, Turkey. It consists of the old Ottoman Mahmut Paşa bazaar storage building, and the Kurşunlu Han. Because of Atatürk's ...
in
Ankara Ankara is the capital city of Turkey and List of national capitals by area, the largest capital by area in the world. Located in the Central Anatolia Region, central part of Anatolia, the city has a population of 5,290,822 in its urban center ( ...
. Among these artefacts are gold and
electrum Electrum is a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver, with trace amounts of copper and other metals. Its color ranges from pale to bright yellow, depending on the proportions of gold and silver. It has been produced artificially and is ...
standing cups and other vessels. The most unusual are the
Alaca Höyük bronze standards Alaca () may refer to the following places in Turkey: * Alaca, Çorum, a large district in Çorum Province ** Alaca Dam * Alaca, Borçka, a village in Artvin Province * Alaca, Beşiri, a village in Batman Province * Alaca, Elâzığ, a village in E ...
; bulls or stags on pedestals whose purpose remains the subject of debate. The standards are cast in copper, many in the form of flat circles, half-circles or squares that are filled with an
openwork In art history, architecture, and related fields, openwork or open-work is any decorative technique that creates holes, piercings, or gaps through a solid material such as metal, wood, stone, pottery, cloth, leather, or ivory. Such techniques ha ...
network of cross bars, central crosses, and swastikas.
Leonard Woolley Sir Charles Leonard Woolley (17 April 1880 – 20 February 1960) was a British archaeologist best known for his Excavation (archaeology), excavations at Ur in Mesopotamia. He is recognized as one of the first "modern" archaeologists who excavat ...
found that the Royal Tombs "seem to belong to the end of a period, as marked by a stratum of destruction and the burning of the citadel. The culture which the tomb objects illustrate does not continue into the next historical phase, that of
Kültepe Kültepe ( Turkish: ), also known under its ancient name Kaneš (Kanesh, sometimes also Kaniš/Kanish) or Neša (Nesha), is an archaeological site in Kayseri Province, Turkey. It was already a major settlement at the beginning of the 3rd mille ...
".


Gold-iron dagger

A gold-handled dagger was found at Alacahöyük, and it is now in the collection of the Ankara's Museum of Anatolian Civilizations. It was excavated from grave K (find No. Al.K.14) and may be dated as early as 2500 BC. Japanese scholars have issued a preliminary report about the composition of the dagger in 2008, and they concluded that the dagger was probably made from meteoritic iron.


Late Bronze

Layers 4-2 Hittite period: The standing and distinguishing remains at Alaca Höyük, however, such as the "Sphinx Gate", date from the Hittite period that followed the Hatti, from the fourteenth century BC. Two Hittite cuneform texts (A1.d164) mentions the city Arinna and the sun-goddess. One letter states: "Zuwa says: Arinna which was inherited by us from our grandfathers has a golden sun disk which represents the Sun Goddess". The letter may have been sent from or to this site, indicating that the city Arinna can be identified with this site or was nearby.


Tudhaliya IV

During the reign of king Tudhaliya IV (c. 1245-1215 BC) drought devastated the country leading to the construction of a series of dams throughout the Hittite Empire. The king also imported grain from Egypt to avoid famine. The Gölpınar dam, located 1.5 kilometers to the south of Alaca Höyük, was dedicated to the goddess Hebat. It has been excavated since 2002 and made usable again in 2006 because the water source was located inside the reservoir. In the late 13th century BC, drier climate conditions ultimately led to the Collapse of the Bronze Age.


Iron Age

Modern assessment finds that the site continued as a flourishing community to the end of the Late Bronze Age. There was also a sizable occupation in
Phrygia In classical antiquity, Phrygia ( ; , ''Phrygía'') was a kingdom in the west-central part of Anatolia, in what is now Asian Turkey, centered on the Sangarios River. Stories of the heroic age of Greek mythology tell of several legendary Ph ...
n times.


Excavations

The site was probed by George Perrot and Ernest Chantre in the late 1800s and drawings of the remains published. In 1907, the Ottoman archaeologist Theodor Makridi Bey carried out brief explorations here for two weeks. In the 1910s, German teams discovered royal tombs dating to the third millennium BC, as well as a Hittite town of the second millennium BC. The impressive
sphinx A sphinx ( ; , ; or sphinges ) is a mythical creature with the head of a human, the body of a lion, and the wings of an eagle. In Culture of Greece, Greek tradition, the sphinx is a treacherous and merciless being with the head of a woman, th ...
gate surrounded by stone reliefs marked its entrance. The town was heavily fortified with walls and towers due to the frequent raids of the Kaska people living in the mountainous region to the north. Excavations by the Turkish archaeologists Remzi Oğuz Arık and Hamit Koşay resumed in 1935 under the personal instructions of Atatürk who contributed from his own budget. In 1968 the work was under the direction of Mahmut A. The work, which continued until 1970, revealed considerable local wealth and achievement even before the time of the Hittites, with the earliest occupation dating from the 4th millennium BC. Tombs of the 3rd millennium BC feature metal vessels, jewelry, weapons, and pole finials of bulls, stags, as well as abstract forms often interpreted as solar symbols. Excavation at the site resumed in 1994, and is now directed by Dr. Aykut Çınaroğlu. In the excavations of 2002, 2003 and 2005, four new hieroglyphic Luwian documents were uncovered, a clay sealing, two vessels with seal impressions, and a stele fragment.DİNÇOL, Ali, and Belkıs Dinçol. "Neue Hieroglyphische Dokumente aus Alaca Höyük." Colloquium Anatolicum. No. 7. 2008


See also

* Alishar Hüyük *
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 ...


References


Further reading

*Remzi Oguz Arik, Les Fouilles d'Alaca Höyük: Entreprises par la société d'histoire turque. Rapport preliminaire sur les travaux en 1935, Publications de la Société Turque, 1937 *Bachhuber, C. 2011. Negotiating Metal and Metal Form in the Royal Tombs of Alacahöyük in North-Central Anatolia. Pp. 158–74 in Interweaving Worlds: Systematic Interactions in Eurasia, 7th to the 1st Millennia BC, ed. T. C. Wilkinson, S. Sherratt, and J. Bennet. Oxford: Oxbow *Çınaroğlu, Aykut, "The Project to Reconstruct the Early Bronze Age Hattıan Royal Tombs of Alaca Höyük", The Adventure of the Illustrious Scholar. Papers Presented to Oscar White Muscarella, hrsg. v. Elizabeth Simpson (Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 94), pp. 67–78, 2018 *Emre, Kutlu, "A Group of Hittite Statuettes from Alaca Höyük", Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts. Abteilung Istanbul, vol. 43, pp. 235–244, 1993 *Ayse Gursan-Salzmann, "Alaca Hoyuk: A reassessment of the excavation and sequence of the Early Bronze Age settlement", University of Pennsylvania, 1992 *Korfmann, M., "Große Göttin” in Alaca Höyük", Pp. 153–65 and pls. 97–102 in IX. Türk Tarih Kongresi: Ankara, 21-25 Eylül 1981: Kongreye sunulan bildiriler. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1981 *Hamit Z. Koşay and Mahmut Akok, "The Pottery of Alaca Höyük", American Journal of Archaeology, vol. 51, no. 2, pp. 152–157, 1947 *M. J. Mellink, "Observations on the Sculptures of Alaca Hoyuk", Anatolia, vol. 14, pp. 15–27, 1970

Ahmet Unal, "The Textual Illustration of the Jester Scene on the Sculptures of Alaca Höyük", Anatolian Studies, vol. 44, pp. 207–218, 1994 *O.R Gurney, "The Ladder-Men at Alaca Höyük", Anatolia Studies, vol. 44, pp. 219–220, 1994 *Piotr Taracha, "The Iconographic Program of the Sculptures of Alacahöyük", Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions, vol. 11, iss. 2, pp. 132–147, 2011 *Taracha, Piotr, "The Sculptures of Alacahöyük: A Key to Religious Symbolism in Hittite Representational Art", Near Eastern Archaeology. A Publication of the American Schools of Oriental Research, vol. 75, no. 2, pp. 108–115, 2012


External links


Images from Alacahöyük



"Hittite culture survives in Alacahöyük" - Hürriyet Daily News
{{DEFAULTSORT:Alaca Hoyuk Çorum Archaeological sites of prehistoric Anatolia Hittite sites in Turkey Hittite cities National parks of Turkey Former populated places in Turkey Archaeological sites in the Black Sea region Geography of Çorum Province History of Çorum Province Buildings and structures in Çorum Province