Başur Höyük (pronounced as Bashur) in Turkey's south-eastern

Siirt Province Siirt Province, (, ; ) is a province of Turkey, located in the southeast. The province borders Bitlis to the north, Batman to the west, Mardin to the southwest, Şırnak to the south, and Van to the east. Its area is 5,717 km2, and its pop ...

is a 5,000-year-old

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 ...

burial site. It is located just outside the city of

Siirt Siirt (; ; ; ) is a city in the Siirt District of Siirt Province in Turkey. It had a population of 160,340 in 2021. The city is predominantly inhabited by Kurds. Neighborhoods The city is divided into the neighborhoods of Afetevlerı, Alan, ...

near the village of Aktaş in a valley of the upper

Tigris River The Tigris ( ; see below) is the eastern of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, the other being the Euphrates. The river flows south from the mountains of the Armenian Highlands through the Syrian and Arabian Deserts, before merging ...

, adjacent to the Başur River. The 820-foot by 492-foot burial mound was excavated in the years up to 2018, by

Brenna Hassett Brenna R. Hassett is an American British bioarchaeologist at University College London (UCL), author, public speaker and one of the founders of TrowelBlazers, which celebrates women archaeologists, paleontologists and geologists. Early life ...

of the

Natural History Museum A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history scientific collection, collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, Fungus, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleo ...

in London, and Haluk Sağlamtimur of

Ege University Ege University or Aegean University () is a public research university in Bornova, İzmir. It was founded in 1955 with the faculties of Medicine and Agriculture. It is the first university to start courses in İzmir and the fourth oldest unive ...

in Turkey.

Archaeology

The site of Başur Höyük consists of a 150 meter by 250 meter mound with 15 meters of occupation remains. It was excavated from 2007 to 2019 by a team led by Haluk Sağlamtimur as part of the rescue archaeology associated with the construction of the Ilısu Dam. Pottery shards date back to the 7th millennium BC with three occupation layers dating from 4th millennium BC

Late 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 diff ...

5 Late Uruk period, 2nd millennium BC Middle Bronze period, and the Medieval period. A

Uruk period The Uruk period (; also known as Protoliterate period) existed from the protohistory, protohistoric Chalcolithic to Early Bronze Age period in the history of Mesopotamia, after the Ubaid period and before the Jemdet Nasr period. Named after the S ...

settlement on the south part of the mound later became an Early Bronze I burial site.
aysal, Emma L., and Haluk Sağlamtimur, "Sacrificial status and prestige burials: Negotiating life, death, and identity through personal adornment at Early Bronze Age I Başur Höyük, Turkey", American Journal of Archaeology 125.1, pp. 3-28, 2021 The Late Uruk settlement was surrounded by a fortification wall with stone foundations and included a monumental building. Finds included thousands of bevelled rim bowls.

History

According to the archaeologists, the mound was already inhabited during the

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 ...

period. The population increased during the Late

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 ...

period. For that time, the evidence of local Anatolian material culture has been documented. Later on, the presence of

Uruk Uruk, the archeological site known today as Warka, was an ancient city in the Near East, located east of the current bed of the Euphrates River, on an ancient, now-dried channel of the river in Muthanna Governorate, Iraq. The site lies 93 kilo ...

influences is being seen, including some sort of a central administration. This is indicated by the excavated cylinder seals, many mass-produced beveled-rim bowls, and multi-roomed buildings and storerooms.

Early Dynastic cemetery

The partial excavation of the cemetery found 18 burials (pit graves),

cist In archeology, a cist (; also kist ; ultimately from ; cognate to ) or cist grave is a small stone-built coffin-like box or ossuary used to hold the bodies of the dead. In some ways, it is similar to the deeper shaft tomb. Examples occur ac ...

graves (walled - sided and floored with stone slaba, and semi-walled - using one wall of a cist grave) and inhumations ("death pit"). No matching Early Dynastic was found during the rescue excavation. Large numbers of metal weapons and ritual items were found as well as cylinder seals. One tomb contained the remains of two 12-year-old children, and the remains of an adult which may have been reburied. The remains of eight other people aged 11 to 20 were found buried outside the tomb. These remains were carbon-dated to between 3100 and 2800 BC, and at least some of the people are believed to have been sacrificed.

Grave goods

Along with the children's bodies were buried hundreds of bronze spearheads, while the bodies outside the tomb were buried with textiles, beads, and ceramics, and at least some of the people are believed to have been sacrificed. Overall, the graves revealed a unique treasure made of painted and unpainted pottery, bronze spearhead, various ritual artifacts, seals with geometric motifs and about 300 well-preserved amorphous bronze artifacts. The majority of pots featured bitumen residues. Tens of thousands of beads made of mountain crystal and other types of stones were also recovered from the burials. The excavation also found 49 small pieces of stone elaborately sculpted in different shapes and painted in green, red, blue, black and white. "Some depict pigs, dogs and pyramids, others feature round and bullet shapes. We also found dice as well as three circular tokens made of white shell and topped with a black round stone," stated Haluk Sağlamtimur of Ege University. The stone pieces are therefore believed to be a set of gaming pieces, thereby confirming that board games probably originated in the Fertile Crescent regions and Egypt more than 5,000 years ago. The stones were accompanied by badly preserved wooden pieces. Similar pieces were apparently found settlement mounds in

Tell Brak Tell Brak (Nagar, Nawar) was an ancient city in Syria; it is one the earliest known cities in the world. Its remains constitute a tell located in the Upper Khabur region, near the modern village of Tell Brak, 50 kilometers north-east of ...

in north-eastern Syria, and

Jemdet Nasr Jemdet Nasr () (also Jamdat Nasr and Jemdat Nasr) is a Tell (archaeology), tell or settlement mound in Babil Governorate, Iraq that is best known as the eponymous type site for the Jemdet Nasr period (c. 3100–2900 BC), under an alternate period ...

in Iraq, but those were believed to be counting stones. Marcella Frangipane, a professor of prehistoric archaeology at Rome's La Sapienza, has stated that: "The findings at Başur Höyük add to our knowledge as they reveal a coexistence of traditions and a continuity of relationships between the settlements in the northern mountains and the Mesopotamia sites."

Human sacrifice

Archaeologists Hassett and Sağlamtimur speculate that the eight people buried outside the tomb may have been sacrificed, possibly as “retainers” to serve the others in the afterlife. Brenna has stated that: 'It is unlikely that these children and young people were killed in a massacre or conflict. The careful positioning of the bodies and the evidence of violent death suggest that these burials fit the same pattern of human sacrifice seen at other sites in the region. The burial has parallels with the elaborate burials from the

Royal Cemetery of Ur The Royal Cemetery at Ur is an archaeological site in modern-day Dhi Qar Governorate in southern Iraq. The initial excavations at Ur took place between 1922 and 1934 under the direction of Leonard Woolley in association with the British Museum and ...

." The site at Başur Höyük is believed to be 500 years older than the Royal Cemetery of Ur, the elaborate tombs where

Mesopotamia Mesopotamia is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Today, Mesopotamia is known as present-day Iraq and forms the eastern geographic boundary of ...

n rulers were laid to rest. In the Royal Cemetery of Ur, hundreds of burials were identified as sacrifices. The burials show evidence of large political and social upheavals around this time, when early states were forming in southwest Asia. Brenna therefore thinks that sacrifices like this one were a way of controlling a city or state's population. Further excavations have revealed a series of other burials at the site, including a mass death pit containing at least fifty individuals who were buried simultaneously.

Parallels with Arslantepe and metal trade

Numerous cultural parallels between Basur Hoyuk and

Arslantepe Arslantepe, also known as Melid, was an ancient city on the Tohma River, a tributary of the upper Euphrates rising in the Taurus Mountains. It has been identified with the modern archaeological site of Arslantepe near Malatya, Turkey. It was na ...

have been documented. As in Arslantepe, after the end of the Uruk-related settlement at Basur Hoyuk, a cemetery was established among the abandoned structures on the mound. It was radiocarbon dated to the same time period of 3100–2900 BC. About 1,000 metal objects, mostly copper, were found at Basur, many of them very similar to those at Arslantepe. There are also similarities in tools and ornaments. In addition, according to Martina Massimino (2023), : "Başur Höyük’s funerary assemblage exhibits evidence of contacts with the neighbouring communities of Mesopotamia to the south, the Euphrates valley to the west and the Caucasus to the north. The composite picture is particularly evident in the ceramic repertoire. In fact, the larger ceramic group bears the peculiar geometric decoration painted in dark red/brown, which is typical of the initial phases of the Ninevite V horizon of northern Mesopotamia." Thus, the same group present both at Basur and at Arslantepe, as well as in many other places in Anatolia, may have been responsible for the flourishing metal trade during this time period. The archaeological evidence indicates clear connections with the Maikop- Novosvobodnaya kurgans culture.
artina Massimino, "Graves of power. Circulation of elite strategies between Caucasus and south-eastern Anatolia in the dawn of the Bronze Age", in Toby Wilkinson, Susan Sherratt (eds), Circuits of Metal Value. Changing Roles of Metals in the Early Aegean and Nearby Lands, Oxbow Books, pp. 190-216, 2023

References

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