Kilise Tepe is a

mound A mound is a wikt:heaped, heaped pile of soil, earth, gravel, sand, rock (geology), 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 ...

Mersin Province Mersin Province (), formerly İçel Province (), is a Provinces of Turkey, province and Metropolitan municipalities in Turkey, metropolitan municipality in southern Turkey, on the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean coast between Antalya Province, A ...

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 ...

, just west of the

Göksu River The Göksu River (), known in classical antiquity, antiquity as the Calycadnus and in the Middle Ages as the Saleph, is a river on the Taşeli, Taşeli Plateau in southern Turkey. Its two sources arise in the Taurus Mountains—the northern in t ...

, lying 20 kilometers from

Mut Mut (; also transliterated as Maut and Mout) was a mother goddess worshipped in ancient Egypt. Her name means ''mother'' in the ancient Egyptian language. Mut had many different aspects and attributes that changed and evolved greatly over th ...

and 145 kilometers from

Mersin Mersin () is a large city and port on the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean coast of Mediterranean Region, Turkey, southern Turkey. It is the provincial capital of the Mersin Province (formerly İçel). It is made up of four district governorates ...

. 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 Tarḫuntašša ( and : ) was a Bronze Age city in south-central Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) mentioned in contemporary documents. Its location is unknown. The city was the capital of the Hittite Empire for a time and later became a regional power ...

, formed when

Muwatalli II Muwatalli II (also Muwatallis, or Muwatallish; meaning "mighty") 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 Mursili II ...

moved the Hittite capital.

History

The earliest settlement is dated to third Millennium BC during the Early Bronze Age. During 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 ...

era, it was used to control the road between the Hittite lands in Central Anatolia 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 east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern ...

ports. At the end of the

13th Century BC The 13th century BC was the period from 1300 to 1201 BC. The world in the 13th century BC Events Asia * c. 1300–1046 BC: in China, the Shang dynasty flourishes as it settles its capital, Yin, near Anyang. Chinese settlers swarm in compa ...

, the settlement was burnt down by

Sea peoples The Sea Peoples were a group of tribes hypothesized to have attacked Ancient Egypt, Egypt and other Eastern Mediterranean regions around 1200 BC during the Late Bronze Age. The hypothesis was proposed by the 19th-century Egyptology, Egyptologis ...

, 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 The 12th century BC is the period from 1200 to 1101 BC. The Late Bronze Age collapse in the ancient Near East and eastern Mediterranean is often considered to begin in this century. Events * 1200 BC: the first civilization in Central and Nort ...

. 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 Greek history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC, which was followed by the ascendancy of the R ...

, but there is no indication of a settlement during the

Roman period The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Roman people, Romans conquered most of this during the Roman Republic, Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of ...

. The ruined

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

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, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

and

Newcastle University Newcastle University (legally the University of Newcastle upon Tyne) is a public research university based in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. It has overseas campuses in Singapore and Malaysia. The university is a red brick university and a mem ...

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 historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progre ...

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 in the 2010–2011 term and Bitlis Eren University in later terms. The findings are exhibited in Silifke Museum.

Notes

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

History

Excavations

See also

Notes

Further reading

External links