Trace of fortress gate found in Arslantepe

MALATYA

Excavations have been carried out to find a fortress gate from the Early Bronze Age on the south of the Arslantepe Mound in Malatya, which is on the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage List.

Along with the excavations carried out since 1961 by academics from Rome's La Sapienza University at Arslantepe Mound, which has a history of approximately 7,000 years and where the first form of the state emerged, a Turkish team has also started excavation work for the first time this year.

Varlık İndere, who has been working in the excavations at Arslantepe for eight years and serving as the excavation vice president for five years, said that they had been working with the Italian team for a long time and that the excavations were carried out as a Turkish-Italian partnership.

"This year, the Culture and Tourism Ministry wanted a Turkish coordination excavation to continue in the area. We are conducting a trial as part of this project. There is an Early Bronze Age wall in the south of the area, which is a fortress protective wall. This fortress wall revealed its existence 10-15 years ago, but we hadn't found its gate. This year our coordinator president from Hacettepe University, Associate Professor Halil Tekin, and Arslantepe's Italian team leader Professor Francesca Balossi Restelli made a joint decision to find the continuation of this Early Bronze fortress wall, that is, the part that extends eastward, with the idea of finding it. With this aim, we think there is an entrance gate here. That's why we are actually searching for it. The purpose of this Turkish coordination excavation is to find the gate of this fortress wall," İndere said.

Noting that they had just started the excavations, İndere said, "We are progressing slowly, the fortress wall is not visible yet, but we encountered something more interesting. We knew that there was a lot of intensity in the north of Arslantepe during the Late Bronze Age. We thought that the area was oriented toward the Euphrates due to trade relations with the Euphrates. However, we encountered Late Bronze Age architecture here. This showed us that during that period, there were some settlement structures not only in the north of the area but also in the south, based on our findings so far."

Explaining that they were working in an 80-square-meter area in the south of the mound, İndere said: "We encountered a stone-built floor that we think is the silo floor from the Late Bronze Age. Again, a little further south, we see pottery. We haven't finished excavating them yet. I think they will emerge before the end of this season. We will dig deeper. Again, we have a very new finding. We think there is a hearth floor here. Maybe it is an oven floor, it was uncovered just yesterday. There is a four-year work plan undertaken by Halil Tekin and the ministry. It was planned for four years. For now, we will continue until the end of the year."

The Arslantepe Mound was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in July 2021.

The mound’s embankment is 30 meters high, and it was inhabited between 5000 B.C. and the 11th century A.D.

More than 2,000 stamp seals, a statue of King Tarhunza and two lion statues from the late Hittite period have been found at the site. The temple at Arslantepe dates back to 3600-3500 B.C.