Excavation Findings at Kınık Höyük

The fifth campaign of excavations at Kınık Höyük, Niğde began its 2015 season on June 3rd. The site of Kınık Höyük is located in Southern Cappadocia, Turkey, in the province of Niğde. Director of the project, ISAW Prof. Lorenzo d’Alfonso, led a joint team of members from Pavia University and New York University. The vice-director of the project is Prof. Mehmet Ekiz of Niğde University and Mustafa Eryaman, archaeologist of the Niğde Museum, is the commissar for the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Four operations were opened: operation A investigates in sector A1 the Hellenistic and Achaemenid trash deposits of cultic activities on the northern slope of the mound, Operation B focuses on the discovery of a big Achaemenid mud-brick building, Operation C investigates the extension and preservation of the Late Bronze Age citadel walls on the south-western slopes of the mound, and Operation D researches the occupational sequence in the lower city of the site.

An important find took place on June 23 in Operation B. Here, excavations concentrated in an area of 5x10m in S16.16, where in 2013 Seljuk, open surfaces and pits had been found and removed. Proceeding to investigate the area, our team reached a wide-open surface, associated with the Late Hellenistic building and installations found during the previous campaigns (KH Levels B3-4) to the north and the south (S 15.20, and S17.11). Under this open surface, possibly defining a central public space in the late Hellenistic village, we found tops of the walls of the Early Hellenistic and Achaemenid mud-brick building with its three phases of construction (Levels B5-7).

A very interesting context was uncovered in the northwestern corner of S16.16. In the corner of a room defined by two mud-brick walls (815 and 2095), a stone and mud-brick installation formed a squared niche. In this niche, above a very finely finished squared basalt object with triangular section (part of a mill?), beside a basalt pestle, we found a cylindrical vessel (27x13cm) with slightly flared walls, a pedestal base, and an everted simple rim. It features a banded handle that is attached directly to the rim and goes down to the base parallel to the wall. The handle, whose last portion is missing, has two applications to the wall at regular distance between the base and the rim, in correspondence to the two corrugations. The outer surface of the vessel is painted a red color and its medium-coarse fabric consists of mineral inclusions typical of the southern slopes of the Mountains, hinting at a local production.

The vessel is almost identical to one of similar shape and dimensions found in the Hellenistic levels at Tepebağları and exhibited at the archaeological Niğde Museum. The vessel from Tepebağları was interpreted as a rhyton. If the interpretation is accepted, the huge mud-brick building of Operation B, Level B5 would also be associated with cultic activities, connected to those discovered in operation A sector 1 for the Hellenistic and Achaemenid Periods.

View the article in Turkish on the finding of the rhyton at Kınık Höyük on the Turkish Ministry site here.