Kınık Höyük

Kınık Höyük (also Bayat Höyük) is a settlement mound in southern Turkey that was inhabited from the early Bronze Age to the Middle Ages. It is located in southern Cappadocia, in the district of Altunhisar of the province of Niğde near the town of Bayat. The mound has a height of about 20 metres and an average diameter of 180 metres.

The Italian linguist Piero Meriggi was the first to report the mound; he visited it as part of a survey in the 1960s and described it as “the biggest site he visited in the Tyanis” (the largest findspot in the Tyanis). Since 2011 excavations have been carried out on Kınık Höyük by an Italian‑American‑Turkish team consisting of scholars from the University of Pavia, New York University, the University of Niğde and the University of Erzurum.

Excavation results

The excavators divide the settlement from top to bottom into seven periods:

Period I: Middle Ages

after a hiatus follows

Period II: Hellenistic period, 4th to 1st century BC

Period III: Achaemenid, 6th to 4th century BC

Period IV: late Iron Age, 7th to 6th century BC

Period V: middle Iron Age, 9th to 8th century BC

Period VI: early Iron Age, 11th to 10th century BC

Period VII:?

The main settlement period of the hill was the Middle Iron Age in the 9th and 8th centuries BC, when Kınık Höyük belonged to the late Hittite kingdom of Tuwana, the successor state of the Hittite Tuwanuwa. Among other things, extensive remains of a citadel, whose walls were largely made of mud bricks, were excavated. Including various predecessor structures, they were dated with the help of the found pottery to the period from the Late Bronze Age to the early Middle Iron Age (1300–900 BC). The region of South Cappadocia had already had strategic significance since prehistoric times, as the routes connecting Central Anatolia via the Taurus passes to South Anatolia and Syria ran here.