The Tell Kurdu Excavation Project investigates a large settlement site dating from the sixth and fifth millennium BCE in the Amuq Plain in the southern province of Hatay. The excavations are co-directed by Rana Özbal (Koç University) and Fokke Gerritsen (Netherlands Institute in Turkey). The excavations have been ongoing since 2022.
Tell Kurdu is a large settlement site dating from the sixth and fifth millennium BCE. It is located in the Amuq Plain in the southern province of Hatay, at the crossroads of the Northern Mesopotamian Plains to the East, the Anatolian Highlands to the North and the Levantine coastal regions to the South. The sixth and fifth millenniums belong to the Chalcolithic period in West Asia, a relatively understudied era between the preceding Neolithic with the establishment of farming societies and the following Bronze Ages with the appearance of literate, urban state societies and empires. The Tell Kurdu Excavations aim to shed light on the intermediate period by studying a wide range of topics and questions. The expectation is that it will demonstrate that the Chalcolithic period was much less of a cultural standstill than has often been assumed.
During the excavation season of 2024, we worked in three trenches on the top of the mound, where we exposed 5th millennium (Ubaid) occupation layers only a few cm below the topsoil. The top of the mound was bulldozed and flattened at some point in the past, making it possible for us to reach the intact archaeological deposits very quickly but losing the data from the later occupation layers. In addition to some structural elements, such as corners of buildings, we uncovered some open courtyards that the Tell Kurdu inhabitants regularly used and reused for many decades. We also opened three new trenches on the eastern part of the site. This area appears to be the edge of the 6th millennium (Halaf) settlement. We exposed some streets and the walls of a building. We will continue the excavations in both areas in the upcoming seasons.
This marks the first season of the renewed excavations at Tell Kurdu. The initial field season took place in the summer of 2022. Through a combination of excavating numerous small test trenches and geophysics, much was learned about the ancient boundaries of the site, the presence of satellite settlements, and the complex physical and anthropogenic processes that took place before, during, and after the habitation of the site.
The Tell Kurdu Excavations are carried out with permission and support from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Türkiye.
Further support is provided by the Netherlands Institute in Turkey (Istanbul), Koç University (Istanbul), Mustafa Kemal University (Hatay), and Antakya Archaeology Museum (Hatay).