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Forty Years of Digging at Kalehöyük

A few kilometres east of the town of Kaman, right beside the village of Çağırkan, a rounded hill rises out of the steppe.

Radar TürkiyeRadar Türkiye4 Kasım 2026
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Forty Years of Digging at Kalehöyük

A few kilometres east of the town of Kaman, right beside the village of Çağırkan, a rounded hill rises out of the steppe. From a distance it looks like an ordinary mound of earth, but it is in fact a höyük, a tell formed by settlements built one on top of another over thousands of years. At this place, known as Kaman-Kalehöyük, Japanese archaeologists have excavated every year since the summer of 1986. Rather than introducing the mound itself or the museum next to it, this article tells the story of that long-running excavation: how it began, what it is looking for, what it has found so far, and how in forty years it turned into a scientific campus in the middle of the steppe.

A story that began with a preliminary survey

The story begins in Tokyo. According to the Japanese Institute of Anatolian Archaeology's own introduction, the Middle Eastern Culture Center in Japan was founded in October 1979 in the Mitaka district of Tokyo as an institute for the study of the Middle East, based on an idea of Prince Takahito Mikasa. In 1985 the center carried out a preliminary survey at Kalehöyük. The excavation team's report on its twenty-seventh season records that roughly 240,000 items, such as potsherds and iron slag, were collected during that first surface survey. When a tenth of the collected potsherds were analysed, it became clear that the hill held about 5,500 years of accumulated culture.

The excavation proper opened a year later. According to the institute's Kalehöyük page, Prince Mikasa turned the first spade of earth in 1986 as president of the center, and work has continued without interruption ever since. For many years the excavation was led by Dr. Sachihiro Omura. Excavations in Türkiye are carried out under permit from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, and every season a representative appointed by the Ministry works alongside the team; the team's seasonal reports note each year which museum that representative came from.

How to read a mound

On a mound, time is read from top to bottom. The newest settlement lies at the top and the oldest at the bottom. The excavation team gives the site's dimensions as 280 metres in diameter and 16 metres in height and regards it as a medium-sized mound by Anatolian standards. It lies about 100 kilometres southeast of Ankara, beside the old Ankara-Kayseri road.

So far the team has defined four main cultural strata. The uppermost, Stratum I, belongs to the Ottoman period, roughly the 15th to the 17th centuries. Stratum II is the Iron Age and spans the 12th to the 4th centuries BC. Stratum III covers the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, from the 20th to the 12th centuries BC. The lowest, Stratum IV, dates to the second half of the Early Bronze Age, in the 3rd millennium BC. Based on finds and architectural styles, the team also divides these strata into sub-phases: Stratum I into two, Stratum II into four, and Strata III and IV into two each. Finds from the Chalcolithic and Neolithic periods have also come to light, but because settlements of those periods have not yet been excavated, the team refers to them for now as possible fifth and sixth strata.

The main goal of the excavation, in the team's words, is to compile a cultural stratigraphy, that is, to produce a chronological table for Kalehöyük. Two separate trenches serve this purpose. The North Trench, opened in 1986, follows the sequence of strata in depth. The South Trench was opened to see, over a wide area, the settlement layout of each culture identified in the north. One answers the question of depth, the other the question of breadth.

Light on the Dark Age

One of the results that brought Kalehöyük to prominence in archaeology concerns the beginning of the Iron Age. The institute recalls that the 12th to 8th centuries BC, the period after the collapse of the Hittite Empire, were long called the Dark Age because they were thought to have left no significant culture. In Kalehöyük's phase IId, which corresponds to the start of that period, a series of successive occupation levels and a rich material culture came to light. The report on the twenty-fourth season describes semi-sunken buildings in the South Trench, post holes set at equal intervals and rooms with rounded corners. The same report holds that the painted pottery found in these levels will be the key to shedding light on the culture of the so-called Dark Age in Anatolian archaeology.

In the levels of the 2nd millennium BC, a cultural sequence can be followed clearly: first the Assyrian Colony Period, then the Old Hittite Kingdom, then the Hittite Empire Period. The report on the twenty-fifth season describes a stone wall in the North Trench belonging to the Assyrian Colony Period, more than three metres high, and a path paved with pebbles; in the same season gold items were found on a small floor, and the team interpreted the spot as a workshop.

Iron and workshops

The strata of Kalehöyük preserve not only buildings but also traces of production. Iron slag was already among the finds collected in the first surface survey, and later season reports document metalworking in detail. The report on the twenty-eighth season describes, next to a Late Iron Age fortress, hearths built repeatedly in the same place and the same shape, copper slag produced during smelting, and stone moulds. From this the team concludes that workshops of the Late Iron Age stood in this part of the North Trench.

Traces of daily life are also stored in the strata. The same report describes two rectangular storerooms with stone walls in the South Trench. Wheat had been found on their floors the previous season, and it was confirmed again that these were grain stores. In the same stratum, painted pottery decorated with stylised deer figures came to light.

How an excavation season unfolds

The excavation reports also describe the rhythm of a season. Work usually starts at the end of June or the beginning of July and continues until early September. At the end of the season, finds suitable for display are handed over to the nearby archaeology museum; in the twenty-fifth season, for example, 51 pieces were deposited this way, in the twenty-sixth 44 and in the twenty-eighth 58. After the dig ends, the finds are washed, sorted, measured, photographed and restored, work that often lasts until spring.

The exposed structures are not left to the winter. Every autumn the team puts temporary protective roofs over the North and South trenches and removes them the following summer before digging resumes. The long, pale roofs that people see when they look at the mound from a distance are this protection itself. The mound has also been photographed from the air with a digital camera tied to a balloon.

An institute on the steppe

Perhaps the most lasting result of forty years of digging is the campus built next to the mound. The Japanese Institute of Anatolian Archaeology was established in May 1998 in the village of Çağırkan, affiliated with the center in Tokyo. According to the institute's account, work was done for many years in prefabricated buildings. Construction of a permanent building began in 2004; the research wing was completed in September 2005, and the conference and library wing in September 2007. The conference hall was named after the Turkish archaeologist Tahsin Özgüç, a close friend of the institute.

A 2024 article by Gonca Tunçbilek Dinçer of Nevşehir Hacı Bektaş Veli University examines this campus from an architectural point of view. According to the article, the campus consists of museum, storage, institute and residential blocks; the institute section is made up of three interconnected octagonal buildings, and the artefact stores of two L-shaped buildings facing them. The research section contains laboratories, a library, study rooms, a photography centre and a conference hall. The institute's own page lists conservation, archaeological chemistry, archaeobotany, zooarchaeology and palaeoenvironment as separate fields of work.

The other two parts of the campus open the mound's story to the public. The Prince Mikasa Memorial Garden, opened in 1993, and the archaeology museum, which displays finds from Kalehöyük, Yassıhöyük and Büklükale, form a single cultural complex together with the institute. The Ministry's museum portal states that the museum was founded through the cooperation of the Turkish and Japanese governments and opened to visitors on 10 July 2010.

An excavation that works like a school

Kalehöyük is not only an excavation site but also a school. Among its goals the institute lists training young researchers and, in particular, awakening an interest in history and cultural heritage among local children. In the twenty-sixth season, alongside the dig, a museology course for specialists from museums in Türkiye was held in partnership with the Japan Foundation and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The same summer, field courses in archaeology, zooarchaeology and archaeobotany also took place; participants included students from Japan, Türkiye, the United States, Poland and Australia.

Every summer the institute announces an internship programme for conservation students. In 2015 a four-day archaeobotany course given by a specialist from the University of Queensland taught participants to identify cereals, legumes and wild seeds using Kalehöyük samples and the institute's reference collection. The institute has also published a series of essays made up of practical guides to conservation and site preservation in the field. The results of the excavation are shared each year in the institute's yearbook, Anatolian Archaeological Studies, and at an annual meeting held in Tokyo.

Kalehöyük's neighbours

Over time the questions of the excavation spread beyond the mound. The institute began preliminary research at Yassıhöyük, in Kaman district, in 2007 and at Büklükale, in Kırıkkale province, in 2008; at both sites full excavation started in 2009. In Yassıhöyük's first season, the mud-brick walls of a large building detected during the magnetic surveys of 2007 and 2008 were found inside a burnt layer. According to the excavation report, these walls still preserve 230 centimetres of their original height.

Büklükale stands on a rocky promontory overlooking the river, at the point where the road from Ankara to Kaman crosses the Kızılırmak. Based on pottery collected from the surface, the institute describes it as a city of the Hittite Empire Period about 500 metres in diameter. The reason it was chosen is clear: at Kalehöyük the Hittite Empire stratum is thin and was disturbed by later Iron Age buildings. Büklükale can fill that gap and help to build a continuous cultural history of Central Anatolia.

How to experience the excavation today

The best gateway to the mound is the museum beside it. Looking first at the mound's model in the museum and at the sections that explain the sequence of strata, and then seeing the hill from outside, is the easiest way to fix in your mind the layers described in this article. Official sources do not state clearly whether the excavation area can be visited outside the digging season; before you go, check the visiting conditions and current opening hours with the museum or on the Ministry's museum portal.

The digging season falls in the summer months, and a team is at work during this period; when watching from outside, respect the team's work and the protective roofs. There is little shade on the steppe and the summer sun is harsh, so do not forget a hat and water. In late spring and early autumn the colours of the steppe are softer and walking is more comfortable. Together with the Japanese garden next to it, this campus easily fills half a day on a trip to Kırşehir.

In forty years Kalehöyük has become a laboratory that reads, layer by layer, five thousand years hidden beneath a hill. In the middle of the steppe, where archaeologists from two countries work in the same trench, this place is one of Kırşehir's most instructive stops for anyone who wants to see how patient science takes root in a landscape.

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