Department of Archaeology

Kilise Tepe Logo

Level III

plan of NW buildingPlan of the NW building
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The mound of Kilise Tepe consists of 13 m of occupation strata on a natural conglomerate promontory overlooking the valley of the Göksu. It was first settled in the Early Bronze Age (early 3rd millennium BC) and was probably continuously occupied into the Late Bronze Age (approximately 1600-1200 BC). At this time at the NW corner of the mound there was a building with large rooms, assigned to our stratigraphic Level III. This went through five consecutive architectural phases (IIIa-e), all associated with "Hittite" ceramics, without any major disruption.


In 2007-2012 we have been seeking greater clarity about the nature of this building, by expanding the excavated plan, and recovering stratified bio-archaeological and ceramic materials. Also, recently revised approaches to the dating of "Hittite" ceramics, stemming from the work of the German team at Boğazköy (Hattusa), meant that any evidence for the absolute chronology of this building would be extremely helpful.

Ivory stamp-sealOfficial's ivory stamp-seal
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We succeeded in defining the limits of the best preserved IIId phase of the building in three directions, north, east and south, where a cobbled open space was exposed outside the SE wall. The western part of the complex has been lost to the erosion of the north-western side of the tepe, but an unusual triangular stone platform with an associated drainage gutter in Room 33 suggests that the lost western part may have been the most significant. Otherwise, it is Room 32, with a central hearth and repeated plastering of the walls that looks most like a main reception room, and the lucky recovery (through flotation!) of an official's ivory stamp-seal from this room is welcome confirmation of our suspicion that this was the seat of the local administration under the Hittite empire.


The ceramics recovered from this phase remain distinct from the repertoire associated with the Stele Building, although mainly by virtue of the absence of certain wares. They include familiar standardized vessel types, in particular internal rim bowls, but they differ enough to constitute a local variant. In particular, they do not resemble the very late LBA repertoire at Tarsus with its large numbers of shoddily made bowls (named "drab ware" by the Tarsus team).

Libation arm fragmentLibation arm fragment
in Red Lustrous Wheel-made Ware
The finely burnished red ware known as "Red Lustrous Wheel-Made Ware", which may come from a production site in Cyprus and was widely distributed in the 14th and 13th centuries is present here in a variety of forms, including, unusually, internal rim bowls: this may reflect Kilise Tepe's location on a south-north route between the Hittite heartland on the central plateau and the Mediterranean shore line opposite Cyprus.

One very helpful discovery was a large assemblage of animal bones behind an oven in one of the rooms: as described by Peter Popkin, this clearly illustrated dietary habits in the IIId phase, with a strong bias towards sheep.

After a rebuild in phase IIIe, which is badly preserved, the whole site was levelled, to provide an open space serving an entirely new construction further East, assigned to Level II and known now as the "Stele Building".