Rising from the flat floor of the Geldingen Plain, south of the road that runs from Amasya to Çorum, Oluz Höyük looks from a distance like any one of the thousands of mounds that dot Anatolia. Yet this rounded hill, some fifteen metres above the plain, was formed by ten settlements built one on top of another on the same spot. Excavations begun in 2007 and carried on without interruption ever since have shown that the mound holds a history of roughly four and a half thousand years, from the Chalcolithic Age to the end of the Hellenistic period. Building levels of the Hittite, Phrygian, Persian and Hellenistic periods have been uncovered here, each recording how a civilisation arrived in the region, took root and in time gave way to another. What has made the site truly known in the world of archaeology, however, are its religious remains: the fire temple founded in the Persian period, the columned building beside it, and the altar of Kubaba surviving from the Phrygian age. In the words of the excavation director, Şevket Dönmez, the mound is a centre that has begun to turn the hearsay of Amasya's history into a history grounded in evidence.

Location and Appearance of the Mound

Oluz Höyük lies about 25 kilometres south-west of the centre of Amasya, within the land of the Gökhöyük state farm at kilometre 27 of the Amasya-Çorum highway. It is three kilometres south of the highway, two kilometres north-west of the village of Gözlek, and some five kilometres east of the village of Toklucak (formerly Oluz), which gave the mound its name. Sources place the mound sometimes within the district of Göynücek and sometimes within the central district of Amasya; its position on the Göynücek road is probably the reason for these two ways of referring to it. In the literature it also appears under the names Yassı Höyük and Tepetarla Höyüğü. Locally, much of the farm land is still known today as the "German Farm".

The mound stands a few kilometres north of the Çekerek River, one of the principal tributaries of the Yeşilırmak (the ancient Iris), on the western edge of the fertile Geldingen Plain. The Çekerek appears as the Zuliya in Hittite texts and as the Skylax in ancient sources. Measuring roughly 280 by 260 metres and almost circular in shape, the hill covers an area of 45 dönüm (about 4.5 hectares), and its highest point stands some 478 metres above sea level. The area is a transitional zone between the coastal strip of the Central Black Sea and Central Anatolia; among the major Hittite-period centres, Ortaköy (Şapinuva) lies about 50 kilometres away and Maşat Höyük (Tapigga) 55 kilometres. Doğantepe, another settlement that has yielded Hittite finds, is only about five kilometres to the north of the mound.

The excavations have also shown that the surroundings of the mound once looked very different from today's dry plain. Coring carried out on the plain, together with the bones of water birds such as cranes, wild geese and pelicans recovered during the excavation, has proved the existence of a small lake that encircled Oluz Höyük to the north and east. The excavation team believes that the Persians may have used this lake to create a hunting park here, a "paradeisos" of the kind beloved by satraps. It is one of several clues suggesting that the settlement was less an ordinary village than a place that drew the interest of a ruling elite.

Discovery and the Beginning of Excavations

The first scholar to mention the mound was the German-born American archaeologist H. H. von der Osten, who carried out a survey west of the Kızılırmak and within its bend before beginning his excavations at Alişar Höyük. Osten relates that in mid-August 1926 he spent a night on the Zile-Amasya road near Göynücek, at the farm of a German family who had been living in the area for thirty-three years. Having spent that night ill, he notes with regret that he was unable to follow up the information his hosts gave him about ancient sites in the vicinity. Even so, he records that on his way to Amasya he visited a fairly large mound on the edge of the "Olas plain", though he gives no further details. Researchers today accept that the mound Osten mentions was in all likelihood Oluz Höyük.

The true discovery of the mound came seventy-two years after Osten's visit. Şevket Dönmez, of the Department of Protohistory and Near Eastern Archaeology at Istanbul University, identified the mound anew during surveys he conducted in 1997-1999 in the Merkez, Gümüşhacıköy, Hamamözü, Merzifon, Suluova, Taşova and Göynücek districts of Amasya, and so brought it into the archaeological literature. Dönmez, whose career had begun in 1989 on Veli Sevin's excavations, had spent fourteen years on the team at İkiztepe in Samsun. In his own account, the answers to the questions İkiztepe had left open, such as why that settlement was deserted in the Hittite period, had to be sought in the interior of the Central Black Sea region rather than on the coast, that is, in North-Central Anatolia. The Oluz Höyük excavation was launched with this idea in mind.

At the time the excavations began, Amasya was regarded as one of the least studied provinces in archaeological terms. The Tombs of the Kings had attracted travellers and scholars since the middle of the nineteenth century, but work on settlements had remained limited. Apart from a brief excavation at the village of Mahmatlar in 1949 by Hâmit Zübeyr Koşay and Mahmut Akok and a number of surveys, no systematic excavation of a mound had ever been carried out in the province.

The First Season and the Methods Used

Systematic excavation at Oluz Höyük began on behalf of Istanbul University with a 31-day season between 6 August and 5 September 2007, under a decision of the Council of Ministers and with the permission of the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage and Museums of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The art historian E. Emine Naza-Dönmez served as deputy director, and the team included the Iranian Iron Age specialist Farshid Iravani Ghadim. At the outset the team set itself four aims: to establish a firm chronology for the interior of the Central Black Sea region; to study the cultures of Amasya in the second millennium BC, that is, the periods of the Assyrian Trading Colonies and the Hittites; to trace the north-eastward spread of Phrygian culture; and to bring to light the Hellenistic settlement architecture that was entirely unknown in the hinterland of the Pontic capital. Judging from the surface finds, the mound was thought to be a major Hittite city, and there were hopes of finding a palace, a temple and even a cuneiform archive.

From the start the work was conducted on an interdisciplinary basis. With technical support from the State Hydraulic Works, topographic maps of the mound were drawn at scales of 1:1000 and 1:500. Between 6 and 9 August 2007, Fethi Ahmet Yüksel and Oya Tarhan Bal of Istanbul University's Department of Geophysical Engineering surveyed an area of about 2,000 square metres in the central part of the mound with geoelectric, geomagnetic and ground-penetrating radar (GPR) methods, seeking the depth, extent and position of buried walls. These archaeogeophysical measurements were meant to map areas not yet excavated, to decide where to dig, and to make the most efficient use of labour and funds.

Besides the architectural remains, pottery sherds, metal objects, seeds and animal bones are each studied separately. The archaeozoologist Vedat Onar examined the animal bones, and the anthropologist Y. S. Erdal the human skeletons. In the first season work was carried out over a total area of 600 square metres, in Trench A, measuring 30 by 10 metres on the highest point of the mound, and in Trench B, dug in steps on the eastern slope, and six architectural levels were identified. Trenches C and D were opened in later years. In time the excavation was included in the General Directorate's project to extend excavation work over twelve months of the year. In the twelfth season, in 2018, the team consisted of twelve academics, trainee archaeology students and a conservation student, and the work was planned to last sixty days.

Layers and Cultural Periods

The stratigraphy established in the first season was refined in the years that followed, and a total of ten settlement levels has been identified in the mound. These are grouped into four main cultural phases. At the top, level "0", mixed into the topsoil, belongs to the Middle Ages, roughly the tenth to fourteenth centuries. Architectural Level 1 is dated to the Hellenistic period, from the end of the second century BC to the beginning of the first century BC. Architectural Level 2, which reflects Persian cultural character, is divided into two phases: Phase 2B covers 425-300 BC and Phase 2A 300-200 BC. Below this, Level 3 belongs to 500-425 BC and Level 4, under Phrygian influence, to 600-500 BC. Levels 5 and 6 are dated to the Classical and Early Phrygian periods (ninth to seventh centuries BC), Levels 7 and 8 to the Hittite period, and Level 9 at the bottom to the Early Bronze Age (fourth millennium BC).

Pottery is the most reliable guide for dating the layers. The shapes, painted decoration and firing techniques used by potters carry the distinctive mark of each period. In Level 3, the continuation of the painted tradition alongside a growing use of plant and figural decoration shows that the local workshops were beginning to absorb new cultural elements. The pottery of Level 2, apart from a few imported pieces, is entirely a continuation of the Central Anatolian Late Iron Age tradition. Dönmez argues that this group of vessels, widespread within the bend of the Kızılırmak and hitherto known by names such as "Galatian ware" or "Pontic local ware", is in fact the product of a regional tradition that had continued unbroken since the tenth and ninth centuries BC, and should therefore be called "Central Anatolian Late Iron Age Late Phase Painted Pottery". The debate shows how the finds from the mound bear on the archaeology of the whole region.

The Hittite Period and the Question of a Sacred City

A stone seal, a bronze sickle, terracotta loom weights and pottery sherds from the Hittite levels of Oluz Höyük show that the settlement was an important centre during the Hittite Great Kingdom (fifteenth to thirteenth centuries BC). In the 2018 season, during clearance work at the northern end of Trench A, a terracotta bull figurine 14 centimetres long and 9 centimetres high was found. Together with a ring-shaped vessel with a bull's head, recovered in fragments in earlier seasons and reassembled, this figurine led Aslıhan Yurtsever Beyazıt of the excavation team to suggest that the mound may have contained a sanctuary or temple dedicated to the Hittite Storm God. The bull was the Storm God's sacred animal. The absence of any fortification wall in the Hittite levels also supports the view that the settlement was religious rather than military in character.

In the 2021 season, deep soundings at the northern end of Trench A produced interesting remains from the Collapse Period (1200-1150 BC), which coincided with the fall of the Hittite Great Kingdom. In Architectural Level 7B2, charred seeds were found from a religious ceremony performed by burning wheat and vetch. The excavation team believes that this find may for the first time allow us to recognise the new religious practices that emerged as the Hittite world disintegrated.

There are differing proposals as to which Hittite city the mound should be identified with. Şevket Dönmez suggests that Oluz Höyük may be the city of Šanahuitta named in Hittite documents; his arguments are that a document from Hattuša mentions the city together with the Zuliya, that is, the Çekerek, and that the Upper Zuliya region included the Geldingen Plain. A. Ünal likewise accepts that Šanahuitta should be sought around Amasya and that Oluz is a strong candidate for it. Özlem Sir Gavaz, on the other hand, proposes that Oluz Höyük may be Ištahara, a city which the written sources place a day's journey from Nerik and which served the Hittites both as a military station and as a cult centre of the Storm God. A firm answer can only come from cuneiform tablets that may yet be found in the excavations. The description of the mound as "the principal site of the Land of Kašku" in the title of one of the first publications reflects the view that the region was the homeland of the Kaška, the people who were in constant conflict with the Hittites.

The Phrygian Period and the Altar of Kubaba

Some six hundred years after the Hittite collapse, Oluz Höyük again became an important religious centre within the sphere of the Phrygian kingdom. Architectural Level 4 (600-500 BC) yielded plain and painted pottery with Late Phrygian features, an ivory stamp seal whose face depicts a lion attacking a gazelle, and the lower part of a stone statuette of Kubaba. These finds clearly establish the Phrygian character of the level. In Level 3 of Trench A, which is regarded as a Phrygian settlement, the discovery of Scythian-type arrowheads alongside mudbrick walls points to contact with the Scythians, whose presence in the region is known.

The most important structure of the period is the altar of Kubaba. It began to emerge in the 2010 season; at first it attracted attention with a nearly square section, and as excavation progressed a building of unusual plan appeared, with a stone-paved court in front of it. The density of stones inside made the structure difficult to understand. A fragment of a Kubaba statuette found at this stage, stylistically close to the Kubaba statues from Boğazköy-Büyükkale and Ankara-Bahçelievler, proved decisive in establishing the building's identity. In his first publication Dönmez proposed that it might be a temple; later detailed study, however, suggested that this structure, which had no enclosed room and whose square section was a solid mass filled with stones, was less a temple than a built stone counterpart of the rock-cut altars of Phrygia. The altar, evidently constructed around 600 BC, stands on what was then the highest point of the settlement; leaving aside the buttressing extensions to its west and east, it is a massive structure on a nearly square rectangular plan.

Excavations around the altar produced further religious finds. The most intriguing are perforated sheep toe bones (phalanges) and knucklebones (astragali). Dönmez connects these bones with the rites described by the Roman writer Apuleius in his "Metamorphoses". Apuleius writes that in the rites of Atargatis, the goddess whom the Romans called Dea Syria, priests in ecstasy flogged their bodies until the blood ran with tasselled whips to which sheep toe bones were tied. If the rites of this goddess, who can be identified with Kubaba in many respects, were rooted in the ancient mother-goddess traditions of the Near East, it may be supposed that the perforated bones from Oluz Höyük were also tied to whips in similar ceremonies. In the 2021 season a falcon idol carved from bone, evidently left as a votive offering, was also found south-west of the altar. A special vessel in the shape of a woman's breast, with a perforated tip, found in the fill of Level 2, is likewise associated by the excavators with the cult of the mother goddess; its decoration points to the sixth and fifth centuries BC.

Kubaba is the local name of one of Anatolia's oldest and most deeply rooted goddess figures. The mother goddess who appears in figurines as "Mother Nature" in the Neolithic is found in the Hittite period under the name Kubaba, as a relatively minor deity; in the Late Hittite period, however, she was held in great reverence, above all at Carchemish. The Phrygians called her Matar or Matar Kubileya; to the Greeks she was Kybele and to the Romans Magna Mater. According to Dönmez, the Phrygians, who began entering Anatolia from the thirteenth century BC, seem not to have worshipped Kubaba until the time of Midas; when under King Midas they extended their sphere of influence to the Kızılırmak basin and the Late Hittite lands, they may have adopted the goddess of Carchemish. The Oluz Höyük statuette dates to the sixth century BC and reflects Phrygian art in its style.

The Persian Settlement: Road, Mansion and Columned Hall

From the middle of the sixth century BC until the campaign of Alexander the Great, for some two hundred and twenty years, the Persians governed Anatolia through satraps appointed from the centre. The region that included Amasya formed part of the satrapy of Cappadocia. According to the excavation team, the radical change in architecture and the innovations in portable material culture show that around 450 BC an Achaemenid group or community of Persian origin settled at Oluz Höyük. From then on the settlement was rebuilt according to Persian architectural tradition. In Architectural Level 2, Trench A revealed a monumental stone-paved road running from south-west to north-east and, to its north, the remains of a complex building thought to be a small palace or mansion. This road, which the team calls the "Persian Road", forms the backbone of the settlement and leads to the religious buildings. Persian-type column bases are also among the characteristic finds of this period.

An announcement made in the 2018 season reported that a throne hall belonging to a 2,500-year-old Persian palace and a columned audience hall known as an "apadana" had begun to emerge at the mound. Dönmez stated that six column bases had been uncovered that season, that the plan was not yet clear, and that the full layout would only be understood after several more years of excavation. Apadana is the name given to the ceremonial halls known from the Achaemenid capitals, whose roofs rested on columns and in which the ruler received envoys and subjects. The excavation team maintains that the building at Oluz Höyük completes the Achaemenid architectural character of the site and that, taken together with the fire temple and the sacred road, it shows the mound to have been one of the most important settlements founded by the Persians in Anatolia. According to Dönmez, these are the first such structures identified at a Persian settlement in Anatolia.

This claim of a "first" needs to be read with care, however. A review of apadanas in Anatolia notes that the building type is represented in Anatolia by other examples as well, such as Building D at Hattuša, Kerkenes Dağı, Altıntepe, Nevşehir, Larisa and Tille Höyük, and that the Oluz Höyük apadana is the most recently discovered link in this series. The significance of the Oluz building therefore lies in its having been found within the whole fabric of a Persian settlement, together with a road, a sanctuary and domestic buildings. In later publications, the large six-columned building immediately west of the fire temple has been interpreted as a hall of worship. In an interview Dönmez also said that the same columned hall might be a place of worship connected with the fire temple, a place where the congregation gathered, or a relay station of the Persian postal system where messengers and horses were changed. Considering that the Persians had to govern an empire stretching from Greece in the west to Central Asia in the east through a rapid communication network, this possibility is also plausible.

In the title of one publication by Dönmez and Mona Saba the mound is also named "Kritalla". Herodotus writes that before Xerxes' campaign against Greece his army assembled at Kritalla in Cappadocia. This identification remains a bold proposal concerning the mound's place in Persian history and has not yet won general acceptance.

The Fire Temple and the Early Zoroastrian Sanctuary

The find that put Oluz Höyük on the international archaeological agenda began to emerge with the discovery of the "Sacred Fire Pit" in the 2013 season. After years of excavation it became clear, by the 2017 season, that these remains belonged to a fire temple (ateşgede) and a surrounding sanctuary. According to Dönmez's publications, the fire temple was built around 450 BC and remained standing at least through the first fifty years of Level 2A (300-250 BC). In use for about two hundred years, the building is, in the excavation team's view, the oldest known fire temple in Anatolia. It consists of a fire pit 1.60 metres in diameter set on the earth, with a naos extending to its south. Together with the naos the fire temple forms a four-cornered plan and is enclosed on the north and west by simple retaining walls.

Traces of smoke on the special stones of the course surrounding the fire pit, and the ash and carbon deposits inside and around it, show that the fire burning here was an "eternal fire" that was almost never allowed to go out. It is thought that the fire temple was left open to the sky so that the fire within could be seen from outside and so that the voice of the priest, the magus, who recited prayers beside the fire for hours every day, could be heard. To the south of the fire temple ran a channel into which the blood of sacrifices was poured, and to the east and north-east lay a sanctuary furnished with special paths and platforms leading to the building. According to the excavation team, this arrangement offers for the first time a tangible counterpart to the theoretical debates that archaeologists and linguists have long conducted about the fire cult.

The excavation director interprets the fire temple in the light of Strabo's account. Strabo, the geographer from Amasya, writes that in Cappadocia there were many temples dedicated to the Persian gods, that at the centre of the open-air sanctuaries called "pyraetheia" stood an altar covered with a great quantity of ash, and that the magi kept the sacred fire perpetually burning there. Every day the magi chanted for an hour and wore felt caps that covered their lips. He adds that in the region sacrifices were made not with the sword but by beating the victim with a kind of club. According to Dönmez, the Oluz Höyük fire temple is the first archaeological evidence that, more than four hundred years before Strabo, in the fifth and fourth centuries BC when Achaemenid rule prevailed, there were temples in Cappadocia where eternal fires burned; Strabo, for his part, was a witness to this tradition, which survived with changes into the Roman period.

The fate of the fire temple can also be read in the excavation. When digging began in 2013, the remains were found to be completely covered with stones and earth. This shows that the architectural elements of the fire temple were deliberately demolished and sealed with stones so that they could never be used again. According to the excavation team, the temple was destroyed in the 300s BC, in the process that began with Alexander the Great's campaign in Asia. Sacred objects that had become unusable after service in the temple were not thrown away at random but buried in special pits, or bothroi. This practice, which shows how highly the fire and everything belonging to it were revered, offers rare insight into the workings of the sanctuary.

The Hall of Worship and a Congregation Facing the Fire

The fire temple is a small building and could not have accommodated a large congregation at worship. For this reason a hall of worship in the form of a columned hall was built immediately to its west for the congregation taking part in the rites. The excavation team also calls this building by the Persian name "peresteşgâh". All its walls except the southern section have been uncovered; its present area exceeds one hundred square metres, and its excavation is not yet complete. Inside, six stone column bases have been found, set in two rows of three running north to south. Around the bottom of these sandstone bases, averaging 50 centimetres in diameter, fist-sized rubble stones were packed to keep the bases supporting the long, thick timber posts from shifting. The columns are thought to have been of wood and to have carried a large roof. The many pottery sherds and small finds from inside the building date it firmly to the fifth century BC.

In the very middle of the east wall of the hall is an opening that looks directly onto the fire temple. Through the northern columns the fire temple and the sacred fire burning within could easily be seen. According to the excavation team's observations, those in the hall in the early hours of the morning must have watched the burning fire and the sun rising over the fire temple along the same line. Dönmez argues that the fire, the focal point of Zoroastrianism from its beginnings, served here as a qibla, that is, a point towards which the community turned together. In his view Oluz Höyük is the first place in Anatolia and the Near East where the space in which the rite was performed and the space in which the congregation worshipped were deliberately separated. These two buildings, linked by position though not physically connected, are regarded as an early example of the idea of forming a congregation, which would later become a shared element of monotheistic religions such as Christianity and Islam; no such arrangement is found in earlier Anatolian religions or in ancient Greek paganism.

North of the hall of worship a small mudbrick structure measuring 2.40 by 2.10 metres was also uncovered. A sounding in the small cell at its centre revealed at least seven layers of ash, each of a different colour. Because the fragile state of the mudbricks shows that no fire was ever lit and no blaze ever occurred in this structure, the ash is thought to have been brought deliberately from somewhere nearby, most probably from the fire temple. The excavation team regards the structure as a place where sacred ashes were kept.

Sacrifice, Purification and Temple Equipment

Work in the 2020 season in the space between the fire temple and the hall of worship revealed a short channel of stone and of the roof tiles known as kalypteres, built against the wall of the fire temple that continues to the south. A large kalypter, 65 centimetres long and 20 centimetres wide, had been laid upside down in the ground on a north-south axis. The top of the channel had been closed with a neat row of stones and then entirely covered with a heap of randomly thrown stones and earth, while the outlet at its southern end had been blocked with a large stone. The channel had received the same treatment as the fire temple itself: rather than being dismantled and destroyed, it had been sealed with stones and made unusable. Vedat Onar, who examined the animal bones found at the mouth of the channel, determined that they belonged to a young bovine cut up with a cleaver. The excavation team interprets the channel as a place where blood flowing from sacrifices was directed and collected, and takes it as evidence that the cult of sacrifice was practised together with the cult of fire.

Sacrificial pits found in earlier years contained the skulls of cattle, donkeys and pigs, showing that the animals sacrificed were not all of one kind. In the excavation team's view, Herodotus' report that the Persians ate cattle and donkeys confirms the connection of these sacrifices with the Achaemenids. Herodotus also writes that the magi might kill any living creature except man and dog; the absence of dogs among the sacrifices is consistent with this. In this context Dönmez recalls a relief found in 1910 at Daskyleion on the shore of Lake Manyas, dated to the fifth century BC and thus contemporary with the Oluz fire temple. It depicts two magi with their mouths covered by veils, before an altar bearing the heads of a bull and a ram they have sacrificed. The veil must have been a precaution to keep the offering from being polluted by human breath; the cylindrical implements in the magi's hands show that the animals were killed by beating with mallet-like wooden tools, recalling the practice described by Strabo. A fire altar can also be seen in the upper left corner of the relief.

A stone basin on the western edge of the Persian Road, which approaches the hall of worship from the north, is interpreted as evidence of purification with water before entering the building and beginning worship. The excavation team draws attention to the similarity between this arrangement, in which personal purification was a precondition for joining in worship, and the practice in Islam. In a bothros on the western edge of the road, north of the hall of worship, a group of objects thought to belong to the temple's equipment was found: a portable fire vessel (ateşdan), skewers, ladles and vessels associated with the preparation of the sacred drink haoma, cleavers and knives used in sacrificial ceremonies, a saw and an axe. According to the excavation team, the fact that implements resembling these objects are still used in Zoroastrian rites today shows that Oluz Höyük witnessed an early, oral phase of the religion, before its sacred book, the Avesta, had been committed to writing.

Interpretations and Debates

The finds from Oluz Höyük are presented in the excavation team's publications together with some far-reaching interpretations. According to Dönmez, a community lived here that worshipped or revered fire, attached importance to belief in one god, and gave no weight to images of deities. This community was of Persian origin and formed one of the first congregations of early Zoroastrianism. In an interview Dönmez says that until that time Anatolia had lived in a polytheistic religious world shaped both by the Phrygian mother-goddess religion and by the Greek gods, and that this new religion, arriving from the east with the Medes and then the Persians, marked a turning point in Anatolian history. He adds that the first Anatolian example of the belief called tawhid in Islam and monotheism in the philosophy of religion took shape at Oluz Höyük.

The team's publications call this new religious order "archaic monotheism" or "early Zoroastrianism". Yet the same publications state plainly that archaeologists, historians and anthropologists do not agree on when and how monotheism arose. The contribution of the Oluz Höyük finds to this debate is significant, but presenting them in categorical terms such as "the first monotheistic temple" rests largely on the excavation team's own interpretation.

Another side of the debate concerns Herodotus. Herodotus writes that the Persians did not know how to make images of gods, temples or altars, that they called those who did so fools, and he attributes this to their not ascribing human form to the gods as the Greeks did. According to Dönmez, when Herodotus, born around 480 BC, was in his thirties, the Oluz fire temple was already in operation; the fact that the Histories never mention Amasya and its surroundings suggests that the historian never saw this region. The excavation team considers that the step from a simple fire temple enclosed by retaining walls to the concept of a roofed hall of worship may mark the beginning of a temple tradition among the Persians, and finds it significant that the idea of an enclosed temple, foreign to the Persians, should first have appeared on Anatolian soil. Because a break is observed in the tradition of enclosed temples in Central Anatolia after the Hittite period, the complex at Oluz Höyük is regarded as the first temple of the Iron Age in the Kızılırmak basin.

The excavation team points out that comparable finds have so far been identified neither in Iran nor further east in Afghanistan and the lands of Turan. On this basis it argues that North-Central Anatolia, that is, Pontic Cappadocia and Cappadocia, should be considered part of the sacred geography of the Avesta. This view invites a rethinking of the traditional account of the origins and spread of Zoroastrianism; it is not yet supported by a broad scholarly consensus, however, and awaits testing by further excavation.

The Hellenistic Age and the Pontic Period

After the end of Persian rule, life at Oluz Höyük continued without a break. The transition from Phase 2A of Level 2 to Level 1 is uninterrupted, and for this reason, according to the excavation team, the mound is the only settlement in the region able to give a cultural portrait of the fourth, third, second and first centuries BC that make up what is called the Hellenistic Age. Architectural Level 1 is dated to 200-47 BC and reflects a strong architectural tradition represented by houses built of roughly dressed rubble, streets and avenues. In Trench B a large complex of several rooms was uncovered, together with a small room containing a horseshoe-shaped oven and a stone-paved courtyard. Roof tiles were widely used to cover the buildings.

Coins were decisive in dating this level. A bronze coin minted at Apameia in Phrygia (modern Dinar) was found in a rubbish pit in Trench A, and two Pontic city coins dated to the end of the second and beginning of the first century BC were found on a stone pavement in Trench B. An iron helmet and lamps are also characteristic finds of this level. A marble vessel shaped like a shallow bowl, with three rectangular handles on its rim and a spout in the form of a stylised bull's head, is also noteworthy. Of this type, known from western Anatolia and the Aegean world and thought to have served as a mortar, the Oluz Höyük example is so far the easternmost found.

Skeletons found jumbled together in Level 5 of Trench B have left a separate question open. Since these adults appear to have been thrown carelessly into a pit rather than laid out in a grave, it has been suggested that they may have been victims of murder. A Punic necklace recovered from the mound, meanwhile, points to the settlement's links with distant trade networks.

The Medieval Settlement and the Cemetery

Level "0", the uppermost level of the mound, is represented by glazed pottery sherds mixed into the topsoil. Found only on the western half of the mound and dated to the tenth to fourteenth centuries, these sherds point to a small settlement of one or two houses rather than dense occupation. The excavation team connects this settlement with Virasia, shown on the Roman road map known as the Tabula Peutingeriana on the road from Amaseia to Euchaita (modern Beyözü, near Mecitözü in Çorum), 16 Roman miles west of Amaseia. If Virasia is Doğantepe (formerly Zara), five kilometres to the north, Oluz must have been a small farmstead-type settlement dependent on it.

One of the most unexpected results of the excavation is the medieval cemetery that came to light in the upper part of the mound. Already in the first season, burials with the head to the west, the face turned south and no grave goods had been identified as Islamic-period burials. By the end of the 2011 season ninety-nine burials, forming three separate levels, had been uncovered in the cemetery. Dönmez counts this cemetery among the earliest biological evidence for an early Turkish presence in Anatolia and argues that the Turkmen burials show that Turkish migrations began before Manzikert. In his view the cemetery also bears traces of the Oghuz pre-Islamic kurgan tradition during the period of transition to Islam. These interpretations too rest on the excavation team's assessment and remain open to discussion through detailed publication.

Daily Life and Small Finds

The everyday objects of Oluz Höyük, no less than its monumental buildings, offer tangible clues to the lives of the people of antiquity. Kitchen vessels, grinding stones, pestles and rubbing stones found in the excavation shed light on diet; terracotta spindle whorls and loom weights on weaving; and net weights on fishing. Samples of seeds and animal bones make it possible to understand what the inhabitants grew and which animals they kept.

The pottery and small finds also show that the mound was part of a wide network of contacts. The neck of a large krater found in Level 2 bears a cloud-shaped motif not previously seen in Central Anatolian Iron Age pottery, together with the heads of stags facing each other, their antlers drawn in an exaggerated manner. The large triangle motifs on the breast-shaped vessel recall the Late Iron Age "triangle ware" that spread across Eastern Anatolia, Azerbaijan and western Iran after the Urartian period. Some bowls with a dark red slip and an S-shaped profile evoke Achaemenid vessels. Pottery, seals and metal objects found around the Persian-period buildings reflect the wealth of the ruling group that lived here. The blending of Iranian style and local tradition in these finds shows that at Oluz Höyük different cultures lived intermingled with one another.

The Site Today and the Amasya Museum

Oluz Höyük is not open to visitors today; the finds from the excavations are displayed to the public in the Amasya Museum. The excavation team has announced its aims of uncovering, for the first time in Anatolia, a Persian settlement over a wide area, of preserving and displaying its permanent archaeological features, and of carrying out conservation and restoration work on the altar of Kubaba. The mound is also a training ground for students of archaeology and conservation. Provincial officials who have visited the excavation have likewise declared that every support will be given to the work.

The results of the excavation have been presented to an international readership in Turkish journals as well as in the proceedings of congresses on Black Sea archaeology and in publications in English and Russian. Dönmez recalls that when they began the excavation they hoped to dig an ordinary Central Anatolian mound and solve some problems of the Iron Age, that they expected neither a Persian city, nor a temple, nor an audience hall, but that they found themselves facing "an entirely different world". In his view the mounds of Anatolia, whether excavated or not, are monuments that hold the true documents of the country's historical past, and they must be protected and handed on to future generations.

Chronology

4th millennium BC: Early Bronze Age settlement (Level 9); a stone casting mould, spindle whorls and handmade pottery.

15th-13th centuries BC: Settlement of the Hittite Great Kingdom period (Levels 7-8); stone seal, bronze sickle, bull figurine and bull-headed vessel.

1200-1150 BC: Hittite Collapse Period; remains of a religious ceremony in which wheat and vetch seeds were burned (Level 7B2).

9th-7th centuries BC: Early and Classical Phrygian periods (Levels 5-6).

c. 600 BC: Construction of the altar of Kubaba; settlement of Phrygian character in Level 4 (600-500 BC).

c. 450 BC: Settlement of an Achaemenid group of Persian origin at the mound; construction of the fire temple and the hall of worship.

425-300 BC: Level 2B; phase of use of the Persian Road, the mansion, the fire temple and the sanctuary.

300s BC: Destruction of the fire temple in the process begun by Alexander's campaign in Asia; the fire temple stands at least until 300-250 BC.

200-47 BC: Hellenistic and Pontic settlement (Level 1).

10th-14th centuries: Small medieval settlement (Level "0") and Islamic-period cemetery.

1926: H. H. von der Osten visits the large mound on the edge of the "Olas plain".

1997-1999: Şevket Dönmez identifies the mound during his surveys in Amasya.

2007: First systematic excavation season on behalf of Istanbul University, 6 August-5 September; archaeogeophysical survey.

2010: The altar of Kubaba begins to emerge.

2011: Ninety-nine burials uncovered in the medieval cemetery.

2013: Discovery of the Sacred Fire Pit.

2017: The remains are recognised as belonging to a fire temple and sanctuary.

2018: Twelfth season; the building with six column bases announced as an apadana and throne hall, and the Hittite bull figurine.

2020: Discovery of the sacrificial channel south of the fire temple.

2021: Ceremonial remains of the Hittite Collapse Period and a bone falcon idol.

2023: Publication of the article presenting the fire temple and hall of worship as the first temple of Iron Age Cappadocia.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Official sources

Other sources

Online sources