| Description |
Situated by the foothills of the Eastern Taurus Mountains in the large and fertile alluvial Malatya Plain on the right bank of the Euphrates at the confluence of Değirmendere. In 1976 the mound appeared as an elongated hill oriented E-W, 150 m long and 28 m wide. It would originally have been wider but its sides have beeing cut into by earth quarrying. The extreme west of the site, somewhat higher and rich in sherds of historical periods, was untouched. The neolithic deposits appeared over all the excavated surface, disturbed only in the east as well as in the west by a Medieval cemetery of the 13th century.
Although the occupation was continous, the excavators divided it into three phases on the basis of the evolution of the architecture and that of the artifact assemblage: The early phase ( Levels 13-9), the middle phase (Levels 9-5) being restricted only to the east zone and the late phase (Levels 4-1) reserved to the east and west zones. |