Erbaba Höyük

Excavation and evidence

Erbaba lies near the lake, about ten kilometres from Beyşehir town according to the regional prehistory study. Jacques and Louise Bordaz investigated the mound in the late 1960s and 1970s. Their reports describe superimposed occupation levels, architecture, pottery and stone tools rather than a standing monument with a single construction date.^[1][2]

The site is one of several Neolithic places in the Beyşehir–Suğla basin. Süberde and other excavated or surveyed sites help place Erbaba in a regional network; similarity between finds does not mean that every settlement was occupied at exactly the same time.^[3][4]

Reading a mound

Archaeologists infer repeated settlement from layers, construction traces and objects recovered in context. Later use of the landscape, modern roads and the present lake edge do not directly reproduce Neolithic conditions. Erbaba matters because it documents the basin long before the Hittite monuments or medieval town.^[1][3]

Location, excavation and dates

Ramazan Gündüz locates Erbaba about ten kilometres from Beyşehir town and 1.5 kilometres from the eastern lake shore. The mound rises about four metres above its surroundings and covers roughly 5,000 square metres. Ralph Solecki recorded it in a 1963 survey; Jacques Bordaz and colleagues excavated in six seasons between 1969 and 1978, exposing around 22 per cent of the mound.^[5]

Excavators distinguished three Neolithic levels. Gündüz reports later analyses placing Level III approximately 6700–6400 BCE and Level I around 6400–6000 BCE. These are ranges for archaeological phases rather than exact foundation and abandonment days. The reported levels do not show a later Bronze Age or medieval settlement on this mound.^[6]

Houses and ceramic traditions

Published excavation plans show adjoining buildings with a cellular layout, in part on stone foundations. The arrangement connects Erbaba with other Neolithic settlements studied in the Beyşehir–Suğla basin, but differences in date and preservation remain. The stone and room plans make the site a source for domestic architecture, not only for portable objects.^[7]

The excavation reports describe a large pottery assemblage, later compared with material from Çatalhöyük, Hacılar and regional mounds. Dark mineral-tempered cooking vessels occur among the earlier Level III forms; later red-slipped S-profile bowls offer another comparison. These typological links help order layers and regional exchange, but they do not imply that the settlements were identical.^[7]

A regional research sequence

Erbaba and Süberde were early excavation anchors for study of the basin. Gündüz records later surveys, including renewed prehistoric fieldwork in 2020–21, that located further Neolithic and Chalcolithic sites. Erbaba is therefore a well-excavated point in a wider archaeological network rather than the only early settlement near Beyşehir.^[8]