Süberde Höyük

A Neolithic site

Süberde was investigated in the 1960s and is discussed with Erbaba in studies of the basin’s Neolithic. Its archaeological evidence belongs to a much earlier landscape than the surviving medieval buildings of Beyşehir. The site is important for comparing settlement and material culture across the lake district.^[1][2]

A recent re-examination of obsidian from Süberde identifies links with the Göllüdağ and Nenezi Dağ sources in Cappadocia. This is evidence for movement of material or exchange networks; it does not by itself reveal the exact route travelled by any individual.^[3]

A regional comparison

Süberde and Erbaba demonstrate that the Beyşehir area was occupied long before the later Hittite spring sanctuary at Eflatunpınar. Their relationship is best understood through published excavation sequences and objects, not a single imagined continuous town.^[2][1]

The finds and their later study

Süberde, also called Görüklük Tepe in the 2024 archaeological paper, is described there as a late Pre-Pottery Neolithic settlement. Jacques Bordaz's excavations in the 1960s recovered chipped stone tools that entered the Konya Museum collection. That collection matters because it can be examined again with techniques unavailable to the original excavators. The authors revisited it nearly sixty years later, connecting old excavation material with new laboratory measurements rather than presenting a new excavation of the mound.^[4]

The team used portable X-ray fluorescence to compare the chemistry of obsidian artefacts with known volcanic sources. Most of the analysed pieces match Göllüdağ, with a smaller contribution from Nenezi Dağ; both sources lie in Cappadocia. Their technological and typological study found no major difference in how material from the two sources was used at Süberde. Provenance identifies raw-material connections across central Anatolia, but the measured artefacts cannot identify the individuals who carried them or prove one exclusive exchange route.^[5]