Why is Ayanlar Höyük important?

A very large site nobody had dug

Ayanlar Höyük — also recorded as Gre Hut — lies about 30 km west of Şanlıurfa. It was identified during surface surveys in 2013 and published by Bahattin Çelik in Documenta Praehistorica in 2017.

The scale is the headline. The mound covers roughly 14 hectares, measuring about 250 by 300 metres and rising close to 10 metres above the surrounding bedrock. Its surface breaks into multiple hillocks rather than forming a single rise — a pattern seen at other large Neolithic sites in the region.

For comparison, that puts Ayanlar in the size class of Göbekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe. It is not a minor outlying station.

What the surface material suggested

Before excavation, the case for Ayanlar rested on surface survey and on artefacts held in the Şanlıurfa Museum.

Those finds were assessed as sharing characteristics with material from Körtik Tepe, Göbekli Tepe, Nevalı Çori and Karahan Tepe — which is a striking range, spanning the Tigris region as well as the Urfa group.

On that basis Çelik dated the site between the early PPNB and middle PPNB. That is a survey-based assessment, and excavation may revise it.

Excavation began in 2025

Ayanlar was added to the Taş Tepeler project as its twelfth active excavation, with work beginning in September 2025. The launch drew international attention, including the participation of Japanese Princess Akiko Mikasa — part of a broader Turkish–Japanese archaeological collaboration that also operates at Harbetsuvan Tepesi.

This means everything published about Ayanlar's interior is, at the time of writing, extremely new or not yet published at all. What exists is a large mound, a survey-based date, and a first season.

The Japan connection

Ayanlar is dug with the full support of the Chiba Institute of Technology, and the ground was broken on 19 September 2025 by Princess Akiko of Mikasa, alongside Türkiye's culture minister.

The detail worth knowing is the tool. The ceremonial hoe she used was the same one her grandfather held at the groundbreaking of Kaman-Kalehöyük, the long-running Japanese excavation in central Türkiye.

Her grandfather was Prince Takahito, Prince Mikasa — brother of Emperor Hirohito, and a working scholar of the ancient Near East rather than a ceremonial patron. He studied Semitic languages, founded Japanese societies for Near Eastern studies, and spent decades building the academic relationship between Japan and Anatolian archaeology. Princess Akiko is honorary president of the Prince Mikasa Foundation, set up in 2017 to support the institute his work made possible.

So the same object has now opened two excavations in Türkiye, two generations apart. Japan also works at Harbetsuvan Tepesi, where a Turkish–Japanese team has excavated since 2022, and is one of 21 foreign institutions among the 36 now involved across the twelve sites.

For a site with almost no published interior, this is the most concrete thing that can be said about Ayanlar: who is digging it, and how seriously.

Why it matters

The obvious reason is potential. A 14-hectare Pre-Pottery Neolithic mound that has never been excavated is one of the largest unopened questions in the region.

The less obvious reason is what it says about the state of knowledge. Ayanlar was sitting in the landscape, known since 2013, visibly enormous, and it took until 2025 to begin digging it. There are more sites in this region than there are excavation teams, seasons and funding to address them.

That should shape how anyone reads confident statements about Taş Tepeler. The picture is being assembled from a small number of excavated sites in a landscape containing many more.

How to hold it honestly

Ayanlar is currently a site of scale and promise, not of established results. It would be wrong to describe its buildings, imagery or chronology with the confidence appropriate to Göbekli Tepe.

What can be said: it is large, it is Pre-Pottery Neolithic, its surface material connects it to both the Urfa sites and the Tigris sites, and it is now being excavated.

Anything more specific should be expected to come from the excavation over the next several seasons — and to change.