AT A GLANCE
Why go?
Horoztepe Hill (Horoz Tepesi) is a Bronze Age archaeological mound on the eastern edge of Erbaa, a town in Tokat Province along the Black Sea region of northern Turkey. Standing just 325 metres above sea level but rich with millennia of buried history, this unassuming hill yielded some of Anatolia's most spectacular Early Bronze Age metalwork when excavated in the 1950s — finds now displayed in Ankara and New York.↗↗
A Hill That Rewrote Anatolian Prehistory
In 1944, Professor Kılıç Ökten identified Horoztepe as an ancient settlement mound. The real discovery came a decade later: in 1954, labourers digging a grave in the adjacent cemetery struck a pit full of extraordinary bronze and electrum objects, and archaeologists Tahsin Özgüç and Mahmut Akok were called in to conduct a short rescue excavation in 1956–57. What they found — royal-priestly chamber graves filled with weapons, figurines, mirrors, sun discs, and musical instruments — proved that the lavish burial traditions of Alacahöyük were not unique to central Anatolia. Horoztepe became the third major site, after Alacahöyük and Mahmatlar, in the study of Early Bronze Age metallurgy and elite culture.↗
