Denizli – Çal – Dayılar
A Neolithic Mound in the Upper Meander Basin
Excavation Director: Prof. Dr. Fulya DEDEOĞLU
A settlement, some 8,000 years of history
In Dayılar, in the Çal district of Denizli, at the start of the natural route linking the Çivril–Baklan plains, watered by the Büyük Menderes (Great Meander), to the Çal Plateau, rises a natural hill formed in the Neogene. What turned Ekşi Höyük into an archaeological settlement is the human life that accumulated on this natural rise over thousands of years.
Villages founded by Neolithic communities were renewed one upon another on the hill; buildings, open areas, places of production and the traces of daily activities gradually formed the archaeological fabric of the mound. Ekşi Höyük is an important settlement for understanding the prehistory of the Upper Meander Basin, and in particular the region’s Neolithisation. Systematic surveys across the plains and uplands of the basin revealed numerous settlements dated to the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods; among them, excavations began in 2015 at Ekşi Höyük, which stands out for its state of preservation and research potential.
The excavations show that the settlement’s history reaches back to the first half of the 7th millennium BC. The earliest phases are marked by rectangular buildings with red lime-plastered floors, while later periods saw a different settlement layout in which apsidal and rectangular buildings, open areas, hearths, ovens and storage units were used together. After the Neolithic occupation the hill was also used in later prehistoric periods, and after a long interval it became a cemetery in the 10th–11th centuries AD.
The architecture and finds uncovered at Ekşi Höyük allow us to understand not only where and when the communities living here lived, but also how they lived. Traces of weaving, clay and bone working, chipped-stone production, cereal processing and storage — considered together with a way of life based on farming and herding — reveal a village order in which production and daily life were intertwined. The buildings and the open areas around them show how different activities were organised within the settlement and how the community reshaped its space over time.
The aim of the Ekşi Höyük Excavation Project is therefore not only to bring buildings and finds to light. The research seeks a holistic understanding of the development of settled life in the Upper Meander Basin: the relationships of village communities with their environment, their subsistence strategies, modes of production and spatial organisation. The excavations are carried out with contributions from fields such as geoarchaeology, archaeobotany, archaeozoology, bioarchaeology and archaeometry. The Ekşi Höyük Excavation is conducted with the permission of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Türkiye, on behalf of Ege University, under the direction of Prof. Dr. Fulya Dedeoğlu Konakçı.
The settlement's earliest phase is defined by red lime-plastered rectangular buildings. The first farming community of the Baklan Plain establishes the core of the mound.
Horseshoe-plan (apsidal) houses rise, some with ovens inside. The first phase of one apsidal house ended in fire and was carefully sealed — the rhythm of life pressed into the layers.
Although modern agriculture has eroded the upper layers, the evidence indicates that occupation continued, intermittently, into the Chalcolithic Age.
Thousands of years later, the abandoned mound is reused in the medieval period as a burial ground.
Following the surveys, the Ekşi Höyük Archaeological Excavation Project (EKAP) begins. Seven building levels have been documented over eleven seasons; work continues.
The Archaeology of the Millimetre
Every season, hundreds of drone frames are combined through photogrammetry into a centimetre-resolution digital elevation model of the mound. In the model below, colour encodes height — red is high, blue is low; the baulks and the hollow of the apsidal building can be read at a glance. As the soil is lifted — irreversibly changing the past — the memory of the dig is preserved in these records.
2026 Season · Interdisciplinary research team
Led by the excavation team's bioarchaeologist Prof. Dr. Başak Boz (Trakya University, Department of Archaeology), this in-person programme focused on the field and laboratory methods for human skeletal remains. The free, 35-hour course was held in cooperation with the Ege University Continuing Education Centre (EGESEM).
The 2017–2018 seasons of Ekşi Höyük appeared among the proceedings of the 41st Excavation Results Symposium.
"First Results and Observations on the Neolithic Period of the Upper Meander Basin" was published in Arkeoloji Dergisi XXIV.
Following the surveys, systematic excavation work began at the mound.
AddressEge University, Faculty of Letters, Department of Archaeology
Bornova 35100 · İzmir, Türkiye
Social mediaInstagram
InstitutionalThe Ekşi Höyük excavations are carried out on behalf of Ege University, with the permission of the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
