Boncuklu Höyük
Boncuklu Höyük · Boncuklu · Beaded Mound
Early Central Anatolian Aceramic/Early Ceramic Neolithic·Central Anatolian Neolithic (Konya Plain local)·🇹🇷 Konya Province, Central Anatolia (Konya Plain), Turkey
About
About Boncuklu Höyük
Ancestor village to Çatalhöyük (c.8500–7500 BCE) on the Konya plain where oval, semi-subterranean wattle-and-daub houses cluster around lime-plastered hearths, and burials under floors already show cranial plastering and obsidian-bead wealth — 'boncuk' = bead. Douglas Baird's excavations proved sedentary foragers turned cultivators here centuries earlier than thought, with wild-crop processing and early sheep management; the houses' continuous rebuilding prefigures Çatal's agglutinative tell logic but at a humbler scale.
Why it mattersDirect genealogical predecessor to Çatalhöyük; earliest bead-intensive symbolic economy on Konya Plain.
Open questions
Mysteries & theories
Mysteries
- 01Why bead wealth concentrates in sub-floor burials?
- 02How did wild-crop tending become cultivator without Levantine model?
Theories
- 01Local Anatolian domestication pathway independent of Fertile Crescent core
Theories are interpretations, not findings. The seal above tells you how much scholarly weight the place carries.
History
How it came to be
- Built
- c.8500–7500 BCE
- Period
- Early Central Anatolian Aceramic/Early Ceramic Neolithic
- Culture
- Central Anatolian Neolithic (Konya Plain local)
- Builders
- Konya Plain foragers transitioning to farming
- Purpose
- Sedentary marsh-edge village, bead and obsidian exchange
- Abandoned
- c.7500 BCE (shift to nearby Çatalhöyük East?)
- Rediscovered
- 2006 Douglas Baird (Liverpool) Konya Plain survey; 2010– excavation
- Excavation
- Excavation ongoing
2006
Identified in Konya Plain survey as Çatalhöyük predecessor
c.8300 BCE
Oval houses with plastered burials in use
On the ground
Structures & features
37.7518° N · 32.8648° E · 1015 m · 3 mapped features
Oval House 6 (plastered hearth)
houseSemi-subterranean oval house with lime-plaster hearth and burial pit
37.7519° N · 32.8649° EBurial cluster under floor
burialFlexed burials with obsidian and shell bead headdresses
37.7518° N · 32.8647° EMidden and marsh-edge zone
middenDump with wild einkorn and caprine remains
37.7517° N · 32.8646° E
Gallery