The beginnings of village life
On the Konya Plain, a small settlement holds a much larger story: how people made a home, worked with plants and kept ties in a changing world.
- Ancient occupation · approximate
- 9400–7500 cal BCE
- Place
- The Konya Plain
- Research
- Excavation 2006–2022
Dates summarise the 2026 publication; the familiar 8300–7800 BCE range covers a more limited part of the sequence. The final full field study season was 2023. Read the chronology and its sources.
A long change, seen in small things.
Boncuklu helps us ask a better question than “when did farming begin?”: how did different ways of living fit together?
Find → method → interpretation. Follow the steps, and see where certainty ends.
Plants, seeds, possibilities
Explore this evidence ↗Small-scale cultivation was part of a wider life of gathering, hunting and wetland resources. Farming did not replace everything at once.
A house is more than its walls
Explore this evidence ↗Floors, hearths and rebuilding reveal repeated choices. Household life is reconstructed from many kinds of evidence.
Connections across a landscape
Explore this evidence ↗Obsidian, shells and biological evidence open different windows onto movement. Each has limits as well as possibilities.
Learn by asking what survives.
Use the bilingual booklets, a printable evidence worksheet and plain-language guides to turn an ancient place into a classroom conversation.
Open the learning resourcesA small place.
A careful visit.
Boncuklu Höyük is near Hayıroğlu in Karatay, Konya. Replica buildings and interpretation help explain the site; a visit is not a promise of an active excavation.
Confirm access and arrangements with the museum administration before travelling. Our checklist keeps the questions together.
Plan your visitThe excavation ends.
The questions stay open.
- 2006Excavation beginsResearch develops over successive seasons.
- 2022Final excavation seasonThe last season of digging, as reported by the team.
- 2023Study and analysisThe last full field study season.
- 2026Research reaches new readersA paper examines plants, stories and public archaeology.
Archaeobotanical storytelling: what gardens, replica houses and local knowledge can bring to archaeological learning.
Read the guide ↗Historical milestones: BIAA reports 2022–2023. Latest research: Chaddock, Fairbairn, Baird and Mustafaoğlu (2026). Sources and publications.