This year after the mid-season party the Boncuklu team had the opportunity to take a well-deserved break for the beginning of the Kurban Bayram holiday. This year thirteen of our number traveled to Cappadocia (three hours north-east of Boncuklu) for a fun-filled weekend of sight-seeing, museum-hunting, hiking, eating, wine-tasting, and […]

Zooarchaeology at Boncuklu
At Boncuklu we have a range of specialists working with human and animal remains found within the trenches. Zooarchaeology is the analysis of animal remains found in the archaeological record, which involves the identification of specific species utilised at the site and their age and sex, to learn about animal […]

Goodbye to our 2018 IFR Students
This year Boncuklu hosted six students for an accredited five-week fieldschool, through the Institute for Field Research (https://www.ifrglobal.org/), hailing from Australia, Canada, and the United States. They undertook one week of field trips to Çatalhöyük, Hattusa, Alaca, Eflatun Pınar, and a weekend trip to Aşıklı and obsidian sources, trips which […]

Introducing Boncuklu 2018
This year at Boncuklu, the focus of the excavation is on three separate trenches. Trench R is the newest trench at Boncuklu and is supervised by Maxime. A geophysical survey of the site was undertaken in 2015 which highlighted anomalies in the area of what is now Trench R. These […]

2018 BK Season is underway
Dear friends and colleagues, We are pleased to report that the Boncuklu Höyük 2018 season is now underway. Two weeks of preparatory work, un-backfilling the three trenches and erecting shade structures over them, culminated last week with the commencement of excavation proper. We hope to publish posts regularly this season […]

Scenes from dig life at BK
Here are a few scenes from life at Boncuklu’s dig house, including some of our more esoteric dighouse signs.

Trench update
Friday’s trench tour was the last of the season and discoveries continue to flow from the site. In Trench P excavation by Shelby has uncovered a series of repairs to the wall of Building 21 and the final floors of Building 20 are being removed so deeper deposits can be […]

Older, smaller, taller?
Dr Jess Pearson is shown here analysing some of the skeletons which we find buried below the houses and in the open areas between houses at Boncuklu. The years are not kind to the human remains we find, with age, rain and pressure of people and vehicles moving over the […]

Stakeholes on view after careful excavation
What is going on in this photo you ask? It is an image of one of our buildings and shows the edge of the building wall (left) with the depression in the centre left by the fireplace and, on either side, parallel rows of stakeholes. The floor of the building […]

Dig team official photo number 2
And breaking a tradition our second dig photo is on site! What a shock not to be outside the shelter for once. Here we are on Sept 4th in Trench P on our final trench summary tour of the season standing above Building 21. This week we start the site […]