Acropolis of forgotten kingdom uncovered thanks to Italian excavations in southern Cappadocia

ANSAmed, 10-2-2012

Numerous archaeological excavations are underway at a huge site in Anatolia which will uncover an ancient and rich yet forgotten kingdom known as Tuwana from the darkness of history, which will be featured in an open-air museum. The news was reported by Lorenzo d’Alfonso, an Italian archaeologist leading the joint mission by the University of Pavia and NYU, who provided details on the excavation campaign in a press conference in Istanbul this month, during which the details of the Italian archaeological missions in Turkey were explained. This “new discovery” from the pre-classical age which “needs to be continued” in southern Cappadocia took place in Kinik Hoyuk, the scholar said, referring to a site mainly involving the beginning of the first millennium BC. The area is “fully” part of the “forgotten kingdom” of Tuwana, said d’Alfonso, known until now through hieroglyphics and from several sources from the Assyrian Empire, but “never studied archaeologically”: “A completely intact site that has been left untouched”, trying to “place it historically to understand which civilisation it belonged to and what it’s role was in the region”. Kinik Hoyuk, the archaeologist said, is “one of the major sites” in terms of size in pre-classical Anatolia, if you leave the capital of the Hittites out: the most conservative estimates say that it spans 24 hectares “but topographers say that it could cover 81 hectares”.

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