The story of Oylum Höyük

In a burnt layer of mud-brick houses on this mound near Kilis, archaeologists found a man buried with his knees drawn up to his belly. Oylum Höyük rises 7 km east-southeast of Kilis, beside the village of Oylum, and is one of Anatolia's largest mounds: 460 by 320 metres at its base, 22 metres high in the north and 37 in the south, its two hills joined by a saddle.

It sat on routes linking the Euphrates Valley, the Amik Plain, the Anatolian Plateau and northern Syria, and people lived here from the Chalcolithic Age to the Hellenistic period. Excavations begun in 1987 showed that early settlers ate grain along with broad beans, lentils, figs and grapes.

On the northern hill, work in 2007-2009 uncovered a copper axe and bronze figurines of a god and a divine couple, placed beneath a building's foundations, probably to win the gods' protection. Village houses now line the west and east slopes.