page_title: Alaca Höyük
section_title: Bronze Age
hierarchical_section_title: Alaca Höyük / History / Bronze Age
caption_attribution_description: The Sphinx Gate, 14th century BC, Alacahöyük, Turkey Alacahöyük
context_page_description: Alacahöyük or Alaca Höyük is the site of a Neolithic and Hittite settlement and is an important archaeological site. It is situated in Alaca, Çorum Province, Turkey, northeast of Boğazkale, where the ancient capital city Hattusa of the Hittite Empire was situated. Its Hittite name is unknown: connections with Arinna, Tawiniya, and Zippalanda have all been suggested.
context_section_description: During the Early Bronze Age, the mound was the center of a flourishing Hattian culture. It has been continuously occupied ever since, until today's modern settlement in the form of a small village. The standing and distinguishing remains at Alacahöyük, however, such as the "Sphinx Gate", date from the Hittite period that followed the Hatti, from the fourteenth century BC.
  Thirteen shaft-grave "Royal Tombs" (EBII, c. 2350–2150 BC) in Alacahöyük contained the dead in fetal position facing south. They were richly adorned with gold fibulae, diadems, and belt buckles and repoussé gold-leaf figures.
  According to Trevor Bryce:
  ″There is a theory that the occupants of the tombs were not from the native Hattian population of central Anatolia, but were Kurgan immigrants from the region of Maikop in southern Russia, who spoke an Indo-European language and perhaps became rulers of the local Hattian population.″
  However, Hittitologist J.G. Macqueen suggested that these tombs, while constructed by an Indo-European people, were not constructed by Anatolian-speakers, such as Hittites:
  "[...] there is no sign of any spread of this kurgan culture further south in Anatolia, so it cannot be linked to the spread of Hittite, to say nothing of Palaic or Luwian. The language of the rulers who were buried in the Alaca tombs, although probably Indo-European, was almost certainly not Proto-Hittite."
  Many of the artefacts discovered at Alacahöyük, including magnificent Hattian gold and bronze objects found in the Royal Tombs, are housed today in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara. Among these artefacts are gold and electrum standing cups and other vessels. The most unusual are the Alaca Höyük bronze standards; bulls or stags on pedestals whose purpose remains the subject of debate. The standards are cast in copper, many in the form of flat circles, half-circles or squares that are filled with an openwork network of cross bars, central crosses, and swastikas. Leonard Woolley found that the Royal Tombs "seem to belong to the end of a period, as marked by a stratum of destruction and the burning of the citadel. The culture which the tomb objects illustrate does not continue into the next historical phase, that of Kültepe". Modern assessment finds that the site continued as a flourishing community to the end of the Late Bronze Age. There was also a sizable occupation in Phrygian times.
caption: The Sphinx Gate detail
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