What is Ayanlar Höyük?

The short version

Ayanlar Höyük — also recorded as Gre Hut — is a Neolithic mound about 30 km west of Şanlıurfa, in southeastern Türkiye. It was identified during surface surveys in 2013 and published by Bahattin Çelik in Documenta Praehistorica in 2017.

For years it existed in the literature as a single survey paper and a drawer of finds in the Şanlıurfa Museum. In 2025 it became one of the active excavations of the Taş Tepeler programme, which studies the dozen or so Pre-Pottery Neolithic sites of the region as one connected landscape.

A very large mound

The scale is the headline fact. The mound covers roughly 14 hectares — about 250 by 300 metres — and rises close to 10 metres above the surrounding bedrock. Its surface breaks into several low hillocks rather than forming one clean rise, a pattern seen at other large Neolithic sites nearby.

For comparison, that is the size class of Göbekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe. Ayanlar is not a minor outlying station; it is one of the bigger sites in the whole group — which is part of why its late excavation is so striking.

What the surface finds suggested

Before excavation, the case for Ayanlar rested entirely on surface survey and on artefacts already held in the Şanlıurfa Museum, including a decorated stone vessel and a fragment of a carved leopard head.

Çelik assessed the material as sharing characteristics with finds from Körtik Tepe, Göbekli Tepe, Nevalı Çori and Karahan Tepe — a striking range that spans the Tigris region as well as the Urfa group. On that basis he dated the site broadly to the early-to-middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B. That is a survey-based assessment, and excavation may revise it.

Excavation began in 2025

Ayanlar was added to the Taş Tepeler project as its twelfth active excavation, with work beginning in September 2025 under a Türkiye–Japan partnership. The opening ceremony drew international attention, including the participation of Princess Akiko of Mikasa of Japan.

This means that almost everything about Ayanlar's interior — its buildings, its layout, whether it has T-pillars or special buildings — is, at the time of writing, either extremely new or not yet published. What exists is a very large mound, a survey-based date, and a first season.

One name to get right

Ayanlar Höyük is sometimes called Gre Hut. It should not be confused with Gre Filla, a separate Neolithic mound near Bismil in Diyarbakır province. The similar nicknames cause genuine mix-ups in popular coverage.

What is settled, and what is not

Settled: Ayanlar is a large (about 14 ha) Neolithic mound west of Şanlıurfa, surveyed in 2013, published in 2017, and excavated from 2025 within the Taş Tepeler programme.

Still open: its internal architecture, its precise dating, and its exact role in the network all await excavation. Ayanlar is a thinly published site whose most important findings have not been made yet — a place to watch rather than one with a settled story.