Boncuklu Höyük: a village of mud-brick houses

The explanations distinguish finds, interpretations and open questions. Sources appear at the end of the page.

What the source says

The project page on the University of Liverpool website is a research impact case study, titled "The Boncuklu Project - REF 2021 Case Study". According to it, Boncuklu Höyük is the site of a 10,500-year-old village near the city of Konya, on the high Anatolian plateau of central Turkey. The site contains evidence of mud-brick houses which, the page says, are the remains of one of the oldest villages in the world, dating to 8500 BC/BCE. Source 1.

What has been excavated

Since 2006 the project has completed two months of fieldwork every year, followed by work throughout the year in international laboratories. It is directed jointly by Douglas Baird of the University of Liverpool and Andrew Fairbairn of the University of Queensland. So far the remains of 22 buildings have been excavated. According to the page, the team has learned from them how the people of Boncuklu made their homes, what food they ate, which objects they used and how they buried their ancestors; the page itself does not set out those findings. Source 1.

Dating and placement

The page expresses the village's age in two ways: "10,500 year old" and "8500 BC/BCE". The article gives both as worded and does not calculate between them. The Met's timeline dates the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of Anatolia to about 11,000-6900 BCE, and 8500 BCE falls within that range; the article is therefore placed in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of Anatolia. The project page does not use the term "Pre-Pottery" itself and gives no range of years for the site's phases. Sources 1, 2.

What the page does not say

The page presents the project as an opportunity to investigate the reasons for the appearance of the first village farming communities in central Turkey, and to understand better the spread of farming through Anatolia into Europe. That is a research aim, not a finding: the page names no plant, animal or food and describes no particular house, burial or object. Anyone who wants to know what the village looked like must turn to the project's scholarly publications, which the page mentions and which were not read here. Source 1.

Local heritage

Much of the page concerns the project's impact outside academia: an on-site visitor centre, freely available information in Turkish and English for the public, tourists and school children, and educational resources used in the schools of Hayıroglu village. According to the page, Boncuklu material will feature in a Neolithic permanent exhibition in the new archaeology museum in Konya; the page gives no date, so it cannot tell us whether that exhibition has opened. Source 1.

Scope of reading: the project page on the University of Liverpool website and the Met timeline page "Anatolia and the Caucasus, 8000-2000 B.C." were read on 24 October 2026. The Boncuklu excavation publications were not read, so this page gives no house plans, levels, radiocarbon dates or individual finds. The article on Göbekli Tepe presents another site that this site places in the same period.