Hundreds of historical artifacts unearthed from Seyitomer Mound

KUTAHYA- Professor Nejat Bilgen, head of the excavation team, said that this year's works at the ancient site would be completed in November.

Bilgen said excavations were going on at a layer which is believed to have come into existence after a strong earthquake in Middle Bronze Age.

"In the last three months, we have had lots of findings mostly ceramic pots, goddess figurines, idols, as well as weapons made of metals and bones," he said.

"We are working together with 250 workers this year at a very large area. When we compare our findings with the amount of findings from other excavations in the country, it is really fantastic for us to reach more than 1,000 historical artifacts every year," he said.

This year, Seyitomer excavation team unearthed 554 artifacts so far and all of them have been sent to Kutahya Museum.

Seyitomer Mound is located in Seyitomer Lignite Company's coal reserve zone in Kutahya.

It is an ancient habitation site measuring 150x150 meters and originally was 23.5 meters high above its surroundings. The site will be excavated completely because the Lignite Company intends to mine 12 million tons of coal, worth 500 million TL, beneath it.

The site has been excavated before by the Eskisehir Museum in 1989 for one season and the Afyon Museum from 1990 to 1995. Both excavations managed to excavate only about one tenth of the mound.

The mound was inhabited during the Chalcolithic, Bronze, Phrygian (Iron), Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, and Seljuk periods, beginning about 5000 years ago.