Alalakh | Tell Atchana

TELL ATCHANA
ALALAKH EXCAVATIONS

Tell Atchana, Alalakh, is the capital of the long forgotten kingdom of Mukish in the second millennium BC, located in the Amuq Valley of Hatay, near present-day Antakya. Together with the neighboring site of Tell Tayinat, it is part of a multi-layered megacity shaped by the Orontes River.

Research History

Tell Atchana, Alalakh, is located along the major branch of the Orontes River in the Amuq Valley of Hatay, near present-day Antakya. Covering an area of 22 hectares, it is the largest Middle and Late Bronze Age (2200-1300 BC) settlement in the region and was the capital of the regional kingdom of...

Amuq Valley Regional Project

The Amuq Valley is located in Hatay, the most southern state of Turkey. Situated at a crucial junction between Cilicia and the Mediterranean coast on the west, Syria to the south...

Excavations at Tell Atchana

Alalakh was one of the most famous cities in the ancient world; part of the larger Yamhad kingdom in the Middle Bronze Age, vassal to the Mitannian kingdom in the Late Bronze Age, and incorporated into the Hittite...

Materials

The metallurgical footprint of LBA Tell Atchana/Alalakh, presented in Johnson (2020), was in no way what had been expected. As a LBA urban center, we had expected to see a relatively standard set of production practices associated with secondary metallurgy....

Climate and Geoarchaeological Research

Geological and Archaeological Traces of Climatic Changes in Amuq Valley during Holocene (TUBİTAK 1001)...

Bioarchaeology

Ancient DNA analysis is a rapidly growing field that can provide insight into the movements and relationships of both past groups and individuals. In partnership with the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, a remarkably large sample of individuals from Tell Atchana have been...

Archaeobotany

As a part of environmental archaeology, archaeobotany has its roots in the 19th century, and today it is still a developing sub-discipline worldwide. Essentially, it is the identification and interpretation of plant remains collected from archaeological sites...

Zooarchaeology

Zooarchaeology (or archaeozoology) can be defined as the science that systematically studies and interprets animal bones recovered from archaeological excavations with the help of other archaeological data and ethnographic observations. The aim of archaeozoology...

Experimental Archaeology

An important arm of the excavations at Tell Atchana has been the on-going series of experimental projects. Testing our understanding of ancient construction techniques and the social dynamics...