Living in the Lower Town at Kınık Höyük (Niğde). Preliminary Report on the 2021-2022 Campaigns in Anatolia

Excavations at the site of Kınık Höyük have brought to light over the past twelve years several occupational phases dated to the first Millennium BCE both on the acropolis and in the lower town, especially for the Middle Iron Age and the Hellenistic period. Since 2021 the University of Firenze joined the University of Pavia (Italy), NYU-ISAW (USA) and Dokuz Eylül University in Izmir (Turkey) in the excavations at the site of Kınık Höyük, and since 2022 the same university took over in the management of the project. This article is a preliminary report on recent excavations area D2-3, located in the lower town, where archaeologists could identify six phases of occupation and two large primary contexts dated to the beginning of the Middle Iron Age, that provide new insights on every-day assemblages and inventories produced locally and the architectural and archaeological context they are related to. The most interesting element in terms of urban layout and structure is related to the construction of the massive defensive fortification of the lower town, that seems to be related so far to the earliest occupation of the Iron Age lower town, i.e. possibly at the end of the Early Iron Age. A selection of the materials and a detailed report on deposits and architecture provides the reader with the archaeological data collected mainly in the campaign 2022 and 2021 in the lower town excavations, while a general overview on the urban fortification of the acropolis allows a general picture of the whole settlement defensive system and space organisation.