Deep within an octagonal church in the ancient city of Tyana, nestled in the town of Kemerhisar within the central province of Niğde’s Bor district — archaeologists have breached the surface of history, unearthing 18 of 42 identified Late Roman graves.
The excavations are being carried out under the Culture and Tourism Ministry’s Heritage for the Future Project, yielding significant new findings on burial traditions, social life and the historical fabric of the ancient city.
Osman Doğanay, head of the excavation team and a professor in the Department of Archaeology at Aksaray University, told the state-run Anadolu Agency that the 2026 excavation season began on April 1.
Now in its fourth month, the project is focused on bringing Tyana’s Roman aqueducts into tourism and the local economy, he said.
“Our work is currently concentrated on the central nave of the octagonal church, one of Tyana’s landmark monuments. The excavations are progressing very well and rapidly. We are working with several teams. This church is one of the areas we aim to make accessible for tourism,” Doğanay said.
Ömür Dilek Erdal, a professor in the Department of Anthropology at Hacettepe University and a member of the excavation team, said she joined the project to study the human skeletal remains uncovered at the site.
She said researchers began concentrating on the western nave of the church after determining that the graves were located there.
“We have been excavating the graves for the past two years. Since anthropological analyses of the human skeletal remains had not been conducted in previous years, I joined the excavation team. The church began to be built during the early period of Christianity and underwent several phases of renovation. We can see that the area was used as a necropolis,” Erdal said.
She noted that the examination of the skeletons has revealed that the church served as a burial ground during multiple periods.
“Our initial studies showed that the church did not contain graves from a single phase but rather a multilayered cemetery. While we expected to excavate graves arranged in a regular pattern, further work revealed that layered burials were actually more common. The evidence indicates that the site was used as a cemetery in four distinct phases. We can see that the church was built over structures dating to around the fourth century, or even the Late Roman Period and that it was abandoned sometime after the 10th century. The earliest burials suggest that the site was initially used for members of the local community,” she said.
Erdal added that archaeologists have begun uncovering more elaborate graves in the lower layers, suggesting that those buried during the church’s earliest phases may have been individuals of special status.
Recalling that the identification of graves began last year, Erdal said, “There were 25 graves prepared for excavation last year. As we cleared the surrounding area, we realized the number was increasing. We eventually identified about 42 graves and have excavated 18 of them. We will open two more graves this season, while the remaining 22 will be left ready for excavation next season.”
