A symposium to present the new results of the archaeological excavation in Arslantepe will be held on October 4-6, 2018. The symposium is organised by Sapienza and the Inönü University of Malatya with the participation of the Italian Cultural Institute in Istanbul and the local authorities of the Province of Malatya.

Academics from various countries (Italy, Germany, United States and Turkey) will be present to celebrate the important results that have been reached at the archaeological site by Sapienza University. The archaeological mission, which has been ongoing for many years, is directed by Prof.Marcella Frangipane from the Department of Antiquities. The archaeological site at Arslantepe, which is part of the university’s major excavation site, has yielded unique findings and is inserted in the short list for UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

Sapienza speakers include Teodoro Valente, Deputy Rector for Research, Innovation and Technology Transfer, and Giorgio Piras, Director of the Department of Antiquities.

Arslantepe 

The archaeological site of Arslantepe presents a long and uninterrupted chronological sequence of settlements that spans from the Late Chalcolithic (1-5) to the Byzantine Era. The excavations have allowed archaeologists to understand the key role of the site, both in the prehistoric and proto-historic periods, at the dawn of the rise of cities and the formation of states. 

Arslantepe is a tell, an artificial hill formed by the superimposition of millennia of settlement layers. Indeed, it was occupied uninterruptedly from at least the 5^thmillennium BC until the Roman and Byzantine Eras, when it became a small agricultural village (4-6^thcenturies AD) and the large Melitene Castrum was erected along the course of the Euphrates (on the site of today’s city of Eski Malatya). 

Although the modern city of Malatya conserves the “historical” toponym, it was not founded until 1838. The fascinating story of this area is testified by the long succession of settlements that, superimposed one upon the other, formed the tell of Arslantepe, a large artificial hill that stands 30 metres high over a surface area of 4 hectares.