Traces of the local people, the "Kashkas," are being sought in the sacred city of the Hittites, Nerik.

Archaeological work has been carried out at the mound in the Oymaağaç neighborhood since 2005.

Findings from the Middle Bronze Age and Iron Age are being unearthed in the area proven to be the sacred city of the Hittites, "Nerik".

Deputy Head of the Excavation Team and Associate Professor Dr. Mehmet Ali Yılmaz, an associate professor at the Department of Archaeology in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at OMU, told an Anadolu Agency (AA) correspondent that they have completed the 20th anniversary of the excavations at Oymaağaç Mound.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Yılmaz, explaining that they have been intensifying their work in the northwestern section of the mound for four years, said, "We have already obtained information about the Hittites on the top of the mound. We have unearthed the temple of the weather god here. At the very least, we have obtained data that can definitively say that this place is Nerik. But we had other questions. When was the settlement first established? We only had surface findings. We have some findings and radiocarbon dates that point to 4,500 BC to understand its early periods. New excavations were needed to understand this in a broader area. Now, we are continuing our excavations with a larger team under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism as part of the Heritage to the Future Project."

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Yılmaz explained that they initially excavated the Iron Age, the mound's most recent settlement phase. He said, "We identified Iron Age architecture across a wide area. We saw that this architecture was actually closely linked to the traditional architecture of the region. The precursor to traditional architecture appears here. Similarly, we saw wooden architecture and the use of the wood, adobe, and stone trinity among the Hittites. The same architecture can be seen in today's villages. Of course, it's not just the Iron Age. Besides the Iron Age, there's another period in the mound about which we knew very little before: the Middle Bronze Age. The Late Bronze Age was a period identified with the Hittites. Was there a settlement here immediately before that? This posed a question for us."

Pointing out that they have a small number of findings related to the Middle Bronze Age, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Yılmaz noted the following:

We had very few finds from the Middle Bronze Age, but our new excavations have now revealed a repertoire of Middle Bronze Age pottery. This is new information and is being evaluated within our work. So, excavations in this area may shed light on this period and provide us with more important information in the future. One of our main questions about earlier periods is, when did the sacred city of Nerik become sacred? In our view, sacredness is a persistent concept, and the local Kaskha people lived in this area before the Hittites. We know Kaskhas as a people present in this region, a definition we know from Hittite texts. When the Kaskhas lived in this region, what sacred element did the Hittites seek to seize control of the northern border from the Kaskhas and try to control it? And, as an unknown mystery, who exactly were the Kaskhas and what was their material culture? Where did they live? What kind of houses did they live in? We are trying to understand these things because they are the local people of this region. I believe that further excavations will also increase our knowledge of these local people.