Archaeologists Found a Lost 4,000-Year-Old Seaside Settlement Near Troy Hiding Pottery Never Seen in the Region Before

On the Anatolian shore of the Dardanelles, on the same peninsula as Troy, archaeologists have identified a settlement that nobody had recorded before. They call it Yaylatepe Höyük. Surface finds show that people lived there between the end of the Late Chalcolithic and the beginning of the Late Bronze Age, a span of roughly 5,500 to 3,500 years ago. Among the pottery is a type of vessel with dark, wavy marks that has not turned up in Bronze Age collections from the Troy region before.

Where the site sits

Yaylatepe Höyük lies on the Biga Peninsula, the ancient Troad, about 3.2 kilometers northeast of Kangırlı village in the Lapseki district of Çanakkale, Türkiye. The mound measures about 200 meters long and 160 meters wide and sits on a natural rise that slopes toward the strait. A natural bay lies about 600 meters to the west, and the Güvenlik Stream runs to the east. Silt from the Umurbey Stream has changed the coastline over time, so the site may have stood closer to the sea in the Bronze Age than it does today.

A settlement found on purpose

The team did not stumble on the mound. Meral Başaran of Fırat University worked within the Dardanelles Bronze Age Ports Research Project and started from a theory: settlements on the two shores of the strait may have been founded in matching positions, facing each other. The researchers used maps to pick out hills near bays and river mouths, then checked them in the field. They identified Yaylatepe in 2024 and surveyed the surface again in 2026. The finds include dense scatters of pottery, terracotta loom weights, chipped stone tools and other stone objects. Farming has damaged the mound.

Pottery that does not match the neighbors

The standout finds are “bone-burnished” vessels. The burnishing tool left dark, wavy marks on their surfaces. Başaran links these wares to Middle Bronze Age layers at Beycesultan in inland western Anatolia. The same type has not been documented in Bronze Age assemblages from the Çanakkale region, including Troy and Maydos. That suggests the pottery tradition at Yaylatepe had ties beyond its immediate area, although the study says excavation data are needed to define that relationship.

Other pottery looks more familiar. The team found a base fragment of a depas amphikypellon, a characteristic Early Bronze Age III form, plus a Middle Bronze Age bowl with a red cross and various red-slipped vessels. Of 54 diagnostic fragments the team analyzed, about 62 percent were wheel-made, and at least 12 showed use of a fast wheel. The researchers read the thinner, more even pastes of Early Bronze Age III and later vessels as a sign of technical specialization. Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age material clusters on the western slopes, Middle Bronze Age material sits on higher ground, and Late Bronze Age material lies at the summit.

A neighbor across the water

From the mound, observers can see Asartepe, a settlement near Ilgardere village in Gelibolu on the European shore. The two sites lie about 6.7 kilometers apart in a straight line. A GIS visibility analysis found nothing in the terrain that blocks the view, and field observers saw Asartepe from Yaylatepe in favorable weather. The paper describes the two as contemporaries that could see each other. Even so, being able to see each other does not prove the two communities met regularly by boat. The researcher says studies of wind, currents and coastal geography are needed to understand prehistoric sea travel here.

What is still unknown

Every find so far comes from the surface, so the site’s layers and its phases of development cannot yet be worked out. The links to Beycesultan and the wider interior remain provisional until someone excavates. For now, Yaylatepe adds a new dot to the map of Bronze Age coastal settlement around the Dardanelles and gives researchers a concrete place to test ideas about how people moved along and across the strait.

Source: Başaran, M. (2026). “Yaylatepe Höyük: Ceramic Evidence and Intervisibility of a Newly Identified Bronze Age Coastal Settlement in the Troad.” Arkeoloji Dergisi, 37, 69-87. DOI: 10.51493/egearkeoloji.1894942. Coverage: Arkeonews, 30 October 2026.

Image credit: View of Yaylatepe Höyük from the south. M. Başaran / ÇALYA Project (2024), CC BY 4.0.