In Türkiye, a dog’s paw prints survive on a 4,000-year-old Bronze Age mudbrick from a burned house

Four thousand years ago, a dog walked across a freshly shaped block of wet clay in western Anatolia. The animal left a line of paw prints, the clay dried, and builders used the brick in a house. Fire later destroyed that house, and the prints survived all of it. Archaeologists excavating Tavşanlı Höyük in Türkiye’s Kütahya province have now recovered the brick, and the country’s Culture and Tourism Ministry announced the find on 26 October 2026.

A large Bronze Age settlement in western Anatolia

Tavşanlı Höyük is a höyük, the Turkish word for a mound built up from layers of settlement over many generations. Reports describe it as one of the largest Bronze Age settlements in western Anatolia. Professor Erkan Fidan of Bilecik Şeyh Edebali University leads the excavation. Minister of Culture and Tourism Mehmet Nuri Ersoy announced the discovery of the prints, which date to about 4,000 years ago.

What the prints show

The prints sit on a mudbrick that the team found among the collapsed remains of a house. A fire destroyed that building, and the debris stayed buried until the modern excavation reached it. Researchers think a dog walked across the brick while the clay was still wet, before builders put the brick into a wall. The ministry’s announcement does not say how many prints the brick carries, and it does not describe the size or breed of the dog.

Mudbricks usually start as wet clay that workers shape in moulds and leave to dry in the open. Anything that crosses the drying bricks can leave a mark, and that explains why archaeologists find animal prints, and sometimes human ones, on bricks from many ancient sites. In this case the fire may have helped. Heat can harden clay, which could explain why the impressions lasted through the destruction and the centuries of burial, although the reports do not say so directly.

Why a small mark matters

Excavations usually recover pottery, tools and walls, which show what people built and used. Paw prints show something different: the animals that shared the settlement. The team says the find suggests dogs lived around the buildings at Tavşanlı Höyük. The researchers describe the marks as accidental, a snapshot of one ordinary moment in the brickmaking yard, and that is exactly why they carry weight. Nobody planned to record the dog, so the print gives a rare, unposed glimpse of daily life.

The announcement also keeps the claim modest. The prints suggest dogs were present near the houses. They do not tell us who owned the dog, whether it guarded the settlement, or what job it did. Those questions need other evidence, such as animal bones from the site.

What we still do not know

No journal paper or detailed excavation report accompanies the announcement yet, so the details above come from the ministry’s statement as relayed by media. The dating to about 4,000 years ago is an approximate figure, and the reports do not explain how the team arrived at it. Future publications from the excavation should show the brick itself in more detail and place it in the wider story of the house and the settlement.

Sources: HeritageDaily (Mark Milligan, 26 October 2026), based on an announcement by Türkiye’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism. No journal paper or DOI is available yet. Lead image: Türkiye’s Minister of Culture and Tourism.