The excavation season at Direkli Cave in the Çağlayancerit district of Kahramanmaraş ended with the recovery of two bone piercing implements, and four perforated beads dating to about 13,000 years ago.
The artifacts were announced by excavation director Professor Dr. Cevdet Merih Erek of Ankara Hacı Bayram Veli University. “Calculating from today, we can say they belong to a period about 13,000 years ago,” said Erek, according to CNN Türk.
All six objects came from the cave’s seventh archaeological layer, which radiocarbon measurements placed around 11,000 BCE, he added.
“The differentiation of this tool industry, the use of different materials in different areas, indicates an industrial development level of the period,” Erek said, according to CNN Türk. He suggested that one bız likely drilled stone beads, while the other “may have been used in leather craftsmanship and making clothing items.”
The new beads join earlier ornaments from Direkli Cave. “The people of the period tended to adorn the dead like a living being to ensure continuity,” Erek said, noting that previous beads of bone and stone point to established practices of personal adornment and burial ritual by the end of the last Ice Age.
Erek described the cave’s slow sedimentation, explaining that three to five centimeters of deposit can represent 1,000 to 2,000 years. This gradual build-up, he said, means deeper layers will likely yield even older cultural horizons.
Work at nearby Eşek Deresi Cave supports the broader chronology. “Excavations carried out in Eşek Deresi Cave and Direkli Cave show the existence of a cultural development of Anatolian origin dating between 8,500 and 14,000 BCE,” Erek said.
He called Direkli Cave “a resource that continues to shed light on human history” in the Kahramanmaraş region and stated that the team plans to extend the excavation grid downward to reach Late Upper Palaeolithic levels.
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