Bronze Age · c. 1915–1595 BC · Beycesultan Höyük, Denizli Province, Turkey
Earliest indigo-dyed textile and nålbinding in Anatolia found in western Turkey
Two scraps of cloth from Beycesultan Höyük, carbonised by fire nearly 4,000 years ago, include a blue hemp fabric made with a single needle around 1915–1745 BC.
Peer-reviewed paper
Beycesultan Höyük, Turkey Two small pieces of carbonised cloth from Beycesultan Höyük, a large settlement mound in western Turkey, include the earliest known indigo-dyed textile from Bronze Age Anatolia. The pieces also include the first preserved example of nålbinding from Anatolia or the wider Near East. The older fragment has been radiocarbon dated to around 1915–1745 BC.
Associate Professor Çiğdem Maner of Koç University led the study. Her co-authors are E. Abay, R. Karadağ and E. Torgan Güzel, and the work is published in the journal Antiquity. Excavators found the fragments between 2016 and 2018, inside buildings that had burned in antiquity.
A large mound with a long history of digging
Beycesultan lies on the Çivril Plain in Denizli Province. It covers about 35 hectares, which makes it one of the largest settlement mounds in western Anatolia. The British archaeologist Seton Lloyd first dug there in the 1950s.
Lloyd identified more than 40 layers of occupation, running from the Late Chalcolithic to the end of the Bronze Age. Earlier finds at the site include the so-called Burnt Palace. This monumental Middle Bronze Age building was destroyed by fire in the early second millennium BC. Excavations resumed under Turkish leadership in 2007.
Cloth rarely survives in Anatolia, because humid soil destroys organic material. Earlier excavations at Beycesultan exposed large burned buildings but almost no fabric. In these two cases, the fire carbonised the textiles and so preserved them.
The older piece is hemp, looped by hand and dyed blue
The earlier fragment, catalogued as Tx1, comes from Room 3 of a Middle Bronze Age house. It belongs to the period of the Old Assyrian trading colonies. Under the microscope it showed no clear warp and weft structure.
Optical and scanning electron microscopy showed instead that it was made by nålbinding. In this technique, the maker forms and interlocks loops by hand, using one needle and a length of yarn. Threads are not interlaced on a loom.
Impressions of similar techniques are known on Early Bronze Age pottery in the Caucasus. However, no earlier physical example has been identified in Anatolia or the Near East.
The yarn is hemp, not wool or flax. Hemp is still grown in parts of the Çivril Plain today. A chemical test called high-performance liquid chromatography detected indigotin, the compound that gives indigo its blue colour.
The researchers think the dye most likely came from woad (Isatis tinctoria). Woad is a plant that grows naturally in Anatolia.
A loom-woven cloth and rooms full of textile tools
The second fragment, Tx2, dates to around 1700–1595 BC, in the Old Hittite period. It is a plain tabby weave made on a loom. This type of fabric is rarely found in Bronze Age contexts across Anatolia, Mesopotamia and the Caucasus.
Reports differ on its fibre. Archaeology News reports that it is also hemp. Arkeonews says the cloth is so heavily carbonised that microscopy only suggests it was made from plant fibres.
Both fragments lay in rooms full of textile tools. These included spindle whorls of different sizes, loom weights and needles. The room of the second fragment also held bronze needles and a weaving comb.
A disc-shaped stone weight lay directly on top of the blue cloth. Postholes in the same space mark where a loom once stood. The finds also support the use of a warp-weighted loom at the site.
The team reads the range of spindle whorl weights as evidence that yarn was spun to different thicknesses. It interprets the rooms as workshops for organised, specialised production. In the team's view, they were not used for casual repair work.
Blue cloth was a luxury in Bronze Age texts
Written records from the Old Assyrian and Hittite periods describe large-scale textile manufacture and trade. They mention wool, dyed garments and taxes paid in cloth.
Cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia and the Hittite world treat blue wool and garments as luxury goods for royalty and elites. They also list blue fabrics among tribute and diplomatic gifts. The Akkadian term uqnû referred to wool the colour of lapis lazuli.
Blue textiles were found in the tomb of Tutankhamun in Egypt. Aegean wall paintings show elite figures in garments with blue details.
Both reports on the study conclude that local producers at Beycesultan made such high-status fabrics alongside everyday cloth. No cuneiform tablets have been found at the site. Its ancient name remains unknown.
Sources
- Oldest indigo-dyed textiles and nålbinding technique found in Bronze Age Anatolia (Archaeology News)
- 4,000 Years of Innovation: Indigo-Dyed and Nålbinding Textile Discovered at Beycesultan Höyük (Arkeonews)
Paper: Maner Ç, Abay E, Karadağ R, Torgan Güzel E. Untwisting Beycesultan Höyük: the earliest evidence for nålbinding and indigo-dyed textiles in Anatolia. Antiquity. 2025;99(403):118-134. doi:10.15184/aqy.2024.194
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