8,500-Year-Old Obsidian Mirrors Unearthed at Canhasan, Home to Anatolia’s Oldest Known Street

The Neolithic settlement of Canhasan in Karaman—long recognized for preserving Anatolia’s oldest known street—has yielded an extraordinary new discovery. During this year’s excavations, archaeologists uncovered a set of finely crafted obsidian mirrors dating back 8,500 years, along with decorated obsidian tools that reveal a distinct symbolic tradition within Central Anatolia’s early farming communities.

A Settlement Already Known for Its Early Urban Layout

Canhasan has drawn scholarly attention for decades because of its exceptional spatial organization. The site preserves one of the earliest intentionally planned passageways in Central Anatolia, reflecting a community already experimenting with guided movement, defined architectural blocks, and early concepts of shared space.

This structured layout—identified years earlier in Canhasan 3—has been fundamental to debates on how Neolithic groups transitioned from clustered households to more regulated settlement plans.

Obsidian Mirrors Reveal an Advanced Craft Tradition

What sets the 2025 season apart is the quality of obsidian craftsmanship. Excavations led by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Adnan Baysal, under Türkiye’s Legacy to the Future initiative, brought to light an obsidian mirror with a highly polished, reflective surface dated to around 6500 BCE.

Producing such a mirror required a demanding and highly skilled chaîne opératoire—one that suggests a workshop tradition deeply rooted in Anatolia. Baysal notes that mirrors of this type have so far only been found within the borders of modern Türkiye, reinforcing the idea of a locally developed technological evolution rather than an imported craft.

Alongside the mirror, the team uncovered obsidian tools marked with thin incised lines. These motifs have appeared repeatedly across seasons at Canhasan, indicating a stable decorative vocabulary unique to this community. While conceptual parallels exist at other Neolithic sites in Central Anatolia, the precise style documented here seems exclusive to Canhasan’s cultural sphere.

Repositioning Canhasan in Central Anatolia’s Neolithic Sequence

Although often overshadowed by the monumental reputation of Çatalhöyük, Canhasan is increasingly emerging as a pivotal site in charting the region’s cultural evolution.

Finds from Aşıklı Höyük, Boncuklu Höyük, Pınarbaşı, and Canhasan now form an interlinked sequence that spans several millennia of artistic and symbolic development. Within this framework, Canhasan appears to occupy a strategic middle phase—bridging earlier aceramic communities with the later architectural and symbolic complexity seen at Çatalhöyük.

As Baysal puts it, the site offers insights into “the first act” of Central Anatolia’s long Neolithic story: the origins of household identity, technological specialization, and communal expression.

Ancientist

Cover Image: Two decorated obsidian tools from the Neolithic layers of Canhasan in Karaman. The piece on the left bears parallel incised lines, while the example on the right features a wavy motif characteristic of the site’s symbolic tradition. Courtesy of the Canhasan Excavation Team.