Kestel is a tin mine of the Early Bronze Age, between 3200 and 2000 BC, in the lands of Celaller village in Çamardı, on the skirts of the Niğde mountains. Facing it across the valley is Göltepe, the ore-processing workshop and settlement that worked with it. The pairing is what makes the place remarkable: the raw material on one side, the metallurgy on the other.
The mining method can still be read on the rock. A fire was lit beneath the ore vein, and once the vein was thoroughly heated water was thrown on it so that it cracked. The workings run like a maze inside the mountain, galleries and all, over a total of one and a half kilometres.
Excavation at both sites turned up a great many ore-dressing tools. Crucibles at Göltepe, with tin slag still in them, showed that tin was being smelted here in quantity: melted in the crucible, poured into moulds and cast as ingots, then finally alloyed with copper to make bronze. That bronze went into every kind of tool, weapon and ornament of the Early Bronze Age — which is to say this hillside supplied one of the essential materials of its era. The work was carried out under the directorship of the Niğde Museum with Prof. K. Aslıhan Yener of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago as scientific director.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Niğde as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from -0.2 °C in January to 22.6 °C in July; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June, July, August and September; rainfall is heaviest in May (48 mm) and lightest in July (6 mm). Long-term means for 1935-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
