Oylum Höyük is a settlement mound about seven kilometres east-southeast of Kilis, south of the Gaziantep road and right beside Oylum village. With a base of 460 by 320 metres it is one of the largest mounds in south-eastern Anatolia, and it has been lived on without a break from the Late Chalcolithic to the present day. Excavation began in 1987; the finds are shown in the Kilis Museum, and olive pits found on the mound document 4,500 years of the olive's history.
Kilis and its surroundings lie in the northwestern part of what is called the Fertile Crescent, on the historic overland routes connecting Anatolia to the Near East. Through that history the area has been held in turn by Babylonians, Hurrians and Mitanni, by Arameans, Assyrians and Persians, by Macedonians, Romans and Byzantines, and by Seljuks, Mamluks and Ottomans.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Kilis as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 5.9 °C in January to 28.2 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in April, May and October; rainfall is heaviest in December (85 mm) and lightest in July (3 mm). Long-term means for 1959-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
