The archaeological work carried out between 1968 and 1970 at Pulur, or Sakyol, a mound south of Çemişgezek district now under the Keban reservoir, showed that the district was settled in the Chalcolithic, between 5500 and 3500 BC. The excavation there turned up houses built like small forts, hearths, mortars, grinding equipment of various kinds, images of animals, and metal objects including bronze needles and picks.
Written history in the region, known as Išuwa in the Hurrian-Mitanni period, begins with the Subareans around 2200 BC.
The province took the name Tunceli by a law passed in 1935; before that it was known as Dersim. The word is a compound in the Zaza dialect from der, door, and sim, silver — silver gate in Turkish — and there is material bearing on it from the 4th century BC. Greek travellers appear to have called the place Daranis, and when Darius became king of the Persians in 519 BC the geographer Ptolemy recorded what is now Tunceli as Daranalis, a name that stayed in use for centuries.
