At Yazılıkaya, also known as Midas Castle, archaeologists have uncovered a substantial section of ancient stone masonry that once helped defend the Phrygian stronghold in central Türkiye. A trial trench in an area tied to a watchtower exposed a wall standing about 2.60 meters high, built from four courses of carefully worked, bossed stone blocks.
The location tells the story as clearly as the stonework. The wall sits between rocky outcrops, closing a vulnerable passage where the plateau’s steep volcanic tuff formations did not form a complete barrier. Excavation director Professor Yusuf Polat of Anadolu University said the discovery changes what the team can document about the site’s defensive architecture because the fortification is no longer limited to bedrock traces alone.
For years, researchers tracked the fortification line through grooves, cuttings, stepped beds, and sockets carved into the bedrock, physical marks left behind after the original masonry vanished. Smaller surviving sections also turned up on the southeastern side of the fortress, but the newly exposed wall preserves the system on a larger scale and shows how the stonework locked into the site’s geology.
Archaeologists also recovered pottery dating to the eighth and seventh centuries BCE from the trench. Polat noted that the ceramics do not serve as a simple construction stamp for the wall, yet the context helps frame when the perimeter work took shape as the settlement strengthened its defenses.
For today’s stone and restoration crews, the details stand out: the original builders cut stepped beds and sockets into solid rock, then used tight coursing and shaped units to bridge a gap that the terrain left open. Even when walls disappear, the substrate can still record layout, bearing points, and alignment. That is the same kind of evidence crews document on preservation work, especially on sites with long service lives and multiple repair campaigns.
Read the full, original article from Arkeonews here.