The mound beneath ancient TarsusGözlükule Höyük is a great settlement mound at Tarsus, about 30 km east of Mersin in southern Turkey, today used as a town park. Some 300 metres across and 25 metres high, it holds the earliest layers of the classical city of Tarsus, which lies both on the mound and beneath the modern town. A crossroads of CiliciaThe first settlement rose here as a village in the 7th millennium BC, beside a stream flowing down from the Taurus. Its position was strategic: it commanded the exit of the Cilician Gates (the Gülek Pass) linking the Anatolian plateau to the Mediterranean, as well as the route through the Amanus toward northern Syria. In the 2nd millennium BC Gözlükule became an important settlement and port, and it served as the harbour of Tarsus; it was here, in 41 BC, that Cleopatra VII sailed in to meet Mark Antony. In time the Berdan river silted up the coast and the harbour lost its importance. A key to Anatolian chronologyThe mound was excavated between 1934 and 1949 by Hetty Goldman, one of the first women to lead a major dig, on behalf of Bryn Mawr College. Her stratigraphy — running unbroken from the Neolithic through the Bronze and Iron Ages to Hellenistic and Roman times — became fundamental to the chronology of Bronze Age Anatolia. Excavations later resumed under Boğaziçi University. Location: Tarsus, Mersin province, southern TurkeySize: Mound c. 300 m across, 25 m highHistory: Settled from the 7th millennium BC; port of ancient TarsusClaim to fame: Harbour where Cleopatra met Mark Antony (41 BC); key Bronze Age stratigraphyVisiting: Archaeological mound within a town park in Tarsus