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Içel(ēchĕl`), city (1990 pop. 420,750), capital of Içel prov., S Turkey, on the Mediterranean Sea. A rail terminus and modern seaport, it exports cotton, petroleum products, chrome, copper, and agricultural produce. Excavations at Mersin in the 1930s showed that the site was occupied in early Neolithic times (c.3600 B.C.).
(Icel), a city in southern Turkey. Administrative center of Igel Vilayet (province). Population, 114,000 (1970). The city has a railroad station and is a port on Mersin Bay in the Mediterranean Sea. Chrome ore, blister copper, cotton, citrus fruit, and cattle are exported; crude oil is imported. The textile, food-processing, and oil-refining industries, a mineral fertilizer plant, and a truck assembly plant are located there. A large grain elevator (with a capacity of 100,000 tons of grain) is located in Mersin.
(modern name, Yümük Tepe), the remains of an ancient settlement (seventh-second millennia B.C.) in the vicinity of the modern city of Mersin in southern Turkey. It was excavated in 1937–39 and in 1946–47 under the direction of British archaeologist J. Garstang. The cultural layer measured more than 25 m thick.
Mersin’s most ancient horizons date from the Syrian-Cilician culture of the early Neolithic. The Aeneolithic horizons containing decorated pottery attest to the strong cultural influence of northern Mesopotamia (fifth millennium B.c). In the fourth millennium B.C. the Anatolian culture of black polished pottery predominated in Mersin. Following a certain stratigraphic gap, horizons with the Syrian-Cilician culture of decorated pottery of the end of the third millennium B.C. and the Anatolian culture of the second half of the second millennium B.C. are observed in Mersin.
REFERENCESEfimenko, P. P. “Neoliticheskii Mersin.” Sovetskaia arkheologiia, 1959, no. 1.
Titov, V. S. Neolit Gretsii. Moscow, 1969. Pages 189–94.
Garstang, J. Prehistoric Mersin. Oxford, 1953.