Hapisboğazı Hittite Sculpture Workshop

The Sorgun Hapisboğazı Hittite Sculpture Workshop lies within the municipal boundaries of Karakız township in Yozgat's Sorgun district, about 2 kilometers from the town center, in the area known as Hapisboğazı. Field surveys at the site have identified two basalt lion sculptures, along with various partially worked stones and the quarry beds from which the stone was extracted and shaped. These finds establish the site as an important sculpture workshop used during the Hittite period (2nd millennium BCE). Given the proximity of Yozgat and its surroundings to major Hittite centers such as Hattusha (Boğazkale) and Alacahöyük, the region preserves important traces of the Hittite stone-working production and supply chain; Hapisboğazı, as part of this network, offers rare, tangible evidence of how sculptors worked basalt outcrops directly on site. The unfinished lion sculptures and the still-unquarried stone blocks scattered across the site freeze a production process that was, for reasons now unknown, abandoned before completion. Considered together with the nearby Sorgun Karakız and Kazankaya Hittite Sculpture Workshops, Hapisboğazı forms an important part of Yozgat's rich Hittite archaeological heritage.