Keban Dam

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Geographical Data
Keban Dam
Keban Dam
Official name	Keban Dam
Impounds	Euphrates
Creates	Lake Keban Dam
Locale	Elazığ, Turkey
Maintained by	State Hydraulic Works (DSİ)
Height	210 m (690 ft)
Construction began	1965
Opening date	1975
Coordinates	37°28′54″N 38°19′03″E / 37.48167, 38.3175Coordinates: 37°28′54″N 38°19′03″E / 37.48167, 38.3175

Keban Dam

The Keban Dam, located in the Elazığ Province of Turkey, was the first of the large-scale dams to be built on the Euphrates River. It was built and is being operated by the State Hydraulic Works (DSİ).

Completed in 1975, it resulted in the flooding of the Euphrates for 50 km upstream, and of 100 km of the Murat River valley to the east. The Murat joined the Euphrates some 7 km upstream. When it was completed, the Keban Dam was the world's eighteenth-tallest dam at 210 m (690 ft).^[1] The point where Murat and Karasu Rivers join the Murat River and its tributary Peru are now inundated by the Keban Dam Lake,^[2] Until 1992, when the Lake Atatürk Dam was created, it was Turkey's third-largest lake with a reservoir area of 675 km² and of a storage capacity of 31 billion m³. The installed capacity of the hydroelectric power plant is 1,330 MW.^[3]

[edit] Archaeological work

From 1968 to 1974, the Euphrates and Murat rivers were the scene of intense archaeological survey and excavation in advance of flooding. The lake formed by the dam is mostly narrow, hemmed in by deep rock valleys. No archaeological sites were found in the survey of these valleys. The Murat valley opens up in two places, and it is here that archaeological (and modern) settlement was concentrated. The Aşvan region, covering about 115 km², contained eleven archaeological sites, all relatively small. The largest, Aşvan Kale, covered about 0.9 ha in total; this and three other sites were excavated by the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara: Taşkun Mevkii, Çayboyu and Taşkun Kale. The other broadening of the valley, at the Altınova plain, was a well-defined area of thick and fertile alluvial soil. Archaeological survey located 36 sites, of which one, Norşuntepe, covered 8.2 ha, being by far the largest site in the region. It was excavated by a German team led by Harald Hauptman. The Altınova plain contained other relatively large mounds, including Tepecik (3.4 ha), Korucutepe (2.0 ha), Değirmentepe (2.0 ha) and Körtepe (1.7 ha).