[2]: 302  There is a high concentration of large "courtyard" houses, indicating that it was a prosperous agricultural settlement or kome, with many affluent landowners.

[2]: 302  Çanlı Kilise is the best-known example of these houses,[3] which probably represent mansions belonging to members of the landed military nobility in Cappadocia.

[1]: 8–9  Nearby Aksaray was then called Koloneia and served as an important crossroads for the region, while the major episcopal center of Mokissos lay a short distance to the southeast at the foot of Hasan Dağı.

[1]: 8–9  Most importantly, at the old site at Akhisar (above the present-day village), there are traces of a fort which has been identified with the Hisn Sinan of contemporary Arabic sources.

[1]: 8–9  Guarding the entrance to the Cappadocian highlands, Hisn Sinan was the most strategically important Byzantine fortification in the region, and one of the most critical defense points in all of Asia Minor.

However, taking into consideration that it was a royal Byzantine settlement and built in the years of Basil II, it’s possible that it could’ve been dedicated to him.

[2]: 305  These areas have been heavily affected by erosion: some structures had collapsed, and in one case part of the rock formation containing the chapel separated from the rest of the complex and slid down the hill.

[1]: 82–7 Just southwest of Area 1's courtyard house is the foundation of a freestanding masonry church, which was set on a level platform cut into sloping bedrock.

[1]: 84  In the north of Area 2, there is a rock-cut church now mostly buried; it has an unusual layout (it's shaped like a trapezoid, and the axis changes multiple times within the structure), possibly because its position on a slope caused difficulties for its builders.

[1]: 88 There is a second refuge accessed from Area 4 — on the eastern part of the upper level, there are three tunnels extending northward from what was probably a room in the northeast corner of the courtyard unit.

[1]: 95  The upper level may have been centered around a small courtyard, but this area is now buried by landslide and the adjoining rooms have collapsed, making it hard to tell.

[1]: 96, 98  In this bottleneck there are remains of an old road cut into the rock, which may represent the main street running through the middle of the medieval village.

[1]: 98  There are also remains of several masonry walls in the area, which may have been defensive structures built later in the settlement's history to control access to its northern part.

[1]: 98  Area 11 in general is the most severely eroded part of the site, so much that a small rock-cut chapel on the northwest side has apparently separated from the main rock formation and slid down the hill.

[1]: 98 Comprising a single courtyard unit along with the foundations of two masonry churches further uphill, Area 12 is particularly important for interpreting the settlement's history because it shows signs of change over time.

[1]: 101 The eastern rock-cut church in Area 12 has several fresco remnants throughout, as well as an unusual cross-shaped cutting some 40 cm across that may have once held a processional cross.

[1]: 100 [2]: 304  One of the frescoes, perhaps dating from the 11th century, depicts the church's donors alongside a scene of the Three Hebrews in the Fiery Furnace protected by an angel.

[1]: 101  Most of the rooms are now partly buried, and the area on the south side of the courtyard has been so heavily damaged by collapse and landslide that its original layout is impossible to reconstruct.

[7]: 124  It includes a church, refectory, various living quarters and other rooms, and an unusually large area dedicated to storage (typical of a metochion).

[1]: 17  It appears that the church was originally built as a free-standing structure located in front of a rock-cut façade, and then later the narthex connected the two.

[1]: 6 The church shares some architectural features with buildings from Constantinople, leading Richard Krautheimer to suggest that it was built by artisans from the capital.

"[7]: 153  The frescoes echo Constantinopolitan trends but are somewhat awkwardly executed, probably because the artist was used to working in rock-cut churches, which had different lighting and ceiling design to a freestanding masonry building like the Çanlı Kilise.

[1]: 18  The four columns supported the tall dome, which collapsed c. 1954; only two were still standing in 1906-7 when Hans Rott and Gertrude Bell visited, and today only one remains.

[1]: 18 The two-storied narthex on the west side of the church was a later addition; its northern part juts out a fair distance farther north than the naos.

[1]: 31  This indicates that while the north narthex was probably not originally intended to a burial site, it was already being used as one during the Byzantine period and then continued to do so long after the settlement itself was abandoned.

[1]: 30 At the southeast corner of the north narthex, there are traces of a wall carved directly into the bedrock and covered in a hard white plaster unlike the kind used elsewhere in the building.

[1]: 30  There was apparently a large framed panel on the east side of the south wall, which was partly destroyed when the naos's foundation was cut into the bedrock.

[1]: 31  The narthex was not originally connected to the façade — they are separated by a small space, less than a meter — but later additions fully joined the two, probably around the same time as the parekklesion was built.

[1]: 33  Besides the tombs in the floors of the north narthex and the parekklesion, the main later addition is that a templon appears to have been added to the naos, enclosing its eastern bays.

[1]: 14  In the first such survey of any Byzantine settlement in Cappadocia, the team focused on measuring and mapping, along with some minor cleanup in order to expose the original architecture.