Numerous grave offerings were found next to the burials - individually or in pairs - including more than twenty bronze standards.

Several have a grill in the centre, surrounded by bands decorated with projections in the shape of birds, flowers or rays of the Sun.

The excavators, Koşay und Arık, assumed a clear ritual role and based the rest of their interpretations on that.

Similar wagon standards are known from Ur and Kish in Mesopotamia as well as the bronze age kurgans of Lčašen and Lalajan in Armenia.

Similar finds at Horoztepe were interpreted as sistrums by the excavator there, the Turkish archaeologist Tahsin Özgüç, on account of the moving parts.

The archaeologist Karl Bittel says that based on the pottery in the princely graves, a date before the establishment of the Assyrian trading colonies in Asia Minor (i.e. before 1900 BC) is to be assumed.

From the different levels of burials and the stylistic development of the grave goods, it appears that the cemetery functioned for a long time, possibly more than two hundred years, between the 22nd and 20th centuries BC - the period of the Hattians, before the rise of the Hittite Empire.

The Alaca Höyük bronze standards are used in stylised form by various organisations as logos, such as the University of Ankara,[1] the city,[2] and the province of Çorum.