During the Early and Middle Bronze Age in the third millennium BCE Alişar developed into a walled town.

Like Kanesh (Kültepe) to the south, it was a center for trade attracting merchants from Assyria at the beginning of the second millennium BCE.

Like most Hittite settlements it was burnt and destroyed at the end of the Late Bronze Age in the twelfth century BC.

In the vicinity of Alişar laid a large Phrygian Iron Age city at Kerkenes.

The site was first excavated 1927–1932 by the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, headed by Hans Henning von der Osten.