[1] The archaeological site consists of a large mound (also known as höyük, tepe or tell), and a lower city, where a kārum (the Assyrian word for trading district[2]) was established in the beginning of the 2nd Millenium BC.

The site is divided into two main areas: the circular mound (tepe, höyük) and the lower town to its northeast.

[4] This kārum appears to have served as "the administrative and distribution centre of the entire Assyrian colony network in Anatolia".

By 1880, cuneiform tablets said to be from Kara Eyuk ('black village') or Gyul Tepé ('burnt mound') near Kaisariyeh, had begun to appear on the market, some being thus bought by the British Museum.

[16] Modern archaeological work began in 1948, when Kültepe was excavated by a team from the Turkish Historical Society and the General Directorate of Antiquities and Museums.

[19][20] Some attribute Level II's burning to the conquest of the city of Assur by the kings of Eshnunna, but Bryce blames it on the raid of Uhna.

[24][25][26] Subsequent excavations attested the following stratigraphy of Kültepe:[27] Recently, in "a small cell-plan structure cutting the walls of the monumental building [o]f Kültepe [Level 13], dated to the second half of the 3rd Millennium BC, statuettes made of alabaster with various attributes and ritual vessels in unprecedented forms were found in situ," and inside a "monumental building [d]iscovered in 2018 [which] contains a room called the 'idol room,' [a] collection of the largest number of idols and statuettes ever discovered in the ancient Near East [was found].

They traded local tin and wool for luxury items, foodstuffs, spices and woven fabrics from the Assyrian homeland and Elam.

The findings have included numerous baked-clay tablets, some of which were enclosed in clay envelopes stamped with cylinder seals.

In 2003, researchers from Cornell University dated wood in level Ib from the rest of the city, built centuries earlier.