K. Aslıhan Yener, often anglicised as K. Aslihan Yener, is a Turkish American archaeologist whose work on Bronze Age tin mines in Anatolia revealed a new possible source of the important metal.
Yener was born in Istanbul to Turkish parents, and moved to the United States, in New Rochelle, New York at the age of six months. In 1964, she entered Adelphi University in Garden City, New York planning to study chemistry. Soon she visited her native Turkey and subsequently transferred to Robert College in Istanbul in 1966, where she studied the humanities. While studying a course in Roman ruins in Turkey, she noticed and became interested in the earlier prehistoric periods at those sites. After graduating from Robert College in 1969 she continued graduate school and majored in archaeology. She received her PhD from Columbia University in New York in 1980, and was an associate professor of history at Boğaziçi University from 1980 to 1988. Aslıhan Yener became a professor of Anatolian Archaeology in the Archaeology and History of Art Dept. at Koç University and an associate professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Department at the University of Chicago, Oriental Institute.
She is currently an emeritus associate professor at the University of Chicago.
Yener is the author of the book The domestication of metals: the rise of complex metal industries in Anatolia (Brill, 2000).[1]