The archaeology of the northern border of the Upper Tigris basin is so far very little known. The earliest settlement had been founded during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A. The excavations carried out at Gre Fılla brought out a continuous sequence throughout the Pre-Pottery Neolithic Period. The PPNA levels are represented by rounded and oval dwellings, and the PPNB levels by subterranean oval structures surrounded by quadrangular buildings. Kendale Hecala was inhabited throughout the Pottery Neolithic and the Early Ubaid periods. Both sites represent local cultural properties, indicating a quasi-closed cultural region in the South-eastern Taurus piedmont.

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A. Tuba Ökse graduated from the University of Ankara Near Eastern Archaeology program in 1979. After being employed in the Boğazköy Museum as an archaeologist, she became the fellow of Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst in 1982, and in 1987, promoted in the Free University of Berlin. Her dissertation is on the Middle Iron Age pottery obtained from three mounds excavated within the salvage Project of the Karakaya Dam. She became Assistant Professor in University of Ankara in 1989, and in Hacettepe University in 1990. In 1996-1997, she studied at the Free University of Berlin as a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung. Since 2006, she is professor in the University of Kocaeli, Turkey. In 1992-2000 she carried out field surveys in the Province of Sivas, Turkey. Since 1999, she leads salvage excavations within the salvage projects of several dams bulit by the State Waterworks of Turkey: Gre Virike at the Karkamış Dam reservoir on the Euphrates River, Salat Tepe and seven other sites at the Ilısu Dam reservoir on the Tigris River. Since 2018 she leads salvage excavations at three mounds to be affected by the Ambar Dam, situated at the northern border of the Upper Tigris region.