Tepde (Koru), is a cute village in Kemaliye, Divriği Arapgir triangle, about 20 km from the district center, in the Arapgir district of Malatya. The meaning of the word Tepde is a hilltop village.
Tepde appears like an oasis today, where multi-storey concrete buildings, high-walled, barbed-wire village houses now occupy even the most remote towns. While walking around through the stony streets, we suddenly find ourselves in the stories reflected from the past to the present. Tepte is like a town of cultural memory that reminds us of our roots. Both concrete and intangible elements are so well preserved that everything in the town has a cultural meaning.
The mainstays of the village are agricultural production, especially grape mulberry and almond, and animal husbandry, albeit a little. Of course, naturally, the village is surrounded by vineyards, mulberry and almond trees. Grapes and mulberries are both fresh fruit and dried, as well as being transformed into high value-added products such as mulberry molasses, mulberry pulp, grape molasses, grape pulp, walnut sausage, and become a source of mainstays in the hands of skilled women of the village.
Tepde women wear shalwar and cardigans as their daily clothes, and wrap a headscarf as a veil, as like in all Anatolia. The women of Tepde, who wear velvet and satin clothes on special occasions such as weddings and holidays, cover their heads again with cheesecloth. The headscarf and manuscripts worn in daily life and on special occasions are embroidered. However, in funerals, unlined and unprocessed cheesecloths are worn. This situation is an endemic tradition that belongs only to Tepde as in circular wall plaster.
Tepte is a town that keeps its traditions alive and has cultural dynamics, and women fulfill an important function as cultural carriers that bring these practices, many of which have remained in the past, from the desolation they are in.
We believe that this work will contribute to a better understanding of the women of this town, which adds value to the geography where it is located like a rare flower, and Tepde, who continues to keep alive the examples of folk culture that have been forgotten, sunk into oblivion, and which are no longer a dream.
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