New investigations in the North-East quarter of Motya. The archaic cemetery and Building J

In June 2013 the University of Palermo excavations on Motya were resumed. The main goal of the new project is to investigate the north-east quarter of the Phoenician settlement and its urban development since the time of its foundation. Two main areas of excavation were opened. In the early cemetery sixteen cremation burials of the archaic period were uncovered. The most striking discoveries, never attested before, were a tomb containing Hellenistic offerings, and the occurrence of archaic infant cremations. The second excavation was conducted east of Zone K in Building J, which is characterized by its use of a fine ‘pier and rubble’ construction technique. Two rooms have been partially cle…

Social Lives of Monumental Walls: Hunting along the Upper Tigris

On the left bank of the Tigris in northern Iraq, in an area today partially flooded by the Mosul Dam reservoir, lies an enigmatic monumental enclosure known in the literature as the “Tigris Wall.” Before its partial submersion under the waters of the modern lake, the large L-shaped embankment, about 4 × 4 km long, enclosed an area of ca. 1600 ha, overlooking the Tigris and its alluvial plain. By means of a holistic strategy that includes different levels of analysis (remote sensing, pedestrian and UAV photogrammetric surveys, excavation, and settlement pattern analysis), this paper addresses the structure, its context, and its environment. Relying on the results of this multi-disciplinary a…

Conclusions: Late Chalcolithic Northern Mesopotamia. Setting the Agenda in the Debate on the Rise of Urbanization in the Ancient Near East

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Drowned Landscapes: The Rediscovered Archaeological Heritage of the Mosul Dam Reservoir

Like natural catastrophes or armed conflicts, resource extraction projects herald the alteration or destruction of natural and cultural landscapes alike. Dam construction is a major threat to cultural heritage in Western Asian archaeology. One event may result in obliterating hundreds of sites, most of which never reappear or do so only sporadically following cyclical water fluctuation. Destruction of sites remains ongoing, necessitating constant assessment of damage and the establishment of strategies of documentation and maintenance. This paper proposes a new paradigm for future safeguarding and, more widely, a new tool for managing contiguous terrestrial and lacustrine cultural zones. It…

Early Bronze Age painted wares from Tell el-'Abd, Syria: A compositional and technological study

Abstract The ‘Euphrates Monochrome Painted Ware’ (henceforth EMPW) is a ceramic style attested in the Middle Euphrates region in northern Syria at the beginning of the Early Bronze Age, ca. 2900–2700 BCE. This style is not an isolated phenomenon; rather, it must be understood in the context of a general, albeit short-lived, re-introduction of painted ceramics into local assemblages of Greater Mesopotamia. In the present study, we investigate the technology and provenance of the painted pottery from Tell el-'Abd (North Syria) and its relation to contemporary ceramics retrieved at this site. We apply a combination of macroscopic observations, ceramic petrography, and micro X-ray diffraction (…

Exploring prenatal and neonatal life history through dental histology in infants from the Phoenician necropolis of Motya (7th–6th century BCE)

The biological life history of infants from archaeological contexts can provide a unique insight into past human populations. Dental mineralized tissues contain a permanent record of their growth that can provide access to the prenatal and early infant life, and mortality, of human skeletons. This study focuses on the histomorphometric analysis of deciduous teeth from the ‘Archaic Necropolis’ of Motya (7th–6th century BCE, Sicily–Italy). The histomorphometric analysis is conducted on prenatal and postnatal enamel of eight anterior deciduous teeth from seven individuals from this Phoenician population to estimate their chronological age-at-death, health, and enamel growth parameters. Proteom…

The ´champagne-cup` period at Carchemish. A review of the Early Bronze Age levels on the Acropolis Mound and the problem of the Inner Town.

The pioneer excavations conducted by the British Museum expedition at the famous site of Carchemish in the 1910’s brought to light a large number of buildings, sculptures and inscriptions which provide an outline of the urban layout of the Iron Age city and its monuments. While many scholars have often attempted to re-examine the epigraphic material as well as the style and chronology of the major works of this period in order to set them in a proper historical context, much less attention has been paid to the earlier levels mainly uncovered on the Acropolis mound, ranging from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age. This paper discusses the archaeological evidence available and attempted to recon…

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Survey with Commercial-Grade Instruments: A Case Study from the Eastern Ḫabur Archaeological Survey, Iraq

Low-altitude photography in archaeology is now common practice at the scale of excavations; however, landscape-scale applications are a relatively new endeavor with promising analytical potential. From 2014–2016, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with a mounted camera was used to document sites recorded as part of the Eastern Ḫabur Archaeological Survey (EḪAS), an archaeological reconnaissance project in western Dohuk Province, Iraqi Kurdistan. The EḪAS team documented over 70 archaeological sites with the UAV, from single-phase artifact scatters, to archaeological remains with standing architecture, to tells that cover more than 30 hectares. Representative examples from this survey are pres…

The ‘grave of the Court Pit’, A rediscovered Bronze Age tomb from Carchemish

This paper examines the British Museum unpublished records related to an Early Bronze (EB) Age pithos burial uncovered a century ago in the Inner Town at Carchemish. The grave, cursorily cited and variously dated (Chalcolithic, EB or even LBA) in the final reports, was described in some detail by Hogarth and Thompson; a precise dating is, however, possible today thanks to the information of paramount importance given by T. E. Lawrence who identified and took a picture of the associated finds, which was recently rediscovered in the Carchemish Archives. The pithos can be now ascribed to the third quarter of the third millennium BC and helps to confirm the recent theory according to which the …

Introduction: The Late Chalcolithic of Northern Mesopotamia in Context. Building on a Long and Eventful Debate

Many of the debates that have until recently driven research into Mesopotamia’s proto-urban phase (5th– 4th millennia BCE) have now been reassessed thanks to new fieldwork in Iraqi Kurdistan and new data into the relationships between the north and south of the Alluvium from hitherto poorly-documented regions. These debates were re-examined in the light of this new material during a workshop held at the ICAANE in 2018 in Munich, leading to unprecedented perspectives on the patterns of early urbanization, social mobility, and the organization of Late Chalcolithic communities. Drawing on research first presented at ICAANE, and building on the most recent data from surveys and excavations, thi…

Early Syrian Bottles

Near Eastern archaeologists are accustomed today to labelling as “Syrian bottles” various kinds of oil/perfume fasks that enjoyed a wide popularity in Syria during the 3rd millennium. Owing to the volatile nature of their contents and the lack of archeometric analysis it has not been possible so far to ascertain whether these vessels were scent or unguent vases. Whatever the case, since they have been found far afeld from the core region of production it is clear that they were a luxury item of long-distance trade and are thus today – if possible misattributions are discarded – a valuable indicator of exchange networks and for establishing synchronisms among distant areas of the ancient Nea…

NEW ANTHROPOLOGICAL DATA FROM THE ARCHAIC NECROPOLIS AT MOTYA (2013 EXCAVATION SEASON)

In this paper we present the most recent anthropological study on bones of the archaic tombs of Motya (Sicily, Italy), where a large necropolis has been brought to light since the first excavations of Joseph Whitaker. The newly acquired data suggest that this portion of the Motya archaic cemetery was not exclusively devoted to the incineration of particular classes of age but the urns and cists could contain multiple burials of very different ages. .

Pots and places in the Late Chalcolithic period. A view from the Eastern Ḫabur Region

This paper attempts to contextualise the preliminary results of a survey (EHAS) and excavation (KUGAMID) projects recently undertaken by a team of the University of Tübingen in the uppermost region of Iraqi Kurdistan as far as the Late Chalcolithic period is concerned. Settlement patterns and land use, stratigraphic sequences and pottery assemblages are considered here in order to shed light on the dynamics of the emergence of social complexity and the establishment of proto-urban trajectories along the river banks, riverine plains, foothills and mountain valleys of the foothills of Zagros. Preliminary results suggest that the process of urbanisation in this area seems to be connected with …

Planning Punic cities: Geophysical prospection and the built environment at Motya, Sicily

The urban plan of ancient Motya on the Isola di San Pantaleo on the west coast of Sicily and its relationship to developments in Phoenician and Punic societies have been investigated since the early 1960s. Data from geophysical surveys in the north-eastern quadrant of Motya show the regular organisation of urban insulae framed by two broad roads. These results, combined with data from previous nearby excavations, improve the modelling of Motya's layout, and contribute to the wider discussion of Phoenician/Punic and broader Mediterranean urban traditions between the sixth and fourth centuries BC.

Human Remains and Funerary Rites in the Phoenician Necropolis of Motya (Sicily)