Settlement Dynamics on the Banks of the Upper Tigris, Iraq: The Mosul Dam Reservoir Survey (1980)

The paper describes a dataset of archaeological sites and villages now partially covered by the water of the Mosul Dam Reservoir. For the first time the dataset offers digitized information on c.150 archaeological sites detected during a survey carried out by the Iraqi State Organization for Antiquities and Heritage in the 1980s. Knowledge of the map of these sites will have a substantial impact on interpretation of Tigridian settlement dynamics.   Funding statement: This research has received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Foreword

preface to the volume Middle Euphrates

Tell el-'Abd II. Pottery and Potmarks at an Early Urban Settlement of the Middle Euphrates River Valley, Syria. Final Reports of the Syrian-German excavations at Tel el-’Abd

The monograph investigates the breakdown of the Uruk world-system towards the end of the 4th millennium BCE, and the roots of secondary state formation in the Middle Euphrates region through the analysis of continuity and change in the Early Bronze ceramic material from the site of Tell el-‘Abd (Tabqa Dam, Syria). This analysis fills a chronological gap for the early third millennium, a period poorly known in the district downstream from Carchemish. It further includes the study of over 1300 potter’s marks, thus offering new insight into the intra- and inter-site organization of pottery production and into a complex and variegated system of visual communication active at a regional level be…

An Early Bronze Age tomb group from Tell Alawiyeh in the British Museum

(not requested)

Nuovi dati dalla necropoli arcaica di Mozia (campagne 2013-2017)

È passato oltre un secolo da quando Joseph Whitaker, pioniere dell’archeologia fenicia in Sicilia, dava inizio alle prime indagini nell’area della cosiddetta ‘necropoli arcaica’ sull’isola di Mozia/San Pantaleo. Negli anni a venire varie altre imprese archeologiche si sono ivi succedute portando alla luce un totale di circa 350 sepolture (soprattutto cremazioni secondarie) e facendo di quest’area cimiteriale uno dei migliori ritrovamenti per lo studio della cultura funeraria fenicia in Sicilia e nel Mediterraneo centrale. Gli scavi condotti nell’ultimo quinquennio dalla Missione dell’Università di Palermo offrono interessanti dati ricavati da un gruppo di oltre 100 nuove sepolture che copro…

Pottery of Phases 16-19” and "Pottery of Phases 20-23" in: Pfälzner, P. – Qasim, H. A. “Urban developments in North-Eastern Mesopotamia from the Ninevite V to the Neo-Assyrian periods. Excavations at Bassetki in 2017.

Pottery comes from various debris layers (mainly A16 to A18) and from floor layers of the domestic building of Phase A19.

Collapse or Continuity? The case of the EB-MB transition at Tell Shiyukh Tahtani

La fin du Troisieme Millenaire est, dans l'histoire du Proche-Orient ancien, une periode sujette a contro¬verses car, selon les regions, elle connalt soil une disintegration et un effondrement culturels, soil une conti¬nuite et un developpement urbains. Le tableau general de la situation reste confus, particulierement en. Syrie, ou it a fait /'objet d'un grand nombre de theories et de modeles d'interpretation. La periode de "transition" entre le Bronze Ancien et le Bronze Moyen est ici consideree du point de vue d'un petit site rural de la vallee de l'Euphrate en Syrie du Nord, Tell Shiyukh Tahtani. Les fouilles recentes realisees par l'Universite de Palerme y ant mis au jour une longue seq…

The Archaic Cemetery at Motya. A case-study for tracing early colonial Phoenician culture and mortuary traditions in the West Mediterranean

The burial ground, roughly dating from the late 8th cent. BC onwards, is characterised in its earliest major phase by the almost exclusive practice of cremation, a rite that was introduced and largely attested in the Levant during the Iron Age1 . The same rite was inherited from the Phoenician homeland and became widespread in the western colonial world, where it eventually survived until the Hellenistic period. The purpose of the present paper is to re-examine briefly the archaeological evidence so far retrieved in the early island cemetery, stressing its main features and reviewing some of the current scholarly views and interpretations.

Radiocarbon chronology

Essay on radiocarbon cronology of Early Bronze Age sites from the Middle Euphrates region

North Mesopotamian Comb-Incised and Comb-Impressed Pottery

Tis contribution focuses on a distinctive kind of pottery decoration, geometric in nature and characterised by multiple parallel line incisions and/or impressions obtained before fring by means of a comb-like toothed tool operating on the potter’s wheel; therefore, in the archaeological literature it is usually referred to as “Comb-incised Ware” or, more generally, “Combed Ware”.

The excavations at tell el-‘Abd

This volume (marru 5/2) is dedicated to the small finds from Tell el-ʻAbd and to the results of environmental studies (archaeobotany, archaeozoology and anthracology); it continues the final publication of the excavation, which began in 2014 with the presentation of the 3rd-millennium ceramics (AVO 16/2). In that volume, the author, Paola Sconzo, introduced the tell as well as the history and the methodology of its excavation. At present, that is, before the final review of the architecture and the stratigraphy, her statements are still fully valid, and have therefore in the main been inserted under 1.1 The excavations at Tell el-ʻAbd.

Uova di struzzo dipinte da Mozia

Analisi e studio di alcuni frammenti di uova di struzzo conservate al Museo di Motya Analysis and study of some fragments of ostrich eggs-shell preserved at the Motya Museum

NEW ANTHROPOLOGICAL DATA FROM THE ARCHAIC CEMETERY AT MOTYA

The archaic necropolis at Motya has been long recognized as a site of great interest for the study of Phoenician burial customs in the West. Since its discovery by Joseph Whitaker more than a century ago, over 300 burials have been brought to light - mainly dating to the late 8th-7th century BC. Burials are characterized by jars used as urns and box-shaped stone cists containing the ashes and burnt bones of the dead. These are indeed secondary cremations, a very common funerary ritual of the Iron Age in the Phoenician homeland and in the colonies overseas. Despite the relevant bearing of this cemetery on historical and cultural grounds, anthropological analysis unfortunately has been mostly…

From the banks of Upper Tigris River to the Zagros Highlands. The Tübingen Eastern Ḫabur Archaeological Survey. Trial season 2013

After decades of strife and unrest, during which Northern Iraq remained closed to the outside world, a new era of international scientific enterprise has begun in this region thanks to the recent democratic and civil upturn and its subsequent economic resurgence. In the last few years, together with the restoration and refurbishment of historical monuments, there has also been a spread of new archaeological undertakings in the form of surveys and excavations, the quality and quantity of which is fully shown in the present volume. A Tübingen University research project was initiated in the northernmost part of Iraqi-Kurdistan, in the province of Dohuk. The research area is located at the foo…

Sombrero lids’ and children’s pots. An Early Bronze Age shaft grave from Tell Shiyukh Tahtani

Tell Shiyukh Tahtani is one of the ancient mounds in the upper Syrian Euphrates Valley, which has been recently investigated by a team of the University of Palermo as part of the Tishreen Dam Salvage project1. Apart from various levels of occupation, ranging from the early third millennium B.C. to classical and Islamic times, these excavations have brought to light a fairly large amount of graves (about 90), which, beside providing many interesting finds, allow us to undertake a detailed study of Bronze Age burial practices at the site and in northern Syria as a whole. In dedicating the present paper to Uwe Finkbeiner, who has, as an excavator, made a great contribution to the archaeology o…

Ceramics

The Middle Euphrates region extends between the regions Jazirah and Northern Levant; it follows the course of the Euphrates from the south flanks of the Taurus mountains in Turkey almost to the modern borderline to Iraq. The settlement area drawn out between steppes in the east and in the west owes its particular character to just that life line with its fat soils but also to the trade routes meeting at the Euphrates Bend and connecting Anatolia to Mesopotamia and the Syrian east to the Levant. Especially for the 3rd millennium, finds and findings from the area under consideration show great cultural variety and demonstrate the different influences by the neighbouring regions that meet here…

Bronze Age pottery from the Carchemish region at the British Museum. The Woolley-Lawrence collection. Report

(not requested)

The Ninevite 5 pottery assemblage of Phase A25 from the extra-mural dwellings and the kiln. In P. Pfaelzner and A. H. Hasim "From Akkadian Maridaban to Middle-Assyrian Mardama. Excavations at Bassetki in 2018 and 2019"

The focus of the 2018 and 2019 excavations at Bassetki was on investigating the beginning of the city in the Ninevite 5 period, its importance in the Akkadian and Old Babylonian periods, and its function as a governor’s seat in Middle Assyrian times. Thus, the main stages of the urban development of Maridaban/Mardaman/Mardama can be traced, which are also documented textually. Der Fokus der Ausgrabungen 2018 und 2019 in Bassetki lag auf der Untersuchung des Beginns der Stadtanlage in der Ninive 5-Periode, ihrer Bedeutung in der Akkad- und der Altbabylonischen Zeit sowie ihrer Funktion als Statthaltersitz in Mittelassyrischer Zeit. Damit können die wesentlichen Etappen der Stadtentwicklung v…

Investigating Jubaniyah. A Late Chalcolithic site on the Upper Tigris River, Iraqi Kurdistan. Preliminary report

Jubaniyah is a blufftop settlement of 4 hectares set on a terrace overlooking the River Tigris in northern Iraq (Iraqi Kurdistan) demonstrating a significant and almost exclusive occupation during the Late Chalcolithic period (ca. 4800-3000 BC). Besides an agricultural-pastoral orientation, the site presumably also functioned as a central hub in riverine communication and exchange with the hinterland during most of this long period. Set within the catchment area of the Mosul Dam reservoir, Jubaniyah is also one among more than 150 flooded sites which periodically resurface due to the reservoir’s annual or cyclical water fluctuation, thus intermittingly revealing the spolia of their past. Th…

IL SITO DI SHIYUK TAHTANI: DATI ANTROPOLOGICI DALLA CAMPAGNA DI SCAVO 2009

Plain and luxury wares of the third millennium BC in the Carchemish region: two case-studies from Tell Shiyukh Tahtani

In the last decades the large number of salvage excavations undertaken in north Syria and southeastern Anatolia has generated much interest regarding the role that the culture of the Big Bend of the Euphrates River played during the 3rd millennium BC. the aim of the present paper is to examine some particular pottery assemblages of the second half of the 3rd millennium which can be relevant for a discussion about a putative Carchemish region in the Early Bronze Age.

Conclusions to the volume: Middle Euphrates

conclusions to the volume Middle Euphrates

Leonard Woolley, Lawrence d’Arabie et les fouilles de Karkémish

essay on the excavations of Karkemish

Late Chalcolithic Northern Mesopotamia in Context. Papers from the Workshop held at the 11th ICAANE, MUnich, April 5th 2018

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…

Associated Regional Chronologies for the Ancient Near East – The Middle Euphrates Region, ARCANE vol. 4

The Middle Euphrates region extends between Jezirah and Northern Levant; it follows the course of the Euphrates from the south flanks of the Taurus mountains in Turkey almost to the modern border with Iraq. The settlement area drawn out between steppes in the east and in the west owes its particular character to just that life line with its rich soil but also to the trade routes meeting at the Euphrates Bend and connecting Anatolia to Mesopotamia, and the Syrian east to the Levant. Especially for the 3rd millennium, finds and findings from the area under consideration show great cultural variety and demonstrate the different influences by the neighbouring regions that meet here at the Euphr…