Operation U, the third excavation of the season, has started in the southeastern corner of the lower town, directed by John MacGinnis, seen below clearing the excavation area. Unlike the other fields where we are working this year, Operation U was planted this year in wheat, which was harvested shortly before we arrived, leaving knee-high stalks.
Having surveyed the area where we wanted to work, we negotiated with the local landowner, Haci Isa Chelik, who kindly gave use permission to burn a section of the fields and dig there for the season. We managed a controlled burn of an area about 50m by 50m in extent, which left a heavy burnt ash layer over our excavation area.
Operation U is of particular interest to use because we were able to see what appears to be a large structure, approximately 30m square, in a magnetic gradiometry map completed in 2009. Our current interpretation is that this building, located adjacent to the city wall, may have been an elite residence, or perhaps a minor public building.
In Hilary’s panoramic photograph above, you can see a low rise behind our black field, followed by a significant dip. The low rise is the line of the city wall and the dip was perhaps an ancient moat or canal outside the city’s fortifications.
John started excavating in two 5m by 5m squares a couple of days ago, and I’ve done some electrical resistivity mapping in the area as well to try and get more details of the building to help John locate his trenches effectively.
This is our first excavation in the southeastern lower town which, for years, has been extremely swampy. You can see that there is now a regular canal system draining the fields which are planted in cotton, making the area available for archaeological excavation. We have high hopes that this untested part of the site will produce a rich record of Assyrian urban life.
4 replies on “News from Operation U.”
John looks great, almost like he’s punting through the wheat stalks!
Out of curiosity, have you taken any of the geophysical survey methods beyond the line of the wall? Is there any evidence for extramural settlement, or any sort of activities for that matter?
Hi Jason. When we did the initial magnetic gradiometry surveys, we tried to collect data at least twenty meters beyond the city wall to make sure that we got a good image of the fortifications, but we didn’t move much beyond that. This kind of geophysics is good for defining sites once they are identified, but way too slow to find new sites in the landscape.
That said, we did undertake pedestrian surveys a few hundred meters outside of the city wall and found isolated scatters of material, mostly of Medieval and Roman date, which we took to represent farmsteads or small family compounds. During the urban Assyrian phase, however, there is no evidence for any built structures outside of the line of the city fortifications.
Hi, Tim,
Hope things are going well… How is your water problem going?
Would the lower city be all homes? Or will there be shops? Or did they have market places? Would there have been any military structures (besides the wall itself) there? I’ve seen the pictures in the IntroArch power point on Geophysical Survey that you did a few years ago, so I think I have some idea of what the remains will look like…
Do the Turks not harvest straw from their fields? It sounds like they use some form of combine harvester to harvest the wheat – but here, we follow that by bailing the straw for use as bedding and other things. I know that in other parts of the Near East traditionally, animals grazed the stubble – is that what happens in the rest of the field? Or do they just burn it and work the ash into the field?
Liz
Hi Liz. Our water problem seems to be solved (I hope I didn’t just jinx us). We are now connected to the village water supply and we have not had any trouble, except of course when the electricity goes out!
We know that there were public buildings in the lower town, including the temple treasury and another large building excavated in Operation G/R. We don’t have evidence for workshops or markets, although we have found traces of slag from various production processes in the lower town. The Assyrians undoubtedly built military structures in the lower town, if the pattern seen at the capitals in Assyria itself holds. There are two interesting possibilities that we see in the geophysical maps. First, there are two long rooms running perpendicular to the city wall just inside the gate complex of Operation Q. We have nicknamed these the “barracks”, although they are most likely store rooms. There is also what appears to be a very large square structure in the western lower town, which might be a military installation.
About the fields, your observations are quite correct. In many places, straw or stubble is used for grazing animals. In fact, this is the common practice across the border in Syria. However, the Turkish practice is to burn the fields and, as you note, to work the ash into the fields. The government is trying to discourage the practice, but it has been the norm here for a long time.