Kemalettin has closed down Operation T for the season. It was a very interesting excavation area although, contrary to our expectations, we did not find the Assyrian street system and private houses we were seeking. Rather, Kemalettin was able to document two layers of what we believe are Late Roman houses with stone foundations. The upper parts of the walls, which were not preserved, were almost certainly made of mudbrick.
There were quite a few items found on the floors, including an interesting collection of ceramics that will form an important part of our publication of the 2012 season. We also found a set of iron keys and other metal objects that await conservation and further study.
This bowl, from the floor of the northern room of the Operation T house, was found with a layer of burnt (carbonized) seeds burnt at the bottom — perhaps the remains of someone’s meal. We have requested permission to export the seeds so that we can run radiocarbon dates on them and determine at least a rough range of dates for the final use of the building. Other pottery was more damaged and will have to await Hayley’s arrival next year before we can restore and record the rest of this in situ Roman pottery collection.
We also had a surprising number of coins this year. Here are photographs of three more coins, all copper/bronze and very well preserved. The coins will be sent to the Diyarbakir Museum for additional study and eventual display. The center coin, we think, is from the time of Flavius Arcadium Augustus, when he was Emperor of the East, c. AD 395-401. The reverse of the coin, seen here, shows the emperor standing holding a scepter and shield with victory standing to his left crowning him and holding a palm branch. The coin on the right is possibly Constantine II from the mid-4th century AD.
We already knew that the Romans were active in this region in the 4th century AD, when the famous black basalt city walls of Diyarbakir were strengthened, so it is hardly surprising to find occupation of the Late Roman period at Ziyaret Tepe. There are also a number of sites documented from that era in the Upper Tigris River valley. What surprised us was that the Ziyaret Tepe houses were not clear on the geophysical maps we made in previous seasons, nor was there a great abundance of Roman pottery on the surface. I guess that is what makes field archaeology so enjoyable — surprises await us at every turn. Operation T will help us fill in a gap in our overall chronology, but we will have to search elsewhere next year for our elusive Assyrian private houses.
