Year: 2011

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ZT Logbook

Last minute preparations.

Hard to believe that it is almost time to leave for Turkey. Ten months of preparation: permit applications, fundraising, recruiting personnel, planning the excavation areas, purchasing equipment and supplies, database management, endless lists, and now we are off. It takes a great deal of logistics to get nearly 30 people from nine countries to all show up in the right place at the right time, and with all the supplies we need for two months of work, but the effort is sure worth it when we get down to work!

On Thursday night, the first wave of archaeologists will arrive in Diyarbakir Airport, to be met by our driver, Mehmet, for a happy reunion. We’ll drive down to Tepe, about an hour to the southeast, and work begins in earnest on Friday. Hopefully we will be able to get our internet connection at the dig house set up quickly, so we can keep the blog updated. If everything goes according to plan, we will open up our sealed depots where the artifacts that are still awaiting analysis from previous seasons are stored, and get to work on Saturday. Inshallah! We are only in the field for two months, so every workday counts. We work six days a week, with Friday off, but this Friday is going to be non-stop work as we set up our dighouse and the laboratories. Each year we put all of our equipment in storage since we only rent our dighouse for the time we are in Turkey, so each season starts with housekeeping.

But first, we have two days of travel ahead.

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Sign up to receive email updates

Passing on the word.

I received a good suggestion from Mona Malik at the Assyrian Aid Society that I add an option to the blog for those of you who might want to get additional email updates, including some supplemental photos and text, on the Ziyaret Tepe Archaeological Expedition, especially after the season ends. Thanks for the idea, Mona!

If you would like to receive periodic email updates on the project, or want to sign up some family, friends or colleagues who might be interested, please let me know via email. My address is matney@uakron.edu. Please put “ZT Email Updates” in the subject line.

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Background Information Team members

The senior staff.

Here are some photographs of our senior staff, just so you can put faces to the names you’ll be reading about. You’ll get to know more about all of us and our research as the season continues.

  Timothy Matney from the University of Akron in Akron, Ohio (USA) is filling out sample tags. At Ziyaret Tepe everyone helps with the mundane tasks that keep the project running smoothly.
John MacGinnis is from the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. Here he is examining a section cut through a main street leading into Tushhan through the southern gate (Operation Q.)
Dirk Wicke comes from the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in Mainz, Germany.
Kemalettin Koroglu, a Professor at Marmara University in Istanbul, Turkey, is drawing a section of the city’s fortification wall in Operation K.
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Background Information

How old is Ziyaret Tepe?

The earliest excavated levels at Ziyaret Tepe date back to the beginning of the Early Bronze Age, roughly 3000 BC. It’s possible that even earlier remains are buried at the bottom of the citadel mound, but it would be very difficult to get to them.

Most of our digging this year will concentrate on the Late Assyrian period, c. 882 -611 BC at our site. Here is a simple timeline from our website that shows the chronology of the Assyrians.

During this time, the city was called Tushhan and it served as a regional center of the Assyrian Empire. The imperial center was located in what is now modern day Iraq. The Assyrians, at the height of their political and military power, controlled a vast area from Egypt to Iran. Ziyaret Tepe, at the northern edges of the empire, served as a military strongpoint guarding the great Assyrian cities, such as Nineveh, to the south from invasion.

After the Assyrians abandoned the city in 611 BC, there were only sporadic occupations on the citadel mound. During the 13th and 14th centuries AD, there was a small farming village on the high mound. We expect to find some of the remains from this medieval occupation at the beginning of the season.

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How can I support your work?

How can I support your work?

There are a number of ways you can help us have a successful season at Ziyaret Tepe.

First of all, spread the word! Tell your friends and family about our blog and ask them to check out the action. One of the joys (and obligations) of the scientific community is to explain to non-experts what we are doing and why it is important and interesting. That is, after all, the goal of our blog.

A second way to help is to make a donation to the project. In the US, contributions are tax-deductable and 100% of your gift goes directly towards supporting our archaeological fieldwork. The easiest way to donate is to give an on-line credit card gift to the University of Akron, earmarked for the Ziyaret Tepe Archaeological Expedition. Here’s a link to the University of Akron on-line giving website.

Scientific archaeology is expensive (workers, airfares, feeding twenty-five hungry archaeologists, etc.) and we pay the bills primarily through private donations, any amount helps. To give you idea of our costs, this year, our local workers will make 48 Turkish lira (= $30) per day, including their wages, social security, and taxes. So a $30 donation would sponsor one of our hardworking villagers for a day’s worth of excavation. $420 pays for our site guard for a week. $1800 just about covers an airfare from US to Diyarbakir, our nearest airport.

We appreciate your support, in whatever form it takes!

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Background Information

A general view of the site.

Here’s a photograph from 2007 that shows the citadel mound in the background. It’s 23 meters (= 70 feet) high and is made entirely of collapsed buildings accumulated over a period of 5,000 years.

In this case, we are excavating in the “lower town”. I thought this might give everyone a sense of the scale of the site. The excavation area is 20 meters by 10 meters (about 60 feet by 30 feet). The raised areas are the mudbrick walls in a small part of a temple treasury that we excavated from 2001 to 2010. The temple (which we have not located yet) was separate from the treasury and was dedicated to the goddess Ishtar.

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Background Information

What are we digging?

The Ziyaret Tepe Archaeological Expedition started in 1997 with a small team of three archaeologists conducting surface survey and topographic mapping. Now in our 15th season, our field crew typically comprises two dozen archaeologists and other specialists, as well as fifty or so local Turkish workers.

The Assyrian city of Tushhan was about 32 hectares (= 80 acres) at its largest extent and probably housed a population of about 5,000. A site this large can never be fully excavated, so we have to carefully select a few areas for intensive scientific excavation. Most summers we excavate in three or four different areas of the site at the same time, depending on our current research questions and personnel.

In 2011, we are digging in one area of the site that has long been part of our excavations, namely the “Bronze Palace” on the high citadel mound. We are also going to start two new areas of excavation, both in the low flat “lower town” that surrounds the citadel. The first of these is an area of Assyrian public housing, that is where we expect the common people lived. The second is a large structure whose function is not clear, but which may represent a wealthy Assyrian’s house or perhaps a small governmental building. I’ll tell you more later about how we know the location of these structures before we start digging!

This blog will follow all three excavation projects as they unfold…

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Where's Ziyaret Tepe?

Map showing where Ziyaret Tepe is located.

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Welcome

Greetings!

Welcome to the Ziyaret Tepe Archaeological Expedition summer 2011 blog! Starting on July 8, my team and I will be sending daily updates on the progress of our expedition to the Ziyaret Tepe, the ancient Assyrian city of Tushhan, in southeastern Turkey. If you’ve ever wanted to go on an archaeological dig but couldn’t find the spare two months to do so, here’s your chance! We will be putting up brief news summaries, pictures, and a running commentary documenting life on a Middle Eastern dig site. Feel free to send us questions or comments – we want to hear from you.

To get you started, I’ve put in a few posts as background information, there’s a map (see “Where is Ziyaret Tepe?”) and, of course, you can always visit our website by selecting the “Ziyaret Tepe home page” link on the top menu bar.