We’ll, we’re two weeks into the digging and making good progress in four excavation areas.
On the citadel mound, Dirk Wicke has been continuing to excavate the earliest levels of the Bronze Palace. As you might recall from earlier posts, the Bronze Palace is a monumental mudbrick building on the eastern edge of the citadel. We had previously established that the building had three major building phases during the nearly three centuries in which it was in use (c. 882 BC to 611 BC). Because it is deeply buried under later rennovations, the earliest phase of the palace has been the least explored. This season, Dirk has removed a section of the second phase building over an area of about 10m by 10m (30 feet by 30 feet) and has exposed more of the earliest building level, which we believe to be 9th century BC in date. In a few places, Dirk and his team have reached the very bottom of the Late Assyrian palace and, below the foundations, have found a cobbled floor and parts of two walls that belong to an even earlier large building dating to the Middle Assyrian period (very roughly 1300-1050 BC here). We know that around 882 BC, the late Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II claimed to have completely rennovated an abandoned palace built by an earlier ruler at Tushhan. We hoping for more evidence to help us securely date these earliest levels below the Bronze Palace.
In the lower town, we have three operations running simultaneously. Mary Shepperson, a recent PhD from University College London, has returned to the project after several years away. It is great to have Mary back on site (and congrats, Dr. Shepperson!). Her excavation area is Operation Y located in the southwestern corner of the lower town. This is probably our most ambitious trench given it’s size (10m by 20m) and that we have less than five weeks of actual digging time. In Operation Y, our past geophysical surveys suggested that the city wall makes a sharp jog here and for years I have thought that there was a large building with rooms arranged around four open courtyards tucked into the jog in the city wall. Mary is now looking for physical proof of that building. She has found the city wall as well as a few later graves – you can see her excavating one above. Mary is close to the depth where we expect to find the tops of the walls of my hypothetical building. Fingers crossed.
John MacGinnis is overseeing the excavations in Operation W where he is looking at the earliest levels of a large mudbrick building that was excavated in the lower town from 2001-2010. Like with Dirk’s project, John is hoping to find traces not only of the earliest Late Assyrian building phases, but to see if there were even earlier building levels. You can see his excavation area below.
Finally, Kemalettin is making great progess on the private housing located adjacent to the city gate in Operation K, as I reported earlier. He extended his trench to the east and now has three clearly defined rooms. I’ll get you more details soon.
