Author: matney

Dr. Matney is Professor of Archaeology in the Department of Anthropology and Classical Studies at the University of Akron. He is the Director of the Ziyaret Tepe Archaeological Expedition.

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Background Information Team members

Willis Monroe works as project registrar.

I’ve been promising to introduce some of the staff. As you’ll see over the season, a successful project relies on individuals with diverse skills who are able to work together as a team. You will also notice that people lend a hand when work needs to be done, so everyone gets some experience with pottery analysis, digging, geophysical surveys, database management, and the dozens of other tasks that arise.

Willis Monroe is our registrar, which is a very key role. When he’s not here in Tepe, Willis is a PhD candidate at Brown University in the Department of Egyptology and Ancient Western Asian Studies. He studies the ancient languages and cultures of the Ancient Near East, including Sumerian, Akkadian, and Hittite. His recent interests have been in Mesopotamian Astronomy and Late-Babylonian Scholarship. During high school he participated in a Rotary exchange program and spent a year in Ankara, which gave him the oppurtunity to learn Turkish and get to know the country. This is Willis’ fifth season at Ziyaret Tepe and it’s hard to imagine this place running well without him.

Willis at work (with friend) registering objects. He is numbering a "Hand of Ishtar", a hand-shaped baked clay piece used to decorate Late Assyrian public buildings. He will enter its measurements and a deteailed description into our centralized database.

The official job of the registrar is to carefully describe all of the artifacts found at the excavation. In the old days, this meant keeping paper registers or notecards on each artifact; today it means that Willis also maintains our intranet, centralized database, and computer laboratory. In effect, he keeps track of the thousands of artifacts that come through the dig house each season. Needless to say, he is busy.

Each day during the excavation, Willis catalogues all of the new artifacts, makes sure that they are cleaned and sent to the right specialist for study and coordinates with our photographer, Hilary, and our illustrator, Paola, to make sure that the appropriate photographs and drawings are made. Somehow he manages to do this cheerfully, even when he is supposed to run the computer lab without electricity!

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Thanks, Brad and Chris!

With some expert troubleshooting from Brad Rice and Chris Martin in IT at the University of Akron, we seem to have overcome our connectivity problems with the blog! Thanks to both of you for your help. As usual, the UAkron IT department comes through.

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Geophysical surveys begins.

This photograph shows Willis Monroe and our driver, Mehmet Tekin, helping with a geophysical surveying on the citadel mound two days ago. We are, in effect, trying to find the western edge of the Bronze Palace before we start the excavations. Our efforts in previous seasons have been entirely concentrated on the eastern part of the building, so we need to expand our explorations.

Resistivity survey on the citadel mound. Mehmet is pouring water into the holes made for the probes in order to overcome contact resistance. This is a serious problem for us because the ground is so dry. It will not rain again until September.

As I mentioned earlier, the Bronze Palace was built, in part, on a thick platform of mudbricks which served as a strong foundation for the building. One clue we have about the location of the western edge of the palace is a steep slope about a meter high and approximately 80m (=240 feet) west of our current excavation area. Since the mudbrick platform should erode more slowly than other materials, it makes sense that this steep erosional escarpment might just be the edge of the platform for the palace.

To test this hypothesis, we are trying to map the ancient subsurface features, like the walls of the palace, using electrical resistivity. This is a geophysical survey technique in which we pass an electrical current underground between two probes. A second set of probes measures the grounds’s resistance to the flow of electricity. Buried walls affect how easily an electrical current flows underground between two points and, if we collect readings systematically along our site grid, we can map them and “see” features below ground without excavating.

The frame that Willis and Mehmet are inserting into the ground holds two of the probes and a long yellow wire connects to two distant probes, some 50m away. These probes create the electrical field and measure the subsurface effects. The box on top of the frame collects the measurements; we have sophisticated mapping software on our field laptop that allows us to convert the resistance readings into a map of subsurface features.

As you can see in the photograph, there is nothing visible on the ground to guide our excavations, so we rely on subsurface geophysics to help us choose the best places to dig.

For any UAkron students who might be reading this post, I will be teaching my Archaeogeophysical Survey course again in the Spring of 2012. It’s a fun class and you never know where it might lead you.

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Due to technical difficulties.

A few of you may have noticed that my last two blogs came up in pieces. In fact, it took many attempts across several hours to get the previous blog to load at all. This one is being sent from the town of Bismil about 25 minutes away from Tepe.

We are still having difficulties with our electrical supply. Turkey runs on a 240V system, but our regulator in the dig house is showing that we are only getting about 150-170V into the house. Some of the rooms in the compound effectively have no electricity and the power goes out completely about ten or so times a day. This appears to be a problem across the entire village, but it does make our technology-driven work more challenging.

We are also having difficulties with our wireless connectivity, which is intermittent at best. If you don’t hear from us for a few days, don’t despair, we will get updates to you as soon as possible. Field conditions are often a bit on the rough side, but we are still making good progress with the archaeology, despite the technical difficulties.

On the bright side, today’s survey data look really interesting; more to come soon on that subject!

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Background Information ZT Logbook

Surveying on the citadel mound.

One of the first things we do each year when we get to Ziyaret Tepe is to relocate our survey points on the site and to re-establish our “site grid”. An important thing to know about most archaeologists: we have obsessive interests in recording the precise location of all the ancient walls, pits, hearths, floors, and artifacts we find on our sites. In order to do this, we create detailed gridding systems which allow us to record the location of ancient features and artifacts in three dimensions. Conceptually, our site grid is a projection of north-south and east-west, lines that divide Ziyaret Tepe into 10m by 10m squares, to which we add a height above sea level.

In 1997, on the very first morning of work at the site, I drove a 1.5m long piece of iron rebar into the citadel mound at an arbitrary (and convenient) point and assigned this precise spot the coordinates N1000 E1000, meaning that it was 1000m north and 1000m east of an point well off site (called an “imaginary datum”). From an old Turkish state map, I determined the elevation at that point was 568.09m above sea level. All spatial measurements made subsequently over the past 15 years reference this initial survey point.

Tim surveying on the citadel mound. This photograph was taken in 2007, but it could be from any season as the annual ritual of establishing the site grid looks pretty much the same each year.

So, our typical excavation unit is a 10m by 10m grid square with each corner located at the intersection of two lines in our site grid. For example, N980 E1170 is the grid point 20m south and 170m east of that piece of iron rebar. We then record the precise location of important features or artifacts within these grid squares, again relative to the iron rebar. I can tell you, for example, that artifact ZT 29303 (an iron pin) was found at N989.28 E1173.63 elevation 568.38m (9.28m north and 3.63m east of the grid corner). I could, if I wanted, put the iron pin back in its original findspot within grid square N980 E1170.

I told you we were a bit obsessive.

Why do we do this? Part of the analysis of archaeological sites involves studying the spatial relationships between different artifacts, and between artifacts and their surrounding features. This detailed level of recording is necessary to allow us to reconstruct the site, either on paper or, increasingly, through CAD and other computer assisted modeling.

A few days ago, Chelsea and I went out and, using our total station and my notes from 1997, we relocated that same piece of iron rebar, still firmly in place at N1000 E1000, we established the north-south line, and started laying out survey and excavation points for this year’s work.

I’ll tell you about our first few days of survey in a subsequent post.

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Background Information

The Bronze Palace.

In an earlier post, I mentioned that we would be working in the Bronze Palace on the eastern edge of the high mound. This is the area marked Operation A/N on the topographic map I just posted. I thought it might be useful to give you a little background information on the palace since it will figure prominently in our posts.

First of all the name “Bronze Palace” is my invention, not the building’s ancient name. It is useful shorthand for referring to the building, and people tend to remember catchy names better. The Bronze Palace was used by the Assyrian rulers of Tushhan to house the central administration, conduct state business, and probably served as the residence of the governor. It is likely that the Assyrian king would have slept here when passing through Tushhan to conduct military campaigns along the northern frontier. Our current dating for the Bronze Palace is that it was in use during the 8th century BC.

Our excavations have uncovered only a small portion of the plan of the Bronze Palace, a large courtyard (Room 5) surrounded by a number of smaller rooms. The entire structure is made of mudbrick on a massive scale. Much of the palace was built upon a 2m (= 6 feet) thick platform of solid mudbrick, and in places the walls were decorated with polychrome wall paintings in black, blue, and red paint over white plaster. The paintings are now sadly in fragments, but they give us some sense of the grandeur of the palace in its heyday. Here is a plan of the building.

Room 7 was the throne room (often called the “reception room”) to the Palace. We know this because of parallels with other Assyrian palaces excavated elsewhere, and because of certain special features found here. I’ll tell you more about that later.

So, why the name “Bronze” Palace. Under the courtyard floor, which was paved with large flat baked bricks, we found evidence of at least five cremation burials, fired to a very high temperature, and containing (in addition to human remains) a large hoard of elite Assyrian artifacts made of metal, stone, ivory, and ceramics, including a very substantial collection of bronze artifacts: vessels, pitchers, lamps, furniture fittings. Since bronze was typically recycled in ancient times, it is rare to find such a large quantity of metal in one place, hence the nickname “Bronze Palace”.

Excavation of a sounding below the Bronze Palace to expose a drainage channel which carried water beneath the palace. The Bronze Palace had a well planned and sophisticated plumbing system.

 

A close-up view of the engraved handle of a bronze pitcher found in a cremation burial beneath the courtyard floor of the Bronze Palace. The artifacts found here were of the highest craftsmanship.

You’ll learn much more about the Bronze Palace (as will we!) as the excavations continue this summer. We will be working close to the throne room, and elsewhere in the palace, so stay tuned.

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Background Information

A topographic map of the site.

Archaeologists love maps. We spend a great deal of time and effort making maps of our excavation trenches, our sites, and the broader region in which we work. Below is one of the essentials of any project – a topographic map. In our first season at Ziyaret Tepe (1997), my colleague Guillermo Algaze and I made a map of the entire site using a total station and a hand-held compass. This map shows the changes in elevations across the site.

Topographic map showing the elevation contours, extent of the site (shaded), and the main areas of excavation (designated with a letter A-S).

The citadel mound is in the north-central part of the site, with the lower town extending to the west, east, and south. Our survey work in past years suggests that the city does not extend to the north and today the limit of the site is marked by a modern road. As you can see, despite over a decade of excavation, we have only exposed less the 2% of the ancient city of Tushhan.

I’ll refer back to this map from time to time so that you can orient our different excavation and geophysical projects across the ancient cityscape.

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What’s in a potsherd?

My last post explained that we were studying the pottery of the Medieval period as a starting point for this year’s investigation. Here is a collection of photographs showing various elements of the process.

The vast majority of archaeological artifacts come out of the ground badly broken. The beautiful complete or restored museum objects we associate with ancient societies don’t really represent the sorts of materials most archaeologists study because finding complete museum-quality artifacts is rare.

Analyzing pottery relies on careful measurements, great patience, and on experience. What we are doing at our processing station at the Ziyaret Tepe dig house is very low tech. We have balance beam scales, hand-held magnifying glasses, paper forms, and a team of researchers with good eyes and a penchant for details.

Each bag of pottery sherds, which all come from the same well-defined place at the excavation (a “context” in archaeological jargon), is emptied onto a table and sorted first by its fabric. Pottery clay has distinctive colors, textures, and inclusions (fine material added to aid in firing the clay and for decorative purposes) such as sand, chaff, or mica. Since potters in different societies used different clay sources and additives, and had different types of kilns or firing techniques, we are able to distinguish between different pottery traditions and pinpoint the time and place of manufacture for many of the tens of thousands of potsherds we recover each year.

Having sorted the pottery into fabric types, each group of sherds is counted, weighed, and the information recorded on our paper forms for later data entry into our central database. We then divide the sherds by shape (or what we call “form”) which further allows us to discriminate between time periods and different potting practices. We have a master list of forms, built up over a decade of pottery analysis, which illustrates each of our pottery forms, and lists parallels we have found with other sites.

Of course we discover new fabrics, forms, and pottery combinations each season and these are carefully described and added to our descriptions. In this sense one is never “done” with pottery analysis.

What can we do with all this detailed knowledge? Well, when we start to excavate a new area, or a new site in the vicinity, or even when we just find potsherds on the surface of an ancient site 50km away, we are often able to say with some confidence during which periods the site was occupied or when a particular building was used.

As you can see, there is a lot to be learned from even the tiniest shred of evidence!

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Work starts in earnest with pottery from the Medieval period.

Hard to believe it is Monday already. We spent our first full day here on Friday getting supplies and equipment out of our depot – a large storage unit we rent on the outskirts of the village – and setting up the camp. I drove up to Diyarbakir and informed the regional museum that we had arrived and met with our official government representative, Ahmet, who works at the Diyarbakir Museum. In Turkish, his title is temsilci and Ahmet’s role in our project is to oversee our activities and make sure we follow all the rules, and to help us in local negotiations and with logistics while in the field. We pay his salary during the season and he will stay with us, sending periodic reports on our progress to the Museum. No work starts without a temsilci!

On Saturday, we got down to business. Much of the first two weeks of the project this year will be devoted to analysis of materials excavated in previous seasons. In our depots we have some 180,000 pottery sherds and other artifacts which form an important study collection and which will eventually all be processed and recorded in our on-line database. This doesn’t sound very exciting and, to be truthful, it is a very tedious and time-consuming task, but understanding pottery is the backbone of much archaeological interpretation. Two important facts: (1) pottery sherds are exceptionally durable and will survive quite happily underground for millennia and (2) pottery styles and fashions change through time so that each generation or era has its own distinctive pottery styles. Hence, we can use pottery (among other things) to help us date the various layers and features we find at our sites.

This season we have started with an important collection of Medieval pottery, some of which we can date stylistically to the 12th through 15th centuries AD because some of the forms are well known from other sites where it is found in good contexts. Medieval pottery in the region is striking because some of it has beautifully colored glazes in blues, greens, yellows, purples, and whites, that rival fine ceramics made today. The glazed pottery is pretty well studied, but what we don’t know much about are its more common, and less appealing counterparts, the unglazed pottery vessels. These are plain terracotta vessels used for cooking, eating, fetching water and other mundane daily tasks; the unglazed pottery is poorly documented in our region, in general. So we are investing a considerable amount of time right now making a detailed study of both the glazed and unglazed pottery vessels, where on the site they come from, and how they change through time to build up a solid sequence of Medieval craftsmanship when Ziyaret Tepe was a small village with perhaps a dozen or so houses between 500-800 years ago.

Eventually these results will be published and our colleagues will be able to take our work and expand on it using new excavations and surveys. While I doubt too many Medieval potsherds will make headlines, such basic science is the foundation upon which we start to learn about ancient societies. Sunday and Monday were also devoted to processing the Medieval sherds; we are already starting to see some interesting patterns develop, but there are many more wooden crates of material left to analyze before we can write the final chapter.

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A few pictures of the village of Tepe.

Children at play along a village street.
View towards the village from our field camp. Cotton fields are found in many places within the village itself.
A kebap shop along the main street of Tepe. On Fridays, we sometimes give our cook the day off and get lunch in the village.