Digging Out: Archeology Makes A Comeback In Iraq.

http://vimeo.com/39074725

Το τέλος της ανασκαφικής περιόδου (04/05/2011)

Επειδή κάποιοι από τους αναγνώστες μας νομίζουν ότι η ανασκαφή συνεχίζεται (και με το δίκιο τους βέβαια αφού δεν ενημερώνουμε το blog) εδώ βλέπετε την φωτογραφία που βγάλαμε (έξω απ'το μουσείο)αφού τελειώσαμε την καταμέτρηση των ευρημάτων। Μετά βγάλαμε άλλες δύο φωτογραφίες (ελπίζουμε να σας αρέσουν) και γυρίσαμε στα δωμάτιά μας για να ετοιμάσουμε τις βαλίτσες μας και να πάρουμε το αεροπλάνο της επιστροφής για την Αθήνα!

Αρχαιολογικά μαστορέματα

Την ίδια μέρα ολοκλήρώθηκε η κατασκευή του συστήματος επίπλευσης που θα χρησιμοποιηθεί για την διήθηση του χώματος από την ανασκαφή! Με αυτή τη διαδικασία θα εντοπίσουμε σπόρους και διάφορα πολύ μικρά αντικείμενα. Το νερό που χρησιμοποιείται ανακυκλώνεται και έτσι δεν σπαταλάμε ούτε σταγόνα.

Παρόμοια κατασκευή χρησιμοποιείται για πρώτη φορά σε ανασκαφή στην Κουρδική Περιφέρεια του Ιράκ!

Την κατασκευή της ανέλαβε η Αλεξάνδρα Λιβάρδα.

Δέυτερη μέρα ανασκαφής (14/4/11)

Κατά τη δεύτερη μέρα της ανασκαφής συνεχίσαμε να αφαιρούμε το επιφανειακό χώμα! Ο γεωδαιτικός σταθμός έχει στηθεί και έχουμε ξεκινήσει τις μετρήσεις της ημέρας!

Πρώτη μέρα στο Tell Nader (11/4/11)

Κατά την πρώτη μέρα μας στο χώρο πραγματοποιήσαμε τη χαράξη του καννάβου! Εδώ βλέπετε τον πρώτο άριθμό που δόθηκε.

Ebla Digital Archives

The aim of the Ebla Digital Archives [ EbDA ] database is to provide a digital edition of the entire corpus of cuneiform texts belonging to the Ebla Royal Archives. Texts are reproduced in the same sequence as in the individual volumes of the series Archivi Reali di Ebla – Testi published by the “Italian Archaeological Mission to Siria” of the Sapienza University of Rome. Compared with the hard copy publication, the digital edition provides harmonized transliterations, corrections and numerous collations made over the years by the team of epigraphers who cooperate with the Mission

Ebla Digital Archives

Bamiyan Buddhas once glowed with colour

Ten years ago the world watched in horror as the Taliban blew up the two gigantic Buddha statues that had looked out over the Bamiyan Valley since the 6th century. Located on the Silk Road the huge works of art formed the centrepiece of one of the world’s largest Buddhist monastic complexes. Thousands of monks tended countless shrines in the niches and caves that pierced a kilometre-long cliff face.

Read more here

Διάλεξη για την Ελληνική Αρχαιολογική Αποστολή στην Ιορδανία

Ανασκάπτοντας τη φιλόξενη χώρα της Ιορδανίας

Αθανάσιος Παπαδόπουλος, Ομότιμος Καθηγητής Προϊστορικής Αρχαιολογίας του Πανεπιστημίου Ιωαννίνων

28 Φεβρουαρίου 2011, 19:00

Αμφιθέατρο Εθνικού Αρχαιολογικού Μουσείου, Τοσίτσα 1, 106 82 Αθήνα

Iraq: Ancient cities sprung from marshes

For more than a century, archaeologists have believed that ancient Mesopotamian cities – places like Uruk and Ur – were born along the banks of the great rivers of the Middle East and depended mainly on irrigation of surrounding deserts for their survival.

Dr. Jennifer Pournelle, a research assistant professor in the School of the Environment at the University of South Carolina, has a different theory. She believes that the great cities of southern Iraq grew and thrived in vast lowland marshes fed by those rivers, not along the banks of rivers themselves.
Last fall, Pournelle led the first American research team of archaeologists to visit Iraq in more than 25 years. And what she and her colleagues found has caused the start of a shift in thinking about how ancient urban landscapes evolved.

“Clearly, the earliest cities were not strung out along rivers like pearls on a strand. Rather, they were spread across the river delta within and along the margins of marshlands,” said Pournelle, who combines excavation records and archaeological site maps with aerial and satellite imagery, in order to reconstruct ancient environments.

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How Jericho's 11,000-year-old tower came into being

Discovered by archaeologists in 1952, a 28-foot-high stone tower discovered on the edge of the town of Jericho has puzzled scientists ever since. Now, eleven centuries after it was built, Tel Aviv University archaeologists at the ancient site Tel Jericho are revealing new facts about the world's first skyscraper.

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Newly Online at the Oriental Institute: Tell Hamoukar, Volume 1. Urbanism and Cultural Landscapes in Northeastern Syria: The Tell Hamoukar Survey, 1999-2001

Tell Hamoukar is one of the largest Bronze Age sites in northern Mesopotamia. The present volume presents the results of three seasons of field survey and remote-sensing analysis at the site and its region. These studies were undertaken to address questions of urban origins, land use, and demographic trends through time. Site descriptions and settlement histories are presented for Hamoukar and fifty-nine other sites in its immediate hinterland over the last 8,000 years. The project paid close attention to the "off-site" landscape between sites and considered aspects of agricultural practices, land tenure, and patterns of movement. For each phase of occupation, the patterns of settlement and land use are contextualized within larger patterns of Mesopotamian history, with particular attention to the proto-urban fifth millennium B.C., the Uruk Expansion of the fourth millennium BC, the height of urbanism in the late third millennium, the impact of the Assyrian empire in the early first millennium BC, and the Abbasid landscape of the late first millennium AD.

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Visible Language: Inventions of Writing in the Ancient Middle East

A new exhibition at the Oriental Institute Museum at the University of Chicago will show visitors how scribes in the ancient Middle East invented writing, thus transforming prehistoric cultures into civilizations.

Among the items on display will be the earliest cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia (today's Iraq), dating to about 3200 BC, which are on loan from the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin. They have never before been exhibited in the United States. The pictographic signs, a precursor to writing, are part of a writing system that developed into cuneiform, a wedge-shaped script that was incised on clay tablets. Examples of that form of writing will also be exhibited.

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How Neolithic farmers and hunter gatherers fought for space

A new research details a physical model, which can potentially explain how the spreading of Neolithic farmers was slowed down by the population density of hunter gatherers. Agricultural or Neolithic economics replaced the Mesolithic social model of hunter-gathering in the Near East about 10,000 years ago.

One of the most important socioeconomic changes in human history, this socioeconomic shift, known as the Neolithic transition, spread gradually across Europe until it slowed down when more northern latitudes were reached.

Over 500 ancient artefacts unearthed in Bazgir Tappeh in northeastern Iran

LONDON, (CAIS) -- Over 500 ancient metal artefacts have recently been discovered during an archaeological excavation on the Bazgir Tappeh in Gorgan Province in northeastern Iran.

The artefacts, all of which are made of copper, comprise weapons, farming tools, drug tubes and pans, which date back to about 1800 years ago, Gorgan Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Department director Fereidun Fali told the Persian service of IRNA reported on Saturday.

The artefacts are comparable to relics previously discovered in archaeological excavations on Gorgan’s Turang Tappeh and the Tappeh Hesar of Damghan in northern Semnan Province, and several ancient sites in Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, he added.

“Ruins of a large Parthian castle built of 37x37 centimetre mud bricks, which are similar to ruins previously discovered at the Turang Tappeh and the Narges Tappeh, have also been unearthed in the upper stratum of the site,” Fa’ali said.

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Major archaeological Discovery In Israel

Byzantine church and a large Mosaic were uncovered in an Israel 
Antiquities Authority Salvage Excavation at Hirbet Madras, in the Judean coastal plain.

In recent months an archaeological excavation was conducted at Hirbet Madras
in the wake of an antiquities theft during which robbers attempted to breach 
and plunder an ancient underground complex.

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What’s inside? Sealed jar discovered at Qumran – site of Dead Sea Scrolls

An intact, sealed, jar has been discovered at Qumran, the site where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in nearby caves.

A multinational team of scientists have been analyzing the jar and their findings are set to be published in the journal Archaeometry. If you have a subscription (or access to a library with one) you can already see the article on the publication’s website.

“The finding of an intact and sealed storage jar is an extremely rare event,” the researchers write. The discovery “provides a unique possibility to analyse its last contents.”

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Göbekli Tepe: Making us rethink our ancestors

German archaeologist Professor Klaus Schmidt first came to Turkey in 1978 for research but it wasn’t until 1994 that he realized the importance of Göbekli Tepe, an early Neolithic site in the southeast of Turkey. He tells us about site’s discovery, its importance, what has been uncovered to date and also has a message for those who traffic in antiquities.

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Tel Ghweran - Archaeological findings dating back to Ayyubid period in north-eastern Syria

Global Arab Network

Syria (Hasaka) - The archaeological site of Tel Ghweran is located on the road from Deir Ezzor to the center of Hasaka city, nestled on the bank of Khabur River south of the city.

Excavations indicate that the site was settled during the late Uruk period, prospering during the second half of third millennium BC and reaching the peak of its splendor during the Ayyubid period in the 12th and 13th centuries AD.


The site, which is 80 meters long, 60 meters wide and 11 meters high, was studied for the first time by a German expedition which was surveying the hills on the banks of Khabur River. The expedition found pottery fragments that indicated that the site dates back to the late Stone Age and the Bronze Age.

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Syria: 650 Babylonian cuneiform tablets document 8000 years of history

By H. Sabbagh    Wednesday, 26 January 2011 00:54

Syria (Hasaka) – Archaeological discoveries in the Tell Lilan site located 120 km northeast of Hasaka indicate to the historic significance of the site which dates back to the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC.

The site is located on one of the important ancient trade routes linking Cappadocia, Ashur and Anatolia principalities.

BBC Video: Attempt to save Iraq's marshes from the desert