Assur 2023
Excavations and other research in the New Town
edited by Karen Radner and Andrea Squitieri
Hardback (Published)
(October 2024)
ISBN: 9783935012669
8.23 x 11.77 inches
Price: $74.00
Out of stock
This first volume of the new series “Exploring Assur” presents the results of the fieldwork conducted at Assur, modern Qal’at Sherqat, in 2023, with a focus on the New Town in the south of the settlement, and contains contributions by Mark Altaweel, Silvia Amicone, Katleen Deckers, Jorg Fassbinder, Holger Gzella, Sandra Hahn, Jean-Jacques Herr, Veronica Hinterhuber, F. Janoscha Kreppner, Inci Nurgul Ozdogru, Karen Radner, Jana Richter, Jens Rohde, Lena Ruider, Claudia Sarkady, Michaela Schauer, Annette Paetz gen. Schieck, Andrea Squitieri, Andreas Stele, and Marco Wolf. At Assur, the team is based in the excavation house first used by Walter Andrae from 1903-1914, and as this building is a protected monument within the UNESCO World Heritage site of Assur, a chapter is dedicated to its history. The early years come to life through the letters of Andrae and many photographs that he and his staff took of the building, reproduced courtesy of the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft zu Berlin. The fieldwork undertaken in 2023 included a program of magnetometer and electrical resistivity tomography prospecting and sediment coring in the New Town of Assur, whose results are presented together with a study of soil and sediment magnetism based on coring samples. The magnetogram of the New Town substantially deepens our knowledge of the settlement’s organisation in the first centuries AD when the city was part of the Parthian world. The excavations conducted in the southern part of the New Town, directly adjoining an area excavated by the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage in 2002, brought to light a sizeable chamber tomb of 46 m2 from that period, with over a dozen skeletons. Moreover, the excavations yielded highly welcome new evidence for the Hellenistic occupation of Assur, namely Building A and two burials (Graves 3 and 4). The dead were placed underneath clay sarcophagi of an ovoid-elliptical shape. One bears an incised alphabetic inscription dated to the month Ab in the year 153 of the Seleucid era, that is July/August 158 BC. Brief as the text is, it provides precious insights into writing and dating practices at Assur after the end of local cuneiform writing and before the rise of the Eastern Mesopotamian scribal tradition that would eventually spread to Hatra and other areas. This burial also contained calcinated textile fragments of at least six different types of cloth. New data for the Assyrian occupation of Assur originates from some small-scale work undertaken on the edge of the Iraqi trench of 2002, from the partially excavated Building B and from Grave 5, which contained typical 7th century BC items including a bronze fibula and a glazed miniature vessel. A deep sounding dug down from this burial to the virgin soil yielded pottery types that are well known from sites in the Assyrian heartland and the Syrian Jazirah in the 13th century BC, including fragments of carinated bowls and beakers with elongated bodies and nipple bases, as well as a piece of charcoal with a radiocarbon dating range of 1506-1440 calBC (95.4% probability). This date corresponds well with the oldest mention of the construction of the wall and the gates of the New Town in the inscriptions of Puzur-Aur III, whose reign is conventionally dated to 1521-1498 BC. In total, the 2023 excavations produced 17 radiocarbon dating ranges, derived from the analysis of charcoal, seeds and human teeth; these are the very first 14C dates available from Assur. Another first for Assur is the palaeobotanical analysis of 133 charred wood fragments and 8,655 carbonised plant remains, which provides an entirely new dataset for reconstruction of the ancient environment. Chapters on the pottery, with first steps towards a fabric classification for Assur by means of portable X-ray fluorescence and petrographic analyses, the small finds and the epigraphic finds (cuneiform and alphabetic) round off the volume.
- Edited by Karen Radner
- Edited by Andrea Squitieri
Other Titles in this Series
Similar Books
Ḫattušaš utnē išḫameški
Hittite and Other Ancient Near Eastern Studies Presented to Piotr Taracha on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday
Punning in Odd or Elegant Constructions in Jeremiah
The Convergence of Linguistics, Rhetoric, and Textuality in the Hebrew Text of Jeremiah
Shame in the Worlds of the Hebrew Bible and Akkadian Texts
A Linguistic Study and Its Implications
Volume 33
Telling Contexts
Archaeological and Textual Studies in Honor of Elizabeth Bloch-Smith and Mark S. Smith
Die Entwicklung erdbebensicherer Bautechniken in der Frühen und Mittleren Eisenzeit in Ostanatolien
Volume 11
Kultur – Kontakt – Kultur
Beiträge anlässlich der 66. Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale in Frankfurt/Main und Mainz, 25.–29. Juli 2022
Volume 35
Sprachwissenschaftliche und kulturhistorische Reflexionen
Festschrift zu Ehren von Jörg Klinger
Volume 31
A Numismatic History of Barikot
Catalogue and Analysis of the Coin Finds from the Excavations at Bir-koṭ-ghwaṇḍai (Barikot), Swat, Pakistan (1984-2022) Pakistan (1984-2022). With a contribution by Luca M. Olivieri
Volume 69
Alexander the Great and the Campaign of Gaugamela
New Research on Topography and Chronology. IAMNI 1 (Italian Archaeological Mission to Northern Iraq)
Volume 53
Archaeology of Eastern Anatolia II: From Prehistoric Times to the End of the Iron Ages
Proceedings of the 2nd Archaeology of Eastern Anatolia Colloquium, 23-25 April 2021, Online (Arkeolojihaber Youtube Channel)
Volume 43
Assyria and the West
A Fresh Look at the Unshakeable Pillars of Late Bronze and Iron Age Chronology in the Eastern Mediterranean World
Autocratic Rule in Antiquity
Proceedings of the 14th Melammu Workshop, Krakow, 46 October 2021
Volume 12
Boğazköy Tablets in the Museum of Anatolian Civilisations (Bo 95–Bo 3993)
Anadolu Medeniyetleri Müzesinde Bulunan Boğazköy Tabletleri (Bo 95–Bo 3993)
Volume 3
Bridging the Gap: Disciplines, Times, and Spaces in Dialogue – Volume 2
Sessions 3, 7 and 8 from the Conference Broadening Horizons 6 Held at the Freie Universität Berlin, 24–28 June 2019
Ceramic Finds in Context (Roman to Early Islamic Times)
Final Publications from the Danish-German Jerash Northwest Quarter Project VII
Volume 13
From Egypt to the Levant and Beyond
African Individuals and Groupsain Cuneiform Texts from the Late Bronze Age
Volume 133
Groundbreaking Technologies in the Middle Paleolithic of the Levant
8igh Resolution and Multi-scale Functional Analysis of Ground Stone Tools
Volume 3
It All Began with Stratigraphy and Chronology
Archaeology in Central Anatolia. Festschrift Dedicated to Sachihiro Omura on his 77th Birthday
Khirbet al-Khalde
Final Publications from the Khirbet al-Khalde Archaeological Project 2023
Volume 2
