Seminars

Cylinder seals, among the most studied ancient West Asian objects, once had materially richer surfaces than their current appearance indicates. Ongoing scientific research on 30 seals from the Yale Babylonian Collection, spanning the Uruk through Achaemenid periods, suggests that ancient users deliberately applied pigments and metals to the carved imagery and inscriptions of some seals. In this talk, we present the findings of our project, with four case studies dating to the second and first millennia BCE examined in depth, asking what these augmentations reveal about seal life histories, function, visual impact, and sealing practices. Methodological challenges, including the possibility of contamination from ancient or modern sources, are also discussed. Taken together, the evidence suggests that color and metal may have been as integral to some cylinder seals as the imagery cut into them, pointing toward a more chromatic, materially complex life for these familiar objects than their surfaces now imply.

Syro-Cilician Ware was the main painted pottery tradition in the Amuq, Cilicia, and inner northwestern Syria during the Middle Bronze Age, and its sporadic appearances outside its main distribution area (as local variations or imports) signify complex interregional networks of interaction. Syro-Cilician Ware has been studied mainly as comparative material with the other painted pottery traditions of the MBA Near East, but its production technology and organization have received less attention. The assemblage from Tell Atchana/Alalakh in the Amuq has enabled a detailed technological analysis of Syro-Cilician Ware, identifying various technical behaviors at different stages of production and yielding some hints regarding the organization of production from an intra-site perspective. Recognition of different local traditions as well as the presence of imported Syro-Cilician Ware vessels at the site have raised the question about the extent of regional and interregional encounters and their consequent effects on pottery production technologies, along with the implications for the organization of production on a wider scale. This presentation offers a comparative technological analysis of the Syro-Cilician Ware from selected sites in the Amuq and Cilicia using macroscopic analysis and thin section petrography. On a regional level, evidence from Toprakhisar Höyük, a rural settlement in the Altınözü highlands, as well as survey data from the Amuq Valley Regional Projects allow one to trace patterns of production throughout the Amuq. On an inter-regional level, evidence from Kinet Höyük, a significant harbor settlement from neighboring Cilicia, constitutes the main comparative material for the Amuq data. These results shed light on (1) the patterns of Syro-Cilician Ware production on both sides of the Amanus Mountains, incorporating sites with different functional attributes, as well as (2) the circulation of both technological knowledge and the vessels themselves within and between the two regions.

The Governorates of Duhok and Ninawa in northern Iraq host the most unusual and monumental irrigation system ever built by the Assyrians in the core of their empire. Between 703 and c. 688 BCE, Sennacherib created the Northern Assyrian Irrigation System in four stages, a ramified network of canals to water Nineveh’s extensive hinterland and supply water to his ‘Palace without a Rival’ and royal parks on the citadel of Nineveh. The creation of this new waterscape greatly transformed the rural landscape of the Assyrian core region, determining a shift from extensive dry farming to an intensive, predictable, and high-yield cultivation system based on irrigation. The talk presents results of the work conducted since 2012 by the Land of Nineveh Archaeological Project of Udine University on the Northern Assyrian Irrigation System, with a particular focus on the newly discovered Assyrian Faida canal and rock art complex. Investigation of this extraordinary and extremely endangered archaeological site was launched in 2019 and has led to the exploration of a 10 km-long (at least) irrigation canal cut into the limestone bedrock of the Chiya Daka hill range. Thirteen monumental sculpted rock panels carved along the canal’s eastern bank were brought to light, representing an Assyrian ruler depicted at both ends of each panel, framing the cult statues of seven deities standing on pedestals shaped like striding animals or mythological creatures. The Faida Archaeological Complex has been recorded, protected, and restored. Conservation treatment and site-enhancing initiatives have also been carried out at the sites of Khinis, Maltai, and Jerwan to create an archaeological park including the entire irrigation system constructed by King Sennacherib and his successors.

Interpretations of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Göbekli Tepe (southeastern Türkiye) have shifted from viewing the site as a purely ritual center to recognizing the presence of domestic activities, albeit with strong ritual underpinnings, as evidenced by the communal "special buildings" with their monumental T-shaped pillars. Moreover, data from recent archaeological surveys and newly initiated excavations at contemporaneous sites in the region clearly demonstrate that Göbekli Tepe was just one element within the broader, long-term process of Neolithization in the region, unfolding throughout the Early Holocene. In this presentation, selected insights from our recent fieldwork at Göbekli Tepe, together with new discoveries from the upper Euphrates and Tigris basins, offer a new perspective on the site’s place within the emerging socio-cultural and environmental dynamics of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic.

This seminar will discuss when and how Anatolian Hieroglyphic script was invented. The nature of the script and its adaptation to spoken language(s) will also be explored according to the evaluation and reevaluation of old and new evidence from Karkemish and Alalakh.

The 3rd millennium BCE witnessed the peak of Early Bronze Age ‘globalization’ across Middle Asia. Long-distance exchanges of raw materials, especially metals, connected and transformed communities from Mesopotamia to the Indus Valley and from Central Asia to the Arabian Peninsula. Archaeological evidence and textual sources testify to the importance of maritime exchange via the Persian Gulf at this time. However, much less attention has been paid to the following millennium, when the ‘Middle Asian Interaction Sphere’ disintegrated, and the scale and nature of metal production and long-distance exchanges were transformed. This seminar presents new archaeological and archaeometallurgical studies from eastern Arabian sites, including Qarn al-Harf (UAE), Failaka Island (Kuwait), and Saruq al-Hadid (UAE), that illuminate the poorly known period of the second millennium BCE. The studies identify continued exchanges of materials to and through the Persian Gulf (including copper, tin, and silver) in the Middle Bronze Age, and the transformation of cultural interactions and exchange in the early Iron Age, while highlighting ongoing challenges regarding the Late Bronze ‘Dark Age’ in the region.