Archaeology
Research

A research project of Archaeology in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology.

Background

The Euphrates River valley is a key area for understanding both the agricultural and urban “revolutions”. During the past three decades much of the valley floor has been submerged beneath major reservoirs and consequently it has received a considerable amount of attention from archaeologists. However, they have focused on tell-sites with the result that we have a biased appreciation of early developments. The aim of the Land of Carchemish (Syria) Project is to provide a more balanced understanding of early human and environmental interactions in this critical Bend of the Euphrates by systematic survey. We pay particular attention to the overall record of settlements, to the landscape between the major settlements, and to a wider chronological range than is often provided by the occupation span of individual sites. By so doing, we hope to provide a demographic perspective on long-term settlement trends in the region as well as a landscape context for both the celebrated city of Carchemish and for Tell Jerablus Tahtani.  The latter was the subject of sustained earlier excavation by Prof. Edgar Peltenburg in the framework of the Tishrin Dam International Salvage Programme. The Project, co-directed by Professor Edgar Peltenburg (Archaeology, School of History, Clasics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh) and Professor T.J. Wilkinson (Dept of Archaeology, Durham University), is being conducted in collaboration with the Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums, Damascus, and is funded in part by the Council for British Research in the Levant. The project builds upon Professor Peltenburg’s Tell Jerablus Tahtani Project as well as the landscape studies of Professor Wilkinson, which have been undertaken along the Euphrates in Syria and Turkey and published in the Series, Oriental Institute Publications.  Survey since 2006 has demonstrated that the tell-dominated landscape of the Early Bronze Age was by Roman / Byzantine times progressively replaced by a settlement pattern of villages and farmsteads which were dispersed widely across the landscape. This remarkably “busy” landscape was associated with numerous canals, qanats, and masonry channels, as well as quarries and evidence for intensive agriculture. Publications of this project are to appear in the journal Levant, published by the Council for British Research in the Levant.

Publications

E. Peltenburg ed. 2007
Euphrates River Valley Settlement. The Carchemish Sector in the Third Millennium BC.  Levant Supplementary Series 5.  Oxford: Oxbow.

Wilkinson, T. J., E. Peltenburg, A. McCarthy, E. Wilkinson, and M. Brown 2007
Archaeology in the Land of Carchemish: landscape surveys in the area of Jerablus Tahtani, 2006.  Levant39, 2007: 213-247

Peltenburg, E. and T. Wilkinson 2008