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Land of Carchemish (Syria) Project
A research project of the Department of Archaeology.
Background
The Euphrates valley in Syria is an important area for understanding the agricultural revolution as well as the development of early cities. However, large areas of that landscape appear to be missing, and a principal aim of the Land of Carchemish (Syria) project is to reconstruct the Euphrates Valley landscape with a view to understanding long-term trends in settlement. The survey is recording surface archaeology as well as prospecting for buried sites that relate to the urbanization of Carchemish and Jerablus Tahtani, as well as to the development of the region during the Neolithic. The Project, conducted by T.J. Wilkinson (Dept of Archaeology, Durham University) in collaboration with Professor Edgar Peltenburg (Department of Archaeology, University of Edinburgh), is being conducted in collaboration with the Directorate General of Antiquities, Damascus, and is funded by the Council for British Research in the Levant.
The project builds upon Professor Peltenburg’s Tell Jerablus Tahtani Project http://www.arcl.ed.ac.uk/arch/jerablus/jerahome.html 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 http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/DEPT/PUB/SRC/OIP/124/OIP124.html The 2006 field season has already demonstrated that the tell-dominated landscape of the Early Bronze Age (dominated by Carchemish on the Turkish-Syrian border), 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 http://www.cbrl.org.uk/default.shtm
Publications:
Wilkinson, T.J. 1990. Town and Country in SE Anatolia vol.1: Settlement and Land Use at Kurban Hoyuk and Other Sites in the Lower Karababa Basin. Oriental Institute Publications 109, University of Chicago, 1-315.
Wilkinson, T.J. 2004. On the Margins of the Euphrates: Settlement and Land Use at Tell es-Sweyhat, and in the Upper Lake Tabqa, Syria. Chicago: Oriental Institute Publications 124, 276 pp: December 2004.
