4. Interactions and New Directions in Near Eastern Archaeology. Volume 3

CONTENTS / SOMMARIO

Iamoni Marco, Rebaudo Ludovico Dino, Zanini Franco

Preface

Coppini Costanza, Simi Francesca

Foreword


Civilizations in contact: current research and new approaches in Mediterranean and Near Eastern Archaeology


Rova Elena

How wide is the Near East? Some reflections on the limits of “Near Eastern Archaeology”

Barbiero Beatrice

A territorial model of animal husbandry for the southern Caucasus: some preliminary results

Casadei Eloisa

The pottery repertoire at the end of the third millennium BC as chronological marker between southern Mesopotamia and the neighbouring regions. The case-study of the Syrian Jazirah

Chelazzi Francesca, Bonzano Simone

Thinking data. Integrative big data approaches towards an ‘introspective’ digital archaeology in the ancient Mediterranean

Cioé Francesca, Merlonghi Marzia

The Crisis Areas Archaeological Database (CAAD): a WebGIS for monitoring and safeguarding archaeological heritage

Coppini Costanza

Settling the land: settlements pattern and ceramics in the land behind Nineveh from the Middle Bronze Age to the establishment of the Middle Assyrian State

Crescioli Lorenzo

‘Living burials’: reopening actions in kurgans and tombs between Central Europe and the Eurasian Steppe

Dall’armellina Vittoria

From the Caspian to the Aegean, from the Caucasus to the Carpathians. The circulation of the “long-sword” in the second millennium BC

Dallai Margherita

The vaulted funerary hypogea in Mesopotamia between the second and first millennium BC: localization and architectural features

Fascitiello Maurizio

Rotary querns from Tell Barri (Syria): chronology, use and function

Hadipour Moradi Soheila

Globalization in zoomorphic motifs during Iron Age in Iran and its neighbour

Oselini Valentina

Defining the MB-LB transition in northern Mesopotamia: some archaeological considerations on the new data from the Erbil Plain and neighbouring regions

Ricetti Melissa

Matching Near Eastern seals and sealings: current issues and new perspectives

Russo Sergio Giuseppe

Connecting cultures, dividing countries: a preliminary assessment of the Khabur Ware from Girnavaz Höyük, Southeastern Turkey

Schmitt Kathrin

(Hi)storytelling: the ancient Near East in western historical novels and archaeological writing

Simi Francesca

The Tell Gomel archaeological survey. Preliminary results of the 2015-2016 campaigns

Canci Alessandro, Qasim Hasan Ahmed

The human burials from Şinduxa (Iraqi Kurdistan). A bioarchaeological and archaeothanatological approach


Marine connections: the Gulf and the interactions between the Arabian Peninsula,
Mesopotamia, the Iranian world and beyond


Cattani Maurizio

Adaptation and transformation of human setting from Middle Holocene to Early Bronze Age in south-eastern Arabian Peninsula

Ghiro Massimiliano, Cocca Enzo, Laurenza Sabatino

A transitional model between Umm An-Nar and Hafit cultures: the case study of Grave 4 of Al Arid

Laurenza Sabatino, Bianchi Marco, Di Michele Antonio

Graves, distribution and social memory: towards a new definition of funerary landscape in Oman

Lischi Silvia

Decorated shell discs from Sumhuram, Oman

Nicosia Mara

Christianity in the Gulf: vestiges of the East Syrian presence in late antiquity

Preston Eleanor Lucy

The Ubaid in the Gulf: compositional analysis of ceramic material (sixth‑fifth millennium BC)

Putzolu Cristiano, Baione Carlo, Cocca Enzo, Laurenza Sabatino

Rescue archaeology in the sultanate of Oman: methods and solution strategies

Details

Interactions and New Directions in Near Eastern Archaeology is the third volume of the Proceedings of the 5th Broadening Horizons International Conference that was held at the University of Udine from 5th to 8th June 2017. Broadening Horizons aims to be an international platform for postgraduate students and early-career researchers in the wide Near Eastern archaeology field. The main topic of the conference Civilizations in Contact served to emphasize the importance of cross-cultural interactions in the Near East over time. In particular, the present volume is devoted to the papers from Session 7, “Civilizations in contact: current research and new approaches in Mediterranean and Near Eastern Archaeology”, and Session 6, “Marine connections: the Gulf and the interactions between the Arabian Peninsula, Mesopotamia, the Iranian world and beyond”. The volume contains 24 peer-reviewed papers divided into two parts, introduced by the two key-lectures which were given by Elena Rova and Maurizio Cattani. These proceedings give a vivid picture of the exchanges and interactions that occurred during the presentation and debate of specialist papers in Udine at the conference. The diversity in terms of geographical environments, historical periods, and topics in Near Eastern archaeology stands out among the contributions published here. This collection of papers by a new generation of young scholars offers fresh and novel approaches to complex archaeological topics.

Costanza Coppini is a White-Levy fellow at the Institute for Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology at the Freie Universität Berlin, leading a project about the Middle and Late Bronze Age pottery and settlements in Northern Mesopotamia. She is a member of the Land of Nineveh Archaeological Project (LoNAP), where she is in charge of the study and publication of second millennium pottery and takes part in the excavation at Gir-e Gomel (KIGAP). Her primary research field concerns the archaeology of the ancient Near East with a specialization in second millennium BC pottery and settlements. In relation to this topic she is involved in the study and publication of the pottery from the excavations at Tell Barri (Missione Archeologica Italiana a Tell Barri, Siria) and Tell Fekheriye (Institute of Near Eastern Archaeology, Freie Universität Berlin). She currently collaborates with other archaeological projects in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and has been involved in excavation projects in Italy and Syria. Besides these she participates in projects dealing with cultural heritage preservation.

Francesca Simi is a postdoctoral research assistant at the University of Oxford. She works for the Endangered Archaeology in Middle East and North Africa project (EAMENA) at Oxford and is a senior member of the Land of Nineveh Archaeological Project (LoNAP). Her primary research field lies in the archaeology of the ancient Near East with a specialization in landscape archaeology. Her interests focus on the reconstruction of long-term population and land-use dynamics in Upper Mesopotamia by means of field survey, remote sensing techniques and GIS methods. She has been involved in several survey and excavation projects in Italy, Syria, Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq. In the Kurdistan Region of Iraq – KRG, she directed the Tell Gomel Archaeological Survey (TGAS).

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Recent Submissions

Now showing 1 - 5 of 27
  • Publication
    Christianity in the Gulf: vestiges of the East Syrian presence in late antiquity
    (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2020)
    Nicosia, Mara
    The Arabian-Persian Gulf area has been fertile soil for different civilisations through the centuries, and bears the traces of numerous settlements of many different historical periods. Specifically, the area known in the past as Bēt Qaṭrāyē shows the vestiges of the Christian Syrian presence. The coastal region stretching from Kuwait to the United Arab Emirates, including also some of the Persian islands, displays a strange unevenness between the literary sources and the archaeological data relating to the history of the Christian communities that lived there between the fourth and the ninth centuries. The main texts naming the area, specifically its upper clergy and its most important religious circumstances, are the acts of the councils, but there are also other mentions scattered in different sixth and seventh centuries authors’ texts. Following the path of the ups and downs of the Church of the East, this paper aims at reconstructing a hypothetical history of the dioceses and the settlements in the area that witnessed the Christian presence. Anyway, this history cannot be understood only by relying upon written sources, and needs then to be integrated with the archaeological reports produced during the last decades. The result of this integration is the picture of a highly lively community, strong and self-reliant, whose history was too often forgotten.
      155  232
  • Publication
    The Ubaid in the Gulf: compositional analysis of ceramic material (sixth‑fifth millennium BC)
    (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2020)
    Preston, Eleanor Lucy
    Maritime trade in the Persian Gulf has been a pivotal feature of world trading systems from the Bronze Age to the present. Understanding its origins in prehistory is essential for any broader interpretation of early social and economic developments between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. The key period in this respect is the Mid-Late sixth millennium BC, when material culture of Mesopotamian origin is first documented in the Gulf. The material remains are in the form of potsherds from the southern Mesopotamian Ubaid tradition, which have been found as far as the Straits of Hormuz, 900 km from Iraq. Chemical analysis, conducted on the Ubaid-ware found in Arabia, determined that these potsherds originated from southern Mesopotamia and were not local imitations. These Ubaid-ware sherds, alongside a coarse-ware, believed to be local, are the earliest ceramic material found in Arabia. However, after the Ubaid period came to an end by the end of the fifth millennium BC, ceramic artefacts are not seen again in Arabia for nearly a millennium. Therefore this early appearance of ceramics in the Gulf region takes on a central role in approaching the wider questions of cross-cultural interaction. However, questions concerning provenance remain. This paper details ICP-AES analysis conducted on both the Ubaid-ware and the local ware with the aim of furthering our understanding of the exchange relationship between Mesopotamia and Arabia and putting the Ubaid within the context of the Arabian Neolithic nomadic population.
      184  240
  • Publication
    Rescue archaeology in the sultanate of Oman: methods and solution strategies
    (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2020)
    Putzolu, Cristiano
    ;
    Baione, Carlo
    ;
    Cocca, Enzo
    ;
    Laurenza, Sabatino
    This paper aims at presenting the results of the topographic fieldwork of a team of professional archaeologists invited by the Ministry of Heritage and Culture of the Sultanate of Oman to excavate and survey three graveyards in the area of Sohar (Falaji as Souq, Wadi al Arad and Liwa) in 2014 and 2015. The construction of the Batinah Express Highway would have led to the destruction of hundreds of burial mounds, therefore the team developed a quick and accurate surveying strategy to document them properly: after a first “test” campaign using monoscopic photogrammetry, the team opted for 3D SfM photogrammetry using a completely open source workflow. This workflow required two surveyors on the field and in the IT lab to ensure the archaeologists updated orthophotos and to update the 2D and 3D vector plans. To manage the huge mass of data coming from the field the team opted for QGIS and the plugin PyArchInit. The mix of surveying methodology and managing system developed on site allowed the team to document the numerous Stratigraphic Units produced during the excavation of hundreds of graves, and also proved to be very helpful as hermeneutic tool as shown in the case of the excavation of Grave 21.
      251  118
  • Publication
    (Hi)storytelling: the ancient Near East in western historical novels and archaeological writing
    (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2020)
    Schmitt, Kathrin
    Verbal aspects of historiography are barely considered in the German archaeological community. The highly descriptive archaeological writing is still widely seen as desirable because of its seemingly neutral and objective nature, especially compared with other forms of historiographical storytelling such as non-fiction, historical novels or documentaries. Even decades after the linguistic turn, its insights never fully entered the German archaeology of the Near East. Therefore, in this paper, I will address issues of narration and language in archaeological fact-production in comparison to historical novels, which are commonly accused of being ideological, euphemistic and sometimes escapist. This leads me to expose some hidden ideological elements in archaeological writing, which are mostly concealed within our structural way to approach past as well as present societies. While I focus on several ‘-isms’ such as colonialism, eurocentrism or androcentrism, the archaeology of the Ancient Near East serves only as a case study. Parts of the issues discussed here apply to varying degrees to the archaeologies of other times and regions as well.
      284  168
  • Publication
    The human burials from Şinduxa (Iraqi Kurdistan). A bioarchaeological andarchaeothanatological approach
    (EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2020)
    Canci, Alessandro
    ;
    Qasim, Hasan Ahmed
    In oriental archaeology the study of human skeletal remains sadly still today receives poor attention causing depletion to the archaeological and historical interpretations. Here we present the results of a study based on an integrated approach between archaeothanatology (among the topics taphonomy of human bone remains, spatial relationships between other elements of the tomb as the architectural structure or grave goods) and bioarchaeology (sex, age at death, ancestry, stature, palaeopathology) of the human bone remains coming from the excavations of Şinduxa necropolis nowadays embedded in the city center of Duhok, Iraqi Kurdistan. Briefly, four tombs were explored: one, placed in plain earth covered with stone slabs belonging to an adult woman and the other three consisted in stone funerary chambers above the ground were bone remains of 9 adult subjects of both sexes were lying. Interestingly in each of these structures a well preserved simple oval clay sarcophagus containing one or two skeletons was present. Regarding the tomb’s chronology C14 calibrated dating indicates a time frame from Neo-Assyrian to the Parthian epoch.
      161  150