West & East VI, 2021-2022

«West & East» is the organ of the Post-graduate Archaeological School of the Universities of Trieste, Udine and Venice Ca’ Foscari (SISBA). It is an on-line journal released once in a year, usually at the end of the year, on the digital platform OpenstarTs – EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste. «West & East» aims to promote studies and scientific research in every branch of Archaeology by disseminating in full Open Access significant pieces of scholarship concerning Mediterranean and Near-Eastern cultures and their reciprocal relationships from Prehistory to the Middle Ages.«West & East» publishes studies that critically discuss topics concerning art and archaeology of the above mentioned subject area and periods. Studies that involve the application of scientific disciplines (e.g. archaeometric analyses) are also welcome, as well as field reports, provided that they give a critical account of the achieved results.

While research publications on Palmyra have become more and more numerous in recent decades, the question of how to characterise Palmyra’s local elite is still controversial. Ernest Will argued that the local elite were a group of «grand patrons» with their habitus reflecting a habitus «de cheikhs selon le terme arabe». Whereas Yon draws a different picture, labelling the local elite an «aristocratie marchande» and implicitly identifying the ruling class of Palmyra as a regime of notables; hence, resembling other local elites in the Roman Near East. Recently, Sommer emphasised that Palmyrene elite members also provided military service. Thus, he questioned the understanding of Palmyra’s elite as a leisure class of notables.

Tra i materiali di epoca romana reimpiegati nelle murature e nelle pavimentazioni dell’Abbazia di Santa Maria di Cavour si distingue una zoccolatura di un recinto funerario di prima età imperiale, che mostra sulla superficie di attesa tre incassi romboidali per l’alloggiamento di pilastrini chiusi alle estremità da due incavi rettangolari. Il reperto non trova al momento confronti in ambito piemontese, ma richiama modelli diffusi in tutta la Cisalpina, riscontrabili negli esempi più illustri dei monumenti funerari dei Concordii di Boretto o degli Statii ad Aquileia e in diverse attestazioni sporadiche, spesso reimpiegate in edifici successivi, nella Venetia et Histria e nella Transpadana orientale, tra le quali si citano i blocchi di Castelseprio e Mercallo dei Sassi nel varesotto. La zoccolatura permette di considerare l’esistenza a Forum Vibii Caburrum di aree di sepoltura monumentalizzate e apre nuove prospettive di ricerca sull’insediamento antico.

The aim of this paper is to outline some of the major features that characterize settlement patterns and networks among sites located along the Tigris Valley in correspondence with the present Mosul Lake (northern Iraq), during the third millennium BC. The study of data provided by surveys and excavations carried out in the context of the Saddam Dam Salvage Project have been combined with the analysis of declassified CORONA images, and data of recent archaeological projects conducted in the area since 2011 with the purpose of contextualize the settled landscape; but also, to find evidence about hierarchies between sites, and of socio-political complexity. I suggest that the first half of the third millennium BC reveals a complex settled landscape consisting of small-sized sites with a remarkable level of specialization and socio-political complexity. Additionally, data from the second part of the period uncovers a landscape where sites seem not to grow into large urban centers yet continue to live as small to medium-sized settlements. This trend is of particular interest as it contrasts with the trend observed in the Jazira as well as in the territories detected by the Eastern Khabur Archaeological Survey (EHAS), the Upper Greater Zab Archaeological Recoinnassance (UGZAR), and the Erbil Plain Archaeological Survey (EPAS). Generally, the results show a deep relationship between the geomorphology of the region and the settled landscape embedded in a complex archaeological scenery in which the river is a border as well as a joining/trading route.