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Introduction |
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Site and Setting |
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Early Excavations |
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New Discoveries |
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Research Goals |
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Acknowledgments |
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Introduction |
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The Neubauer Expedition to Zincirli is an archaeological project of the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute. With the generous financial support of the Neubauer Family Foundation, the Expedition is conducting a long-term, large-scale exploration of an important Iron Age city in southeastern Turkey, in the province of Gaziantep near the border with Syria. At the site of Zincirli Höyük (latitude 37° 6' North, longitude 36° 40' East) are buried the extensive ruins of the ancient walled city of Sam’al, nestled in a fertile valley surrounded by heavily forested mountains, not far from the Mediterranean Sea. Three thousand years ago this 40-hectare (100-acre) city was the capital of a small but powerful kingdom. The city had a monumental palace, massive outer walls, and ornate city gates adorned with sculpted stone reliefs. The Neubauer Expedition began work at Zincirli in 2006. Five excavation seasons have now been completed, in the summers of 2006 to 2010. An academic staff of 30–50 archaeologists and archaeology students dig at Zincirli each summer with the help of 60–90 hired workers recruited from villages in the vicinity. Many more annual field seasons are planned in order to excavate large areas of the ancient city and thus gain new insights into the culture, society, and economy of the kingdom of Sam’al and, by extension, other Iron Age kingdoms of the ancient Levant. A number of significant finds have already been unearthed. For example, in July 2008, an inscribed pictorial stele commemorating a royal official, “Katumuwa, servant of (King) Panamuwa,” was found by the Neubauer Expedition in a newly opened excavation area in the lower town. This important discovery, which reveals new aspects of ancient religious belief and practice, was reported in the New York Times and in Archaeology magazine, which named it one of the “top ten” archaeological discoveries of 2008. Scholarly studies of the new stele have been published in the November 2009 issue of the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. A general overview of the Zincirli project and its research goals has been published in Near Eastern Archaeology vol. 72 no. 4 (December 2009). In addition to the ongoing financial support of the Neubauer Family Foundation and the Oriental Institute, the Expedition was recently awarded a major three-year research grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. It has also received funding from the Argonne National Laboratory—University of Chicago Joint Theory Institute for the creation of an agent-based computer simulation and visualization of population dynamics, resource use, and construction activity in the Iron Age kingdom of Sam’al. The expedition is led by Dr. David Schloen, the project director, who is an associate professor of archaeology in the Oriental Institute and the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago; and by associate director Dr. Amir Sumaka’i Fink.
[Last revised on July 22, 2011.]
Map showing the location of Zincirli (ancient Sam’al) and other major Iron Age sites. Zincirli is located at the eastern outlet of the northern pass across the Amanus Mountains; thus the inhabitants of this site controlled the northern route from the Upper Euphrates River, 100 kilometers (60 miles) due east of Zincirli, over to the rich Cilician Plain in the west, heartland of the Iron Age kingdom of Que, whose capital was at Adana. The Iron Age kingdom of Sam’al occupied a narrow valley surrounded by steep mountains.
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Dr. David Schloen Associate Professor University of Chicago 1155 East 58th Street Chicago, Illinois 60637 |
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Contact: |
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The Neubauer Expedition to Zincirli
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View map of site location |
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Katumuwa of Sam’al— in the New York Times |
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Sources |
