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<< Our Photo Pages >> Tell Khaiber - Ancient Village or Settlement in Iraq

Submitted by davidmorgan on Tuesday, 21 May 2013  Page Views: 5224

Multi-periodSite Name: Tell Khaiber
Country: Iraq
NOTE: This site is 5.902 km away from the location you searched for.

Type: Ancient Village or Settlement
Nearest Town: Nasiriyah
Latitude: 31.000000N  Longitude: 46.200000E
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
2 Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
no data Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
no data Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
1

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Tell Khaiber
Tell Khaiber submitted by Andy B : One of the most striking finds at Tell Khaiber is a clay plaque showing a worshiper approaching a sacred place. Photo Credit: Prof. Stuart Campbell, Manchester University. Site in Iraq (Vote or comment on this photo)
An ancient Sumerian city, 20km from Ur, inhabited from about 4000 to 2000 BCE. British and Iraqi archaeologists have started the excavation of the enormous building complex. One of the most striking finds at the site to date is a clay plaque, 9cm high, apparently showing a worshipper approaching a sacred place.

The team, directed by Professor Stuart Campbell and Dr Jane Moon, both from Manchester, and independent archaeologist Robert Killick, first spotted the amazing structure – thought to be an administrative complex serving one of the world’s earliest cities – on satellite.

It was after carrying out geophysical survey and trial excavations at the site of Tell Khaiber that they were able to confirm the size of the complex at about 80 metres square – roughly the size of a football pitch.

They are the first British archaeologists to excavate in Southern Iraq since the 1980s, working close to the ancient city of Ur, where Sir Leonard Woolley discovered the fabulous 'Royal Tombs' in the 1920s.

The arrangement of rooms around a large courtyard are at a site only 20km from Ur, the last capital of the Sumerian royal dynasties, the founders of the earliest cities in the world.

Source: Manchester University
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Tell Khaiber
Tell Khaiber submitted by Andy B : Early stages of excavation at the ancient settlement mound of Tel Khaiber. Photo credit: Prof. Stuart Campbell, Manchester University. Site in Iraq (Vote or comment on this photo)

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"Tell Khaiber" | Login/Create an Account | 3 News and Comments
  
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Archaeologists Explore Ancient Sumerian Settlement Site in Iraq by davidmorgan on Tuesday, 21 May 2013
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Looking at it from the surface, the site features only desolate, low-lying mounds with scatterings of artifacts, including fragments of pottery, hinting that something was here anciently. But satellite imagery indicated signs of at least one very large structure, still buried beneath thousands of years of natural deposits. This drew archaeologists of the newly formed Ur Region Archaeology Project (URAP) to the site in 2012 for preliminary survey work, and what they found has launched a new series of investigative excavations beginning with the first Spring field season in 2013.

Tell Khaiber, as the site is called, is playing host to one of the first major archaeological projects with extensive participation by foreign scientists since the hiatus caused by the political situation and hostilities of the Iraqi war. Consisting of an international mix of six British archaeologists representing four UK institutions and four Iraqi archaeologists from the State Board for Antiquities and Heritage of Iraq, the team expects to uncover not just monumental buildings, but evidence that may shed new light on the environment and lifeways of the people who inhabited the site.

"From the pottery collected on the surface, we can say that people lived at Tell Khaiber for over two thousand years, from about 4,000 to 2000 BC", reports Co-Director Jane Moon of the University of Manchester and her colleagues. "The pottery coming up now is more consistently early second millennium BC, and I think that is almost certainly the date of the big building.........This means our big building probably dates to the time around the fall of Ur, which would be really exciting."

To date, surveys and excavations have yielded, in addition to pottery fragments and traces of a monumental building, small items that hold clues about the daily life of the people who lived at the site at least 4,000 years ago: a copper awl, clay sealings, flint sickle blades, and a small clay plaque depicting a worshipper. Writes Moon about the worshipper in a blog about the ongoing excavations, "It shows a person in the correct attitude for approaching a sacred place: one hand modestly drawing the robe over the mouth".

Could this be an indication that the emerging monumental building is a religious structure, such as a temple? Much more excavation and analysis needs to be done before interpretations and conclusions can be drawn.

Consisting of two distinct mounds, the site of Tell Khaiber was first documented in 1965 by Henry T. Wright of the University of Ann Arbor, Michigan. He collected and dated surface finds from the south mound. In 1972, the north mound was recorded and mapped by the Iraqi State Organization for Antiquities and Heritage. It was not until 2012 when it was determined that the remains were intact enough, visibly untouched by looters, to merit new investigations under a collaborative effort between the University of Manchester and other British institutions and the State Board for Antiquities and Heritage of Iraq.

The significance of Tell Khaiber rests with its possible association with the Sumerian civilization (Sumer) and more particularly its ancient center at Ur. At the height of Sumer, the headwaters of the Gulf extended much further north, making the region a vital link between the settlements of Sumer and other trading civilizations of the Gulf and India. Occupied from around 4,000 BC to 2,000 BC, the city dominated the region. Excavations conducted by the famous archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley between 1922 and 1934 uncovered the spectacular Sumerian ‘royal’ tombs and features of monumental architecture. The well-known Great Ziggurat of Uri still stands as its best-preserved and most visible landmark.

But Tell Khaiber's occupation, like UR, may extend much farther into the past says Moon, "People clearly lived at Khaiber a thousand years earlier, as I recognize occasional fragments of the characteristic solid-footed goblets of that time, made of a very different clay mix from

Read the rest of this post...
[ Reply to This ]
    Re: Archaeologists Explore Ancient Sumerian Settlement Site in Iraq by bat400 on Thursday, 30 January 2014
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    And a similar article include additional inforamation from Jane Moon:

    “Ultimately we’re not looking for objects we’re looking for information.….”

    She says modern methods, such as examining very thin slices of soil hardened with resin under a microscope, can shed light on details like whether there were carpets on the floor or whether a surface was used for cutting. Putting samples of earth through a wet sieving machine can provide information about climate and agriculture by revealing bone fragments from rodents or lizards.

    “You can really look at the ancient economy and that’s the kind of thing they couldn’t do when they last found big buildings like this,” says Moon, who last worked in Iraq in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq War, documenting archaeological sites in the north before they were submerged by Saddam Hussein’s dam-building projects.

    Her team, which has struggled for both funding and visas, consists of six British archaeologists, an Iraqi archaeologist, and two Iraqi trainees. It is funded mostly by a Swiss benefactor, with participation by the British Institute for the Study of Iraq.

    A law passed in 1932 bars archaeologists from removing antiquities from the country, but Moon believes making the knowledge about the antiquities available is as important as the objects themselves. "There’s always been a sense of taking the intellectual property away,” she says, adding that all the information, including drawings, was being done electronically to make it easier to compile and to share.

    “We want to make this as public as possible so we can give this information to anyone who wants it. We have no reason to hang on to it and we have the means to spread it around, so that’s what we’re doing,” she says.

    Thanks to coldrum for the link: http://www.csmonitor.com
    [ Reply to This ]

Huge find throws new light on ancient Iraq by davidmorgan on Tuesday, 21 May 2013
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University of Manchester archaeologists have started the excavation of an enormous building complex in Iraq, thought to be around 4,000 years old.

The team, directed by Professor Stuart Campbell and Dr Jane Moon, both from Manchester, and independent archaeologist Robert Killick, first spotted the amazing structure – thought to be an administrative complex serving one of the world’s earliest cities– on satellite.

It was after carrying out geophysical survey and trial excavations at the site of Tell Khaiber that they were able to confirm the size of the complex at about 80 metres square – roughly the size of a football pitch.

They are the first British archaeologists to excavate in Southern Iraq since the 1980s, working close to the ancient city of Ur, where Sir Leonard Woolley discovered the fabulous 'Royal Tombs' in the 1920s.

The arrangement of rooms around a large courtyard are at a site only 20km from Ur, the last capital of the Sumerian royal dynasties, the founders of the earliest cities in the world.

Professor Campbell is head of the University’s Department of Archaeology. He said: “This is a breathtaking find and we feel privileged to be the first to work at this important site.

“The surrounding countryside, now arid and desolate, was the birthplace of cities and of civilization about 5,000 years ago and home to the Sumerians and the later Babylonians."

One of the most striking finds at the site to date is a clay plaque, 9cm high, showing a worshipper approaching a sacred place. He is wearing a long robe with fringe down the front opening.

“It has been off-limits to international archaeologists for many decades so the opportunity of re-engaging with the study of the earliest cities is a truly exciting one,” said Professor Campbell.

“The satellite photos suggested the presence of a substantial building, and our survey has indeed confirmed that there is a building about 80m square, probably connected to the administration of Ur.

“We provisionally date the site to around 2,000 BC, the time of the sack of the city and the fall of the last Sumerian royal dynasty. “

The team aim to analyse plant and animal remains found at the site to help reconstruct environmental and economic conditions in the region 4,000 years ago.

Marshy conditions are thought to have prevailed, with the head of the Gulf being much further north, so that maritime trading was possible to obtain vital natural resources from India and the Arabian peninsula.

Professor Campbell, who has now returned from Iraq, added: “As well as offering unparalleled opportunities for redeveloping research in one of the most important areas of archaeology in the world, the project is also building partnerships with local practitioners and institutions.

“The aim is to help rebuild capacity in archaeological expertise and heritage management, working alongside members of Iraq's State Board for Antiquities and Heritage, and to address the 20-year isolation from the international community.”

Source: University of Manchester.
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