Excavations at Zincirli
FAIN: RZ-51027-09
University of Chicago (Chicago, IL 60637-5418)
David Schloen (Project Director: November 2008 to December 2013)
Archaeological excavations and interpretation at the Iron Age city of Sam'al, located in modern-day Zincirli, Turkey.
This archaeological project explores the 40-hectare (100-acre) site of Zincirli in southeastern Turkey, near the northeastern corner of the Mediterranean Sea, on the eastern side of the Amanus Mountains. Zincirli was the site of ancient Sam'al, an important walled city of the later Iron Age (ca. 900-600 B.C.) and capital of an independent kingdom. Previous excavations have produce many impressive finds and a good picture of the Iron Age royal citadel in the center of the site. Funds are sought to expand excavations at the site, especially in the large lower town, which was not previously investigated. There are very few Iron Age sites in the Levantine region at which large horizontal exposures of coherent architectural phases has been achieve, and Zincirli is ideally suited for this, promising to provide a qualitative leap in our understanding of Iron Age urbanism as a result of the quantitative expansion of excavation to cover entire urban neighborhoods.