Macroscale City Structure at Late Assyrian Ziyaret Tepe, Turkey (Phase II)

FAIN: RZ-50721-07

University of Akron, Main Campus (Akron, OH 44325-0001)
Timothy Matney (Project Director: November 2006 to June 2012)

Continuing excavation, analysis, and interpretation of urban planning and settlement patterns of a site in present-day Turkey that was a provincial capital of the Late Assyrian Empire. (36 months)

This proposal requests funds for three years to complete archaeological fieldwork started under NEH-RZ-50516-06. The fieldwork will take place at Ziyaret Tepe in the Diyarbakir Province of Turkey between July 15 and September 10 annually, with subsequent specialist analyses being conducted in the US and Europe after each field season. Ziyaret Tepe is a 32-hectare site on the Tigris River, and served as a regional center on the northern periphery of the Assyrian empire (c. 900-600 BC). The principal goal of the current, and proposed, NEH-funded projects is to study how the Assyrian city was structured and how it functioned in antiquity. This is what we have termed the "macroscale" study of the built environment. This work is important not only for understanding narrowly the nature of Assyrian urban life at the peripheries of the empire, but will also add significantly to our broader anthropological understanding of the structure of urban life in the earliest cities across the globe.