Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean (19.2007(2010))

TELL ARBID

SYRIA

2005 in the southern end of square 30/41.
The top layer in the new trench contained
Khabur Ware period remains: mainly pise
walls, consisting of numerous segments
set on different foundation levels. It seems
that in some cases the tops of these walls may
have served as an occupational level,
although they could hardly have been erected
solely for this purpose. The fragmentary
3rd millennium BC structures reached
beneath the Khabur Ware layers in the
western and northern parts of the trench
appear to have been in use during the
successive Akkadian and Early Dynastic III
periods. The uncovered remains belong to
two adjacent house complexes dubbed
Northern and Southern respectively.
Despite rebuilding and modification of
the internal layout, the two houses seem to
have preserved basic elements of the plan
and sometimes also the function of some
rooms from the Early Dynastic III through
the Akkadian period. Tannurs are good
examples of this continuity as they were
consistently placed inside the same room
within each house. In two rooms with
tannurs, one dating from the Akkadian
phase (in the Northern Complex) and one

from the Early Dynastic III phase (in the
Southern Complex), horseshoe-shaped
andirons in different states of preservation
were discovered near the tannurs [Fig. 5].
A suite of three rooms in a row were
excavated in the Northern Complex (loci: 2,
19 and 26-31/41), one of these being
a courtyard. The entrance to the house is in
its northern part, which had been investi-
gated in the previous season. In the Southern
Complex, four small rooms were investi-
gated. The house was accessible from the
west. It probably opened onto a small street
which had functioned in the same spot since
the Ninevite 5 period.
Work in square 31/41 within the
Northern Complex yielded a few graves from
the Akkadian period. Two among them,
graves of infants, were discovered beneath
the floor of locus 22-31/41 (a room),
while a third burial, that of an older child,
was dug in the wall of the same room in
a later phase of the Akkadian period. In the
latter grave (G4-31/41), the contracted
skeleton was found with a bronze bracelet,
beads of lapis-lazuli, carnelian and shell and
five pottery vessels: two jars, two goblets and
a cup [Fig. 6\.

SECTOR W-WEST: NINEVITE BRICK PLATFORM

The western part of Sector W (the distance
between the excavation trenches in Sector
W on the southern slope of the tell called
for a subdivision into the W-West and
E-East parts to facilitate the documentation)
was first investigated in the season of 2003,
when traces of a massive brick structure from
the Ninevite 5 period were found in two
squares (48/51 and 49/51). Excavations
undertaken again in 2005 and 2006 proved
it to be a vast structure built of bricks of
different quality with no discernable traces
of usage on the surviving surface to identify

its function (Bielihski 2008: 558-559)
[Fig. 7]. Trenches opened now in five
squares: 48/49, 48/51, 48/52, 49/49 and
49/52, aimed at determi-ning the full extent
of this feature and recon-structing
provisionally its original height. At selected
points the homogeneity of the structure and
the kind of mud bricks used in particular
sections were checked by probing, while the
outer face of the structure was followed in
a number of long trenches.
Contrary to expectations, the ‘platform’
(the term is used for lack of a better

Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean 19, Reports 2007

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