This website is devoted to the excavations carried out at Terqa by a Joint American Expedition between 1976 and 1986. It was under the auspices of the Institute of Archaeology, University of California, Los Angeles, and under the direction of Giorgio Buccellati and Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati.
It followed after a first season (1975) carried out under the auspices of Johns Hopkins University and under the direction of Delbert R. Hillers with the assistance of William Sladek. The 1976 season was still carried out under the Johns Hopkins permit. Sice 1977, the permit was transferred to the Institute of Archaeology, UCLA.
In 1986 the Joint American Expedition terminated its work at Terqa, and the permit, plus all the assets including the expedition house in Darnaj, were turned over to Oliveir Rouault.
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The Shelby White and Leon Levy
Program for Archaeological Publications
In 2000-2003 a grant from the Shelby White and Leon Levy Program for Archaeological Publications provided major support for research and publication relating to the excavations carried out under the tenure of the Joint American Expedition.
Besides providing funding, the grant was very significant in energizing our efforts towards a continued commitment to the project. This lasted beyond the tenure of the grant because of the research framework it created.
These are the major results:
- the publication of three volumes of final reports:
- the construction of the present website;
- the re-organization of the entire archive, including the digitalization of the field records and of the photographs.
Work is still under way on the publication of some additional material.
The website was updated in 2009-10 with a grant from the Committee on Research of the UCLA Academic Senate.
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The archaeological site
Terqa is today a medium size mound on the banks of the Euphrates in southeastern Syria, about 60 kms north of the Iraqi border. It was an important province of the kingdom of Mari in the third millennium and down to the conquest of Mari by Hammurapi of Babylon. Its history has been revealed by both the excavations and a number of texts found in the capital's royal archives.
Thereafter, Terqa became the capital of a reduced version of what had been the kingdom of Mari, a territory known as Khana, a term that recurs in the royal titulary of the kings of Terqa.
Throughout Mari's history, its peasant population developed a new economic base by harnessing the resources of the steppe to support a new type of pastoralist culture. Terqa was an important gateway to the steppe, and as its power began to wane in the latter part of the second millennium, its range if influence and control shifted to the west, where it survived as the kingdom of Amurru.
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Qraya
A short distance upstream of Terqa, the small archaeological site of Qraya came to our attention when some local inhabitants brought to us some vessels they had found just under the surface. They were beveled rim bowls, a fact which seemed immediately of great significance. With the agreement of the Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums, we did immediatley a small sounding, which seemed very promising, and so we asked, and obtained, for the site be added to the Terqa permit.
Most of the occupational levels are indeed from the protoliterate period, which is altogether missing at Terqa. This chronological juxtaposition of the two sites, plus the extreme closeness in geographical terms, leads to the obvious conclusion that Qraya represents, in effect, the archaic levels (fourth millennium) of the same settlement which we have in Terqa in the later periods (third and second millennium). For this reason, we include the publication of its data within the framework of the Terqa project.
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Methodological significance
Besides the important substantive results that the excavations produced, there were also significant methodological firsts associated with our project. In particular, it was at Terqa that computers were first introduced to archaeology in Syria. And perhaps the first electronic publication of cuneiform texts was the one dedicated to the texts of Terqa.
Several other methodological concerns characterized our ten years at Terqa, including (1) the development of audio-visual presentations, which anticipated (1976) the multimedia possibilities of the computer; (2) the production of an extensive microfiche library which gave us (at a time when book scanning did not yet exist) the possibility of conducting meaningful research in the field; and (3) seroius preliminary efforts at community archaeology, offering a meaningful fruition of the site to the local stakeholders and to visitor.
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The website
In this respect, the website serves as a historical repository of work that, by now, would otherwise be inaccessible. In spite of being, obviously, totally out of date as to the mechanics that were used at the time, the intellectual springboard from which these early attempts grew deserves to be documented. And, in fact, brought back to life thanks to the new electronic devices, these products, which are by now thirty years old, acquire a new life and substantive validity.
Thus the website aims to provide as much a record of the finds made during our tenure at Terqa as an insight into an interesting chapter in the history of archaeology – shedding light on the transition from a fully analogical to a digital age.
The authorial responsibility for each page is indicated in the masthead of each page, below the page title, along with the date.
In the table below one will find the names of the editorial staff of the website:
| Editor |
Giorgio Buccellati |
basic concept, overall design, writing of all text pages |
Associate
Editor |
Mary Stancavage |
coordination of work on archival material, website updates, coordination of work on HTML pages, |
Assistant
Editors |
Christine Hoang (2009-10)
Tatevik Mirzakhanyan (2011-13) |
implementation of individual pages, scanning of analog materials |
| Audio-visuals |
Ann Tsueng (2009-13) |
reviewing of original audio and graphic films, production of transcripts |
| Webmaster |
Bernardo Forni |
server maintenance |
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Publication program
An extensive publication program was undertaken during the tenure of the project (1976-1986). It is fully given online within the present website's Electronic Library.
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Wider dissemination
As part of a wider outreach, we produced "Folios" that aimed to present the data in attractive graphic formats – not as easy to produce in pre-digital days...
We also printed a set of greeting cards, that highlighted some of the charcateristic items from the excavations, with "thoughtful" description that aimed at providing information even within this particular medium.
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