Since the early 1920s, researchers and adventurers alike have been attracted to the dense archaeological treasures of the Amuq plain in southeastern Turkey. Some of the first expeditions were led by Robert Braidwood from the University of Chicago, whose excavations revealed mosaics, sculptures, pillars, and clay tablets with cuneiform inscriptions. However, due to shifting political tides, operations at the site were abandoned, leaving it to become overgrown, and eventually bulldozed to develop local cotton farms. Although the work done was never published, in 2003 the University of Toronto founded the Ta’yinat Archeology Project (TAP), reigniting interest in the long forgotten site.
A team of six geology students were invited this summer by the TAP to conduct various geophysical surveys under the supervision of Dr. Charly Bank, a senior lecturer at the Department of Geology. The students performed three weeks of fieldwork at Tell Ta’yinat, with data analysis and interpretation continuing into the current academic year.
The TAP team includes professionals in a wide range of specialties including paleoethnobotany, zoology, epigraphy, photography, illustration, and conservation. They have one common goal: to piece together the puzzle behind the origin of this ancient buried city and the people who lived there.
The site, encompassing around 20 hectares of land, was once the ancient capital of the “Land of Palastin.” For decades, archaeologists were puzzled by the site’s proximity to other known Bronze Age sites as well as several gaps in the archaeological record. However, a recent unearthing of a 2700 year-old tablet at Ta’yinat has revealed that the occupation of the site may have been cut short by acts of pillage and mass burning.
The task at hand for the students was to investigate targets of archaeological interest that were out of reach for basic field techniques. The crew would drive to the excavation site before dawn to conduct the surveys while temperatures were cooler. At noon, they would pack up the equipment and return home to study the new data. Environmental geosciences and physics student Kanita Khaled points out, “It was incredibly hot and dry up on the mound, especially with the heavy equipment that we had to carry around with us for the seven-hour surveys.”
Scientists use the geophysical methods of magnetometry and resistivity to map the subsurface of regions of archaeological interest. These methods rely on the principle that different materials have different physical characteristics. Just as one can identify a mud brick wall from surrounding dirt by its texture, one can also use more complex physical characteristics such as density, electrical conductivity, viscosity, magnetic field, and capacitance to distinguish subsurface materials.
Magnetometry is a technique in which subsurface materials are distinguished based on their influence on the earth’s magnetic field. One way to collect data over a large area is to attach a GPS antenna onto a magnetometer and traverse the area in a grid pattern. A slower, but more precise method is to manually collect data points at measured intervals. Thousands of individual readings are needed to make a single magnetic map.
Ironically, the mysterious fire that had baked the city’s walls provided a slight advantage to the geologists. Since burnt mud-brick is more magnetic than its surroundings, it features more prominently in the magnetic maps.
The researchers found that a key area of interest lay on the lower mound, an area now covered by cotton fields, under which lay the remnants of the city wall. Although a visible topographic change indicated the approximate location of the wall, magnetometery data proved a compositional boundary as well.
Another team of researchers set out to collect data with another technique known as resistivity. Resistivity is the method by which an electrical current is passed into the ground by a pair of electrodes while the resistance of the subsurface is measured by another set of electrodes. Because the physical properties of the layers and objects in the subsurface are different, they can be mapped out based on their resistance.
Various resistivity results produced at Tell Ta’yinat displayed blocky, almost rectangular, anomalies of high resistance, which could be attributed to possible building walls.
The students involved hope the results produced will prove themselves valuable and lead future archaeological work to new discoveries. “Working on the field and in the laboratory allowed our team to acquire important professional experience and skills as well as to provide data for the Ta’yinat Archaeological Project,” notes geology student Pierre LeBlanc.
This work was possible through the Faculty of Arts and Science’s Independent Experiential Study Program. According to Bank, the research team’s supervisor, “Such a project allows student the rare opportunity to work on an interdisciplinary project and view their contribution as piece of a larger puzzle put together by researchers in history, artefact preservation, textile production, zooarchaeology, and social network analysis.”
