1. Cilt - Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı

During the Late Bronze and Iran Ages, Ziyaret Tepe was an important Assyrian urbancenter, serving for a while in the Late Assyrian period as the regional capital of the borderprovince, when the site was known as Tushhan (see Roaf in Matney et aL. 2002).The overall goals of the 2002 field season were: (1) to continue work in the Ap e­ration E step-trench started in 2000 and, in particular, to excavate both Middle Assyrianperiod remains near the top of the sequence and early second millennium Be andearlier levels at the base of the Operation E step trench; (2) to document the architecturalsequence of the Operation A public building and the nature of the underlying depositsbeneath the building's foundation platform; (3) to expand excavation of the OperationG Late Assyrian structure with the eventual goal of recovering a complete planof the building; (4) to explore possible Roman-period remains in the lower town previouslyrecovered via surface survey in Operation J in the westernmost portion of the 10­wer town; (5) to continue earlier subsurface magnetic field gradiometry survey at ZiyaretTepe initiated during the 1998 and 1999 seasons with an ultimate goal of mappingthe entire Late Assyrian city; (6) to begin a detailed geomorphological description andreconstruction of the paleoenviranment of the Upper Tigris region. This report detailsour progress towards the last two of these goals. The results of the excavations notedabove under the first four goals are reported in the Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı series andthe preliminary reports noted above.Geophysical Survey: Magnetic Field Gradiometry SurveyMagnetic field gradiometry survey (hereatter ngradiometryn) is a non-invasivegeophysical survey technique which maps subsurface features using sophisticatedcomputer modeling software to chart minute fluctuations in the strength and directionof the earth's magnetic field. The measurement of the ambient magnetic field of theearth is taken using a hand-held gradiometer, which incorporates two separate andhighly sensitive magnetometers in a simple perpendicular array (l.e., during operation,the sensors are aligned one on top of the other in relation to the level of the earth's surface).Measurements are taken on a measured grid corresponding to the overall sitegrid, converted to digital values and stored in a data collector attached to the hand-heldunit. Variations in the readings of the earth's ambient magnetic field (measured in nanoTesias)are caused by any of a number of shallow subsurface features including: underlyinggeological formations, highly ferraus artifacts (e.g., iran artifacts) and in situ firedsoils which contain iron particles (e.g., hearths, kilns). While these artifacts and featurescause a relatively strong anomalies in the earth's magnetic field (on the order of100-200nT against the earth's ambient field strength of 20,000+nT), much weaker signalson the order of 0.1 to 1OnT are easily recordable with standard gradiometers andotten reflect weak signals of great significance for archaeologists. An example of a weakersignal would be differences between iron-poor Iimestone wall foundations andiron-rich collapse originating from the decay of mud-brick made from iran-bearing soils.Geophysical survey using gradiometry methods started at Ziyaret Tepe in 1998.The placement of excavation trenches at Ziyaret Tepe during the 2000-2002 excavationseasons has largely been guided by the results of subsurface magnetic field gradiometrysurveys. Two initial field seasons of subsurface magnetic field gradiometry werecarried out in 1998 and 1999 at Ziyaret Tepe (Matneyand Somers 1999; MatneyandBauer 2000). The purpose of those surveys was to test the efficacy of using magneticsurvey techniques at Ziyaret Tepe. Favorable results were obtained, as reported previously,and it was decided that a total survey of the site would be conducted, starting in2002 and continuing for several seasons. In 2002, our geophysics team conducted surveyin two portions of the site: the western high mound and the western lower town(Fig. 1). These areas were chosen for several reasons. On the high mound, extensiveexcavations on the eastern edge of the site in Operations A and E have begun to clarifythe nature of remains in that area. In contrast, the western side of the high mound98