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Tell Taya (1968–9): Summary Report

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

Extract

The second season of excavations at Tell Taya lasted from the beginning of December, 1968, to the end of February, 1969. They were again sponsored by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, which provided equipment and the loan of the Rimah dig-house, and were financed largely from the School's Jebel Sinjar Fund, set up by an anonymous donor to assist research on northwest Iraq during the third millennium B.C.; part of a grant to the writer, given by the Gerald Averay Wainwright Fund (Oxford University) for work on this period, was also used.

The staff consisted of the writer as director; Mr. Hugo Blake, who worked mainly on site Si, as assistant-director; Miss Nina Shaw, who was responsible for the conservation and registration of objects, and also did much of the photography; and Miss Ann Hechle, who recorded the pottery. Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Postgate were with us for a time, and in the absence of inscribed material the former undertook part of the surface survey while the latter helped on the excavation generally. All members of the staff, however, did far more than this bare list of assignments might imply, and I am deeply grateful for their devoted perseverance through what was said, at Tel'afar, to be the worst winter in living memory. The Iraq Directorate-General of Antiquities was represented by Sd. Mahfudh Abdullah and Sd. Nehad ar-Rawi, and we were as usual indebted, both to them and to many other government officials in Baghdad, Mosul, and Tel'afar, for their invaluable interest and support.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , Autumn 1971 , pp. 87 - 100
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1971

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References

1 The material seems identical with that of the beads found in 1967 (Iraq 30 (1968), 253)Google Scholar. Samples of these have been analysed by Miss Mavis Bimson of the British Museum Research Laboratory, and I am indebted to her and to Mr. Henry Hodges for the following information.

The body of the beads is quartz-frit (Egyptian faience). The blue, of which there may be more than one shade, was caused by copper; the original colour, usually or always, was turquoise blue. The green was caused by copper with a trace of chromium in it; it was originally a vivid grass-green. The chocolate-brown was caused by copper in the cuprous state; it was originally a deep red, sang tie boeuf. The white was the natural colour of the body, which is self-glazing.

Some of the glazed objects from Taya have a body which closely resembles terracotta, but it is in fact ordinary quartz-frit containing organic impurities; our previous references to glazed pottery (Iraq 30 (1968), 244, 249Google Scholar) are therefore incorrect.