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The Excavations at Al Mina, Sueidia. II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Leonard Woolley
Leonard Woolley
Affiliation:
London
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Extract

In the first part of this report I dealt with the broad results of the excavations on the Greek harbour site; this, the second part, is intended to give the detail upon which those results were based. Again, it is archaeological only in the narrowest sense of the word; the pottery which forms the bulk of our historical material will be described hereafter by others, and is mentioned here only so far as it may throw light upon the use and character of the rooms; most of the other objects found figure only in the catalogue, and the description is of the buildings alone. Even so it is partial. To have given a detailed account of all the hundreds of rooms excavated and noted would have been at once wearisome and otiose. Much of the material recorded in the field notes was intended merely to establish relative dates and levels and is utilised in the plans so that its repetition in the text would have been useless. I have accordingly selected what appeared to me to be of interest as illustrating the condition in which the remains were found or witnessing to their original character, as summarised in the first part of the report, and have suppressed whatever was redundant. To the description of the buildings of each period is added a catalogue of the principal miscellaneous objects found in that level; but, at the risk of inconsistency, I have put together in a separate list certain classes of objects, seals, amulets, etc., which seemed to gain interest by such grouping; and the weights, which require special treatment, have been omitted altogether.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 58 , Issue 2 , 1938 , pp. 133 - 170
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1938

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References

1 Pp. 1–30 of the present volume of the JHS, to which plate and figure references are made.

2 The fact is evidence of the wide extension of the original town towards the N.E., where the tell has been swept away by the river. The quarters near the river bank would certainly have been drained into the harbour, i.e., the drains would have sloped down to the N.E.; only on the S.W. outskirts of the town is the drainage likely to have carried off to the low ground.

3 On this, see above, room 4, House A, Level 2. The wide distribution of the fragments of a single vase proves that the buildings as far apart as Houses A and F were destroyed simultaneously, and that the houses of Level 2 were built over their ruins at one and the same time. This agrees with the fact that over the whole of this part of the site the Level 3 buildings are found to have been destroyed by fire.

4 One-loom weaving establishments are a not un-common feature of the modern Syrian bazaar, and the presence of loom-weights is no argument for the residential character of the building.

5 The rooms marked on the plan J 6, 7, 9 and 10 ought to be given to House K, seeing that the wall to the S.W. of them is continuous, whereas the walls to the N.E. are not uniform.

6 In no case was more than the foundation preserved; even where the pebble floors survive, as in Sq. E 4, the rubble masonry does not stand above floor level.

7 For the notes on MN 44 and 154 I am indebted to the late Alan Shorter.

8 I am indebted for the analysis to Mr. James R. Ogden, F.S.A., who found that the beads can be brought by a very simple treatment to a bright gold colour which he believes to be original—an opinion challenged by Mr. H. A. P. Littledale. Mr. Ogden on seeing the necklace recognised the quality of the gold alloy and suggested that the light colour which seemed inconsistent with 18 ct. metal was due to the effects of heat, not knowing that the object had been found in the burnt ruins of the house. Mr. Littledale holds that the pitted surface of the cleaned and burnished beads, as shewn by microphotographs, implies the disappearance of an element in the alloy which was responsible for the original pale colouring.

9 Mr. E. A. Lane's article, Mediaeval Finds at al Mina in North Syria, appears in Archaeologia, lxxxvii, p. 20Google Scholar. The articles on the Attic red-figured pottery by Professor Beazley and on the earlier pottery by Mr. C. M. Robertson, will appear in the next volume of the JHS.