WERB news 4 Nov - Publications Unit - The University of Western ...

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6 UWAnewsa fortress cityuncoveredDesert sand gives upa 2,000 year old city …Archaeologists of the 21st century tend to get more excited by thescrapings of a domestic fireplace than the statues from a temple.“Of course everything is precious and vital to building up a picture of a community,but these days, we are more interested in the environment and the ecology of aparticular place and time, rather than the public life of a community,” said eminentarchaeologist Professor Graeme Clarke (pictured right), who visited UWA recently.Professor Clarke, the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens Visiting Lecturerfor 2002, presented some of his past 16 years’ work in Syria at a public lecture for theSchool of Humanities (Classics and Ancient History).Since 1986, he has been leading an excavation of the abandoned Hellenistic city ofJebel Khalid on the west bank of the Euphrates River in North Syria, about 60kilometres south of the Turkish border.He discovered the lost city while conducting a survey for a Melbourne team ofarchaeologists who were excavating a Bronze Age site further up river.“I came across some pottery pieces, which eventually led me to the remnants of acity wall, and I realised what I had found,” Professor Clarke said.Excavation of the site began two years later and Professor Clarke, who was then aprofessor of classical studies and Director of the Humanities Research Centre at theAustralian National University, got together a team which goes to the site every yearfor two months.“We have to employ a guard for the other 10 months of the year. But it’s just notpractical to work at the dig for longer than that period each year,” he said.“For a start, the conditions are very hard and it’s difficult to get a team of expertstogether for any longer than a couple of months.“Each year the team we take with us might include an illustrator, a photographer, aconservator, an architect, a surveyor, metal, glass and coin experts and a botanist. Wetake between 15 and 18 people and employ up to 90 locals at the site. It looks likeRaiders of the Lost Ark when we’re at full strength!”Jebel Khalid was a Greek fortress 30 hectares in area built on a limestone plateau atthe beginning of the third century BC.“It was newly conquered territory for Alexander the Great and the city was a“The charcoal remainsfrom the fireplaces tell uswhat wood grew in thearea so we know howdamp it was. Soil samplescan also tell us what sortof plants grew and we canbuild up an ecologicalpicture…”THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA • 4 NOVEMBER 2002
UWAnews 7military colony built to guard a rivercrossing,” Professor Clarke explained.“It was abandoned in the first half of thefirst century BC when the Greekdynasty collapsed and the Romanschanged their protection strategies.“Jebel Khalid was not the sort of placeyou would stay in if it no longer had a use.Everybody lived inside the fortress wherethere was no natural water and thepeople all had to leave the fortress to goout and work in their fields, then comeback in again at night.“Being an abandoned city means thatwhat we are finding is their rubbish,what they didn’t want and what theyfound too heavy or awkward to takewith them. It is all covered in 2,000years of dust and sand.”But, slowly, Professor Clarke and histeam are building up a picture of theenvironment on this plateau on thebanks of the Euphrates, more than2,000 years ago.“We have found olive pips and grapeseeds preserved in the fireplaces, so weknow they grew them. The charcoalremains from the fireplaces tell us whatwood grew in the area so we knowhow damp it was. Soil samples can alsotell us what sort of plants grew and wecan build up an ecological picture.”It has taken around 13 years toexcavate about 10 domestic houses ona large block. They have learned aboutthe women’s activities at home whilethe men worked the fields, findingevidence of spinning, weaving andcooking.“We are interested in finding outhow people lived, their culinary habits,their diets, so we go first for domestichomes rather than public buildings.“We have found a lot of stew potswhich means they didn’t eat theiranimals until the end of the stock’suseful life. They would have used theirsheep, goats and horses for carryingloads and providing milk for cheese andyoghurt, and for wool. The only younganimals they slaughtered were pigs andthe native gazelle.”Professor Clarke said his teamworked ‘fiendishly hard’ every Marchand April, rising at 4.30am, working atthe dig until midday, then spending theafternoon analysing, conserving andcataloguing their finds until the lightfaded.“Essentially, we work a double shiftevery day. And living in a Bedouin villagein the heat and dust where we mustcommunicate in Arabic with the localsand share two showers between 18people makes it hard going.”He said they had found coins at thedig from the fourth century AD.“These were dropped by what we callstone robbers. A lot of the stone hasbeen taken from the city. There isevidence that tractors came in duringthe 20th century to take stone away.“The French encouraged theBedouins to become sedentary. Somany of them robbed the city of itsbuilding blocks, to provide theirpermanent homes. It’s still happening.When we were there this year, somelocals came to take away some stoneblocks because somebody in theirvillage had died and this is how theybury them, under stone blocks.”Everything the team unearths at JebelKhalid belongs to the Syriangovernment. The major pieces go tothe museum at Aleppo, the nearest cityand the second biggest city in Syria, afterDamascus.“But they are only interested inwhole pieces. As it’s an abandoned site,there are plenty of broken plates, whichare fine for the information they cangive us, but not for display in a museum.“There are many more years of workin the dig but eventually, we willprobably get permission to take some ofthe unwanted pieces out of the country.In the meantime, they stay in storage,”he said.Professor Clarke explained that histeam would not excavate the entire site.“These days we leave something forthe archaeologists who come after usbecause they’ll be looking for differentthings,” he said. “Thirty years ago, wewouldn’t have been interested in theecology and environment of a site; wewould have been looking at differentaspects. And it will change again.“So we only ever ‘sample’ a site now.We have only excavated one of the 30columns in the fortress wall. We don’tneed to unearth all 30 because they willall tell us the same thing.”As the visiting professor for theAustralian Archaeological Institute atAthens (AAIA), Professor Clarke istouring Australia and visiting all theuniversities which support the AAIA.“I am very pleased to report that theclassical studies departments around thecountry are hanging on. They seem tohave stabilised after being under threatfor a while. But who knows what willhappen in the future?”Graham Clarke on sitein SyriaTHE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA • 4 NOVEMBERS 2002
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