Ziyaret Tepe

Starting October 1, 2012, the value of your donation for the 2103 field season will be doubled!

With autumn upon us we are turning our thoughts to the 2013 campaign. This will be the final season of excavation at Ziyaret Tepe - and we have a busy schedule planned! Our objectives include:

new investigations on the palace mound

probing a major building complex inside the western city wall

excavation of an area of commoner housing

exploration of the lower levels of the administrative archive room

continued electrical resistivity survey

This is your opportunity to help support this work. Furthermore, thanks to a generous commitment from the UK, any donation made in October and November will be matched: give now and the value of your donation will be doubled! The work at Ziyaret Tepe is uncovering unique information on the ancient Assyrian empire which can be recovered in no other way. And this is the last chance! Please click HERE if you would like to help us in exploring this unique heritage.

Since 1997, along the banks of the Tigris River in the Diyarbakir Province of southeastern Turkey, an international team of archaeologists have been excavating the remains of the Assyrian city of Tushhan (modern-day Ziyaret Tepe). Ziyaret Tepe was occupied nearly continuously for 2400 years starting in the Early Bronze Age (c. 3000 BC). For most of this time, Ziyaret Tepe was a modest village situated in the fertile Tigris floodplain. However, during the Middle Iron Age (c. 882 - 610BC), Ziyaret Tepe became an important urban center on the northern periphery of the Assyrian Empire. Let us take you inside the ruined city of the Assyrians and the modern scientific explorations aimed at recovering and reconstructing its buried past.

The Ziyaret Tepe Archaeological Expedition was established by Prof. Timothy Matney of the University of Akron. Over the past sixteen field seasons, the project has evolved from a team of three archaeologists to a large collaborative scientific expedition. Our current fieldwork is a joint effort between Prof. Matney, Dr. John MacGinnis (Cambridge University), Dr. Dirk Wicke (University of Mainz) and Prof. Kemalettin Koroglu (Marmara University). Past senior collaborators include: Prof. Guillermo Algaze (UCSD), Prof. Michael Roaf (University of Munich), Dr. Lynn Rainville (Sweet Briar College), and Prof. Simo Parpola (University of Helsinki). Our work is conducted in cooperation with the regional Diyarbakir Archaeological Museum and its Director, Nevin Soyukaya. An annual permit for archaeological exploration is granted by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Turkey.