Survey

Looking for traces of occupation in the Balikh valley

While the excavations give a detailed picture of life in some of the settlements in the valley, other questions also interest us: are there any more settlements to be found in the valley belonging to the same period? If so, how do these settlements compare with each other?

In short: where and how did people live in the Balikh valley during the past millennia?

To find an answer to these questions, we started a series of field surveys early in the 1980s. A field survey is a method by means of which we can quickly map the remains of the past within a large area. Step by step we systematically collect archaeological material from the surface of the old tells.  

For thousands of years the valley has been worn away by the Balikh river. The edge of the valley consists of terraces gradually rising in height from ten to thirty metres. In some places the valley is very narrow; in other places it is twelve kilometres wide. In this area the natural rainfall varies strongly. The north has enough rain for agriculture without artificial irrigation. In the south, however, irrigation is necessary. Therefore inhabitants have often chosen the northern part to live in. They founded their settlements close to the river.

At first we focussed mainly on the obvious visible remains from the past: the hundreds of large and small tells that rise above the plain everywhere. Some years ago Tony Wilkinson (Oriental Institute Chicago) began his research of the areas between the tells. In these 'empty' spaces he found numerous human traces: agricultural fields around old settlements, dried-up irrigation canals and trade routes between cities that had disappeared long ago.