Tell Sabi Abyad at about 6000-5900 BC

In 2002 we began excavations on the north-eastern side of  Tell Sabi Abyad and in 2003 we continued our work in that spot. Immediately below the surface of the mound we came upon occupational layers which date from around 6000-5900 BC. Apparently this part of Tell Sabi Abyad is much younger than the western part of the mound.

We have uncovered the remnants of a sizeable house, constructed with long, thin and hand-made mud bricks. The house had one large room, approximately 4.5 by 2 metres in size, with a number of small side rooms on the northern side (and possibly also on the eastern side), each more or less 1.25 by 1.25 metres in size. In one corner of the large room we found traces of a hearth and against one of the walls a large square mud-brick container had been built. The container was around 1 by 1.25 metres large and approximately 40 cm in height. It is probably a storage bin.

The main room was accessible via two doorways, one to the south and the other to the east. The side rooms showed no traces of doors. These small spaces were accessible either through an opening high up in the wall or through the roof of the house.

Around the house there was a large yard with the remnants of ovens and hearths. Sometimes the edge of the hearth was lined with sherds.

The yard was also used as a burial place, in view of the find of a child burial. The very young child was lying in a shallow pit with the hands folded on the belly and the legs in a crouched position.

From our investigations it appears that before people began building the house we have just described they first demolished and completely cleared away an older house in this spot. We found traces of a solid, white-grey plastered floor which we must ascribe to this older house.

When we were removing this plaster floor we came upon an orange-red, intensely burnt layer. This burnt layer immediately recalled the so-called Burnt Village, which we uncovered at Tell Sabi Abyad at the beginning of the 1990s. Was this Burnt Village, dated to around 6000 BC, perhaps larger than we have believed so far? We hope to be able to investigate this burnt layer more closely in a following season of excavation.

More than 10 years ago we first dug on the north-eastern side of Tell Sabi Abyad. At the time we found hardly any traces of architecture. We did find thick deposits of ashes and refuse, however. We think that this part of Tell Sabi Abyad was only very sparsely built on around 6000 BC: one or two houses at the most.

   Tell Sabi Abyad in the late Neolithic, ca. 6600-6000 BC
   Tell Sabi Abyad at about 6000-5900 BC
   Tell Sabi Abyad in the Middle-Assyrian period, ca. 1230-1180 BC
   Assyrian pottery kilns
   Assyrian cylinder seals
   Assyrian burials
   Assyrian cuneiform texts