Great series! Shorter videos are perfect for when I have a few minutes. Found you through Milo! I’m glad you enjoy his enthusiasm and joy about archeology. You clearly love your work. You are like Milo fully realized after years of experience, and your enthusiasm is intact.
This is probably the best YT channel of all time! I could rave about it pretty much endlessly, but it’s probably best to spare everyone the pretentious cliches I’d inevitably resort to, and just say thank you for doing it.
I always find geomagnetic surveys interesting, close up it looks like random splotches, but if you zoom out then ancient buildings and earthworks pop out clear as day sometimes.
I really appreciate you sharing this information in this format. It's exciting to learn about the latest discoveries and research as it happens. Thank you
Thanks for another excellent and interesting video! It seems, compared with the other trenches you've shown that all of this is very near the surface. Would you expect to find earlier occupations further down? Or would there be less found in this area, as it was outside the city itself, and building only occurred in this area as the population expanded?
I do expect earlier occupation and would very much like to know just how early it goes. Since this mound is not nearly as high as the main city mound, we might be able to dig deep enough to find out when it was founded. Of course, we can't get rid of good architecture above so we need to find a space where we can continue down--after we understand this building, of course.
Really calls to question my understanding of ancient Mesopotamian cities. What we learn from class and textbooks is mostly the layout within the walls, to think how much we've been missing.
At the end of this season did you have to backfill the trenches (with the thoroughly sieved material dug out of them?) to protect them until you return or is there a simpler method (easier to remove) of preserving the opened area from natural or human interference for the duration they're not being actively investigated? Thank you so much for the detailed views and explanations!
We do backfill. I think in one of the drone shots you can just see a bit of green cloth because it was taken at the end of the season. We put geo-textile down over the trench and then put sieved dirt over that. If we plan to excavate in that area again in the following season we don't completely fill the trench, only cover everything textile, then put enough dirt to make sure it is secure. Then we can remove that dirt and the cloth in a day or two when we open the next season.
Thanks for the great video. I've got a question: Once you have reached and cleaned the floor; do you plan to dig beneath it to see if there are even older levels or burials or ceremoniously buried items beneath? And how do you decide when to leave a floor of a house intact and when to "destroy" it to continue excavating?
Excellent question. I do hope to go beneath the floor, since that will tell us a lot about how the house was built (foundations) and if there are earlier floors and/or burials beneath. Whether to go beneath depends on many factors, though. The most important is permission from the Iraq State Board. If they don't want us to remove it, we don't remove it. The next factor is how much we think we will learn by digging deeper. If we can make a case that our understanding will be substantially advanced, we might be allowed to go beneath, perhaps not too far, and then we can fill it back in and replace the paving bricks of the floor.
Hi, I was curious to ask a question. You mentioned in a previous video that the site gets reburied at the end of the season. That was a much deeper dig, but does this one get reburied as well? Do you bury it with something that is easier to redig if you come back to the site?
Yes, we cover up any new trench, especially architectural remains within, to protect it from the elements. If we are going to return to a trench, we won't completely fill it in but will protect anything exposed. If we don't plan to return to a trench then we fill it back in as completely as possible. We use the dirt that we took out of the pit in the first place, since that has been sieved and examined and we put it on top of geo-textile that marks the end of the excavation level.
There's a lot of exposed material from old excavations and we're trying to help preserve that while also making sure we don't add to the problem with new exposures. The longer something is left exposed, the more it will deteriorate. Of course, there is also the important idea that people should be able to see some of this ancient architecture. That's why we're helping to preserve the already exposed material while leaving it visible where possible.
Great series! Shorter videos are perfect for when I have a few minutes. Found you through Milo! I’m glad you enjoy his enthusiasm and joy about archeology. You clearly love your work. You are like Milo fully realized after years of experience, and your enthusiasm is intact.
thank you so much for these videos its absolutely amazing to be able to see this let alone on youtube for free! wow!
Positive Algorithm Comment
Couldn't agree more!
Thanks! Much appreciated!
Absolutely
This is probably the best YT channel of all time! I could rave about it pretty much endlessly, but it’s probably best to spare everyone the pretentious cliches I’d inevitably resort to, and just say thank you for doing it.
Such amazing content
I always find geomagnetic surveys interesting, close up it looks like random splotches, but if you zoom out then ancient buildings and earthworks pop out clear as day sometimes.
Love Ur. Got to do a report on its cemetery for an art history class. Very cool artifacts. I wish I had the grasp on history then that I do now.
I really appreciate you sharing this information in this format. It's exciting to learn about the latest discoveries and research as it happens. Thank you
Just stumbled upon your channel Brad! Love the work you guys are doing!
Really awesome to see ongoing archeological work like this, and you do such a great job of presenting and explaining it!
Thanks for another excellent and interesting video! It seems, compared with the other trenches you've shown that all of this is very near the surface. Would you expect to find earlier occupations further down? Or would there be less found in this area, as it was outside the city itself, and building only occurred in this area as the population expanded?
I do expect earlier occupation and would very much like to know just how early it goes. Since this mound is not nearly as high as the main city mound, we might be able to dig deep enough to find out when it was founded. Of course, we can't get rid of good architecture above so we need to find a space where we can continue down--after we understand this building, of course.
son bricking up the door to split the house and get his own space, very relatable even across such vast years 😅
Another well crafted video that brings this dig right into my world. Thank you.
Ditto
I loved the brief satellite shot
Visiting Ur is a dream of mine...
Really calls to question my understanding of ancient Mesopotamian cities. What we learn from class and textbooks is mostly the layout within the walls, to think how much we've been missing.
Fascinating thank you 👍
At the end of this season did you have to backfill the trenches (with the thoroughly sieved material dug out of them?) to protect them until you return or is there a simpler method (easier to remove) of preserving the opened area from natural or human interference for the duration they're not being actively investigated? Thank you so much for the detailed views and explanations!
We do backfill. I think in one of the drone shots you can just see a bit of green cloth because it was taken at the end of the season. We put geo-textile down over the trench and then put sieved dirt over that. If we plan to excavate in that area again in the following season we don't completely fill the trench, only cover everything textile, then put enough dirt to make sure it is secure. Then we can remove that dirt and the cloth in a day or two when we open the next season.
@@artifactuallyspeaking Thank you!
Thanks for the great video. I've got a question: Once you have reached and cleaned the floor; do you plan to dig beneath it to see if there are even older levels or burials or ceremoniously buried items beneath? And how do you decide when to leave a floor of a house intact and when to "destroy" it to continue excavating?
Excellent question. I do hope to go beneath the floor, since that will tell us a lot about how the house was built (foundations) and if there are earlier floors and/or burials beneath. Whether to go beneath depends on many factors, though. The most important is permission from the Iraq State Board. If they don't want us to remove it, we don't remove it. The next factor is how much we think we will learn by digging deeper.
If we can make a case that our understanding will be substantially advanced, we might be allowed to go beneath, perhaps not too far, and then we can fill it back in and replace the paving bricks of the floor.
Hi, I was curious to ask a question. You mentioned in a previous video that the site gets reburied at the end of the season. That was a much deeper dig, but does this one get reburied as well? Do you bury it with something that is easier to redig if you come back to the site?
Yes, we cover up any new trench, especially architectural remains within, to protect it from the elements. If we are going to return to a trench, we won't completely fill it in but will protect anything exposed. If we don't plan to return to a trench then we fill it back in as completely as possible. We use the dirt that we took out of the pit in the first place, since that has been sieved and examined and we put it on top of geo-textile that marks the end of the excavation level.
There's a lot of exposed material from old excavations and we're trying to help preserve that while also making sure we don't add to the problem with new exposures. The longer something is left exposed, the more it will deteriorate.
Of course, there is also the important idea that people should be able to see some of this ancient architecture. That's why we're helping to preserve the already exposed material while leaving it visible where possible.
Mesopotamia😍😍😍