Anatolica 36, 165-195. doi: 10.2143/ANA.36.0.2049242 © 2010 by Anatolica. All rights reserved. ANATOLICA XXXVI, 2010 THE SURVEY OF PøR HÜSEYøN, 2004 Brian L. Peasnall and Guillermo Algaze* INTRODUCTION Since 2002, the DiyarbakÕr Small Streams Archaeological Survey Project has worked to record archaeological sites in the piedmont region of the Upper Tigris Drainage Area just east of the city of DiyarbakÕr, north of the Tigris River, and west of the city of Batman and the Batman River (Peasnall 2003) (Fig. 1). The project is ongoing, and to date 108 sites have been recorded within the survey area. Unquestionably, one of the most important of these is the ancient settlement of Pir Hüseyin, situated some 25 km east of DiyarbakÕr on a high terrace overlooking the floodplain of the Ambar Çay, a minor perennial tributary of the Tigris. Pir Hüseyin has long been a focus of scholarly attention as the putative location where a justly famous stele of the Akkadian king Naram Sin was unearthed sometime in the last decade of the 19th century (below). Surprisingly, however, the mound had never been systematically surveyed, mapped, and collected until members of the DiyarbakÕr Small Streams Archaeological Survey Project did so in 2004.1 What follows is a report on that work focusing on the setting of the site, its nature, chronology, and significance. RESEARCH BACKGROUND In 1892, Natik Effendi, a lawyer from DiyarbakÕr whose work often took him to villages in the vicinity of that city, visited the house of a local landowner and noticed a broken stone stele that had been incorporated into the retaining wall of a well. After he brought the monument to the attention of local museum authorities in DiyarbakÕr, the stele was quickly sent to the archaeological museum in Istanbul (ES 1027; Amiet 1975: 197, Fig. 105; Börker-Klähn 1982: 133, Fig. 25), where it remains today (Fig. 2). Made of polished diorite, and measuring, as preserved, 57 x 42 x 20 cm, the stele bears the figure of a helmeted Mesopotamian king holding weapons. This royal personage is depicted in a style typical for art of the mature Akkadian period in southern Mesopotamia (Orthmann 1975), and is, in fact, identified in the accompanying inscription as Naram Sin, the powerful fourth ruler of the Akkadian Dynasty in southern Mesopotamia, whose reign is * Peasnall: University of Delaware; Algaze: University of California, San Diego. 1 The 2004 season consisted of Brian Peasnall (director), Guillermo Algaze (archaeologist), Michael Rosenberg (archaeologist), Mitchell Rothman (archaeologist) and øsmail SarÕpÕnar, who served as representative of the Directorate of Museums and Monuments of the Ministry of Culture in Ankara. The members of the project were ably assisted in all aspects of their work by ùehmus Kartal, director of the Culture and Tourism Ministry’s office in Batman Province. 993428_Anatolica-36_06_Peasnall.indd3428_Anatolica-36_06_Peasnall.indd 116565 007-05-20107-05-2010 114:50:204:50:20 166 BRIAN L. PEASNALL & GUILLERMO ALGAZE conventionally dated to ca. 2260-2223 BC. This identification is very important because we know from extant textual documentation (year names, contemporary royal inscriptions, later copies of such inscriptions, and later epics) that the early kings of the Akkadian Dynasty in southern Mesopotamia campaigned extensively against enemies situated across the high plains straddling the borders of modern day Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Naram Sin, in particular, crossed the Tigris river repeatedly in order to campaign in areas east of the river in northern Iraq, the area then known as “Subartu”, and north of the Tigris in southeastern Turkey, the area then known as the “Upper Lands” (Frayne 1993; Steinkeller 1998; Westenholz 1999). Additionally, we know that Naram Sin was the first Akkadian king to have brought portions of Upper Mesopotamia under the direct control of Akkadian imperial administrators (Frayne 1993; Risvet and Weiss 2005; Westenholz 1999). Soon after it arrived in Istanbul, the stele was examined and published by the Assyriologist Jean-Vincent Scheil (1893). Following publication, the stele was immediately, and correctly, understood as a record of the nature and extent of the activities of the Akkadian Empire in the Upper Tigris region. Naturally, this stimulated a search for its precise find spot. To this effect, the German explorer J.P. Naab (1934) traveled to DiyarbakÕr in 1902 where he located both Natik Effendi and the owner of the house in which the lawyer had first noticed the stele. There, Naab was told that the stele had been originally found at the small village of Pir Hüseyin on the Ambar Çay. When Naab arrived at Pir Hüseyin, he observed that the modern village was situated just south of an impressive ancient mound. In short order he was able to locate a villager who claimed to have been present when the stele was first discovered in 1890 as villagers dug into nearby ancient ruins to collect stones for use as foundations for their houses. According to the informant, the stele was found just east of the village that existed at the time of Naab’s visit, about 2 “cubits” (Ottoman arsin: ca. 1.3-1.5 meters) below the modern surface (Naab 1934: 33).2 Based on this, Naab (1934: Pl. III, Fig. 5) provides a rough map for its find spot, redrawn here as Fig. 3, which places the stele directly southeast of the ancient mound of Pir Hüseyin as he understood it. Naab’s findings were confirmed two years later by the British scholar, Leonard King (1910: 245, note 1), who also traced the stele backwards from DiyarbakÕr to Pir Hüseyin and was also taken by local villagers to the exact location of the site where the stele was unearthed. Unlike Naab, King does not 3 provide a map, but his description matches Naab’s point by point. 2 The arsin, an Ottoman unit of length, varied slightly depending on its use context. When used by architects, it was equivalent to ca. 75 cm; when used as a general unit of measurement in the marketplace, it was equivalent to ca. 68 cm; and when used specifically as a measurement for textiles it was equivalent to ca. 65 cm (Hinz 1970). 3 The Naab/King attribution of the Naram Sin stele to Pir Hüseyin is generally accepted by ancient Near Eastern scholars. One notable exception, however, is Jutta Börker-Klähn (1982: 133), who contends that the stele came instead from the village of Mayafarkin (modern Silvan, Byzantine Martyropolis, some 45 km northeast of Pir Hüseyin). Regretfully, Börker-Klähn does not discuss the reasons for this alternate attribution of the stele’s provenance. A recent definitive compilation of Akkadian Royal Inscriptions by Douglas Frayne (1993: 128) repeats the contrasting claims about the stele’s provenance without taking sides. However, an attribution of the stele to the Silvan area is, in our opinion, untenable in light of Naab and King’s careful detective work. We suspect that Börker-Klähn’s attribution of the stele's provenance to a location other than Pir Hüseyin is ultimately based on an underestimation of the true extent of the settlement in the Late EBA (below). 993428_Anatolica-36_06_Peasnall.indd3428_Anatolica-36_06_Peasnall.indd 116666 007-05-20107-05-2010 114:50:204:50:20 ANATOLICA XXXVI, 2010 167 Our work at the site indicates that the mound of Pir Hüseyin as Naab, King, and other early explorers understood it, represents only the citadel of a much larger ancient settlement, which was founded and grew to its maximum extent in the late third millennium BC, and that the stele, if in its original location, would have been situated towards the southeastern periphery of the lower town that surrounded the citadel at that time (Fig. 4). Further, our collections suggest that Pir Hüseyin continued to represent an important regional center through at least the first millennium BC, and was the locus of substantial occupations dating to the Middle Bronze, Late Bronze (Middle Assyrian), and Iron (Neo-Assyrian) Ages. However, before discussing the results that substantiate these preliminary conclusions, we need turn to a brief discussion of the regional and environmental context in which the site existed. REGIONAL SETTING AND COMMUNICATIONS The piedmont region of the Upper Tigris Drainage where Pir Hüseyin is located is a coherent region of high plains and low rolling hills north of the Tigris River and south of the Taurus mountains of southeastern Turkey (Fig. 1). Like the river, the piedmont runs in a northwest to southeast direction through southeastern Turkey, with the Taurus coming closer to the river towards the eastern edge of the piedmont. Within the survey area, the piedmont ranges in altitude from ca. 650 to 850 m in a west-east direction. It is characterized by relatively abundant and stable annual precipitation, which ranges from ca. 500 to 600 mm per year and naturally follows an increasing west (DiyarbakÕr: see Erinç 1950) to east (Silvan: see Bayraktar, Turalioglu, and Sen 2005) gradient that varies with the noted altitudinal changes. Today, the piedmont is intensively devoted to grain production. However, its natural vegetation would have consisted of an open forest of scattered oak and pistachio (Rosenberg et al. 1998), and remnants of this vegetation can still be observed in isolated spots too difficult to plow. Pir Hüseyin sits atop a Pleistocene terrace overlooking the Ambar Çay, which flows about 340 m east of the site (Fig. 5). The precise location of the site within this terrace was probably determined by a line of substantial springs offering potable water to its inhabitants, which emerges some 130-170 m southwest of the High Mound within a seasonal creek that runs perpendicular (i.e., E-W) to the Ambar Çay.