Every year, the Penn Museum provides support to Penn undergraduates and graduate students as they deepen their understanding of the human experience outside the Museum’s walls. Follow these blog posts from our intrepid young scholars as they report on the sights and sites that they encounter throughout their travels in the field.
In my last post, I talked about the site of Oğlanqala and its importance to archaeology in the Caucasus. Our survey focused on continuing the work of past seasons in order to link up Oğlanqala with surrounding fortresses and occupation sites. We also visited areas which had a good chance of producing evidence for previous occupation (these ranged from Chalcolithic sites all the way up to the Medieval era!) in hopes of expanding our knowledge of settlement patterns in the region. Several of these survey days revolved around hiking up to qalas or fortresses. Qalas were located at higher elevations (often on top of mountains) in order to provide a wide view of the surrounding countryside and for better protection against attacks.
Several of the qalas we looked at were surrounded by large stone walls. To see if we could figure out a date of construction for these walls, the survey team opened up several small trenches alongside them with the intent of reaching their base. Some were successful in finding bits of charcoal which we can use for carbon dating, so hopefully once they are sent to a lab, we’ll know more about the date of these impressive walls!
After the three-week long survey season, I stayed on to join the excavations at Qizqala. Qizqala is another fortress, located a little over a kilometer away from Oglanqala and likely occupied contemporaneously. Since I joined after the survey was over, excavations were well under way in several areas of the settlement and its surroundings. As I arrived, we began to open new trenches over graves situated in a valley on the other side of Qizqala. These graves are called kurgans, and are distinguishable by a ring of hewn stones commonly between 4 and 15 meters in diameter. (However, some of the larger ones have been over 90 meters!)
At first, we thought that we were only excavating one kurgan. Once we removed the topsoil, however, it was clear that at least three more surrounded it! After expanding the trench to encompass two more, we found out that they were only marked by half-circles of stone – which had not been encountered before in kurgan types. Three weeks of excavation were dedicated to carefully excavating these graves and removing beautiful Bronze Age ceramics, arrowheads, beads, and, of course, skeletons.
In the last week of excavation, I left the kurgans to take over a trench in the domestic area of Qizqala’s settlement. We were interested in further exposing a large, curving wall which had been found in the trench right next to mine. For the last week of the excavation period, we managed to uncover not only the continuation of that wall, but three other walls as well, all very different from each other. Although more excavations in this area will take place next season, right now we are wondering if these walls belonged to stables, bounded areas used for storage, or were simply walls to an oddly-built tower!
I’m back home in Philly now, but the experience I gained this summer is sure to help add perspective to my studies of the ancient Near East. I don’t know what next summer will hold, but I’d love to rejoin the Naxcivan team in order to try and answer the many questions which this season, quite literally, turned up!
Photo Credits: Author
