THE Joint Expedition of the University Museum and the American Schools of Oriental Research has resumed work at Tepe Gawra and Tell Billa, Iraq, with Mr. Charles Bache as field director. The reports so far received cover only the first month of work, but the results already augur well for a successful season. At Tepe Gawra, the remaining walls of Stratum VIII, which proved so interesting last year, have been removed and Stratum IX has been entered upon; an intermediate layer seems also to have been present, at least in part of the site.
In Stratum IX has been found a building, almost the duplicate of the so-called Priests’ Residence of early VIII and with the same crenelated niches, similar to the one pictured in Plate XI of the Bulletin for March 1932. An interesting feature of the lower building is that it faces in exactly the opposite direction.
Among the outstanding objects found recently at Tepe Gawra are an ivory comb and hair-pin; the latter is decorated in the central portion with lapis-lazuli and green stone lozenges, and is further ornamented by four bands of gold. Both comb and hair-pin were found in a mud-brick grave which had originally been covered with rushes, the mould of the oxidized rushes being found over the body and over the top of the walls.