Anthony McNicoll Visiting Lecture

Nicolò Marchetti

Karkemish on the Euphrates: Recent Discoveries by the Turco-Italian Archaeological Expedition 

More than 6000 years of history are represented at Karkemish, located at a crossroads of civilizations in the modern province of Gaziantep. Besides new finds for the Halaf period, we now also obtained an almost complete sequence for the Early and Middle Bronze ages. It is for the following periods, however, that the most striking finds have been made: in the last four seasons, a large palace from the Hittite Empire period is being investigated on the acropolis and over 500 clay sealings with seal impression(s) in a stratum from 1250 BCE in the lower town.

Especially interesting is the fact that these administrative practices continued also during the following Iron I level. For the Iron II/Neo Hittite period, a public compound was explored in the Lower Palace area, decorated by several newly found in situ decorated orthostats. The Neo Assyrian occupation yielded most interesting historical documents for a settlement probably intended to be an administrative capital for the West of the empire. After the site reverted to village dimensions in the Achaemenid period, the refoundation of the Hellenistic city of Europos marked the beginning of a new phase in the multimillennial history of the site.

After the last digs in 1920, carried out by famed scholars as Hogarth, Woolley and Lawrence (of Arabia), ten seasons of renewed archaeological excavations and conservation activities have taken place between 2011 and 2021 at Karkemish by the Universities of Bologna, Istanbul and Gaziantep with the support also of the Italian Ministries for Foreign Affairs and that for Universities and Research and the Sanko Holding, in full cooperation with the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism, General Directorate of Cultural Heritage and Museums.

Nicolò Marchetti is Full Professor of Archaeology of the Ancient Near East at the Department of History and Cultures (DiSCi) of the University of Bologna. He directs archaeological excavation projects in Turkey at Karkemish and in Iraq at Nineveh. He has also coordinated several national and international research projects, including the EU-funded ARCHAIA, HeAT, WALADU, EDUU and, currently, BANUU. He currently coordinates the Volkswagen Foundation-funded project KALAM which aims at protecting endangered archaeological landscapes in Iraq and Uzbekistan. He is the editor of the open science website.

About the Anthony McNicoll Visiting Lectureship

Dr Anthony McNicoll was senior lecturer in Middle Eastern Archaeology at the University of Sydney from 1976 until his untimely death in 1985. In the classroom, the field, and through his publications, Anthony McNicoll inspired a new generation of archaeologists while earning the respect and friendship of his academic peers.

After gaining a doctorate from Oxford University on the subject of Hellenistic fortifications, Anthony McNicoll was appointed Director of the British Institute of Afghan Studies in Kabul (1974-75). He came to Sydney with a solid background in field archaeology learnt in Turkey, Iran, Bahrain, Afghanistan and Jordan; this expertise he readily passed on to his students while Co-Director, with Professor J. Basil Hennessy, of the University’s excavations at Teleilat Ghassul and Pella in Jordan.

The Anthony McNicoll Visiting Lectureship 2022 is proudly hosted by the Department of Archaeology at the University of Sydney.

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Hosted by the School of Humanities and the Near Eastern Archaeology Foundation (NEAF).