Revisiting Fara: Comparison of merged prospection results of diverse magnetometers with the earliest excavations in ancient Šuruppak from 120 years ago

Abstract

Ancient Šuruppak, today Fara, was one of the major Sumerian cities in Mesopotamia. It was situated along one of the ancient watercourses of the Euphrates River. Findings date it back to the Jemdet Nasr period around 3000 bc with a continuous occupation until the end of the Ur III period around 2000 bc. Fara was first explored and excavated by the Deutsche Orient‐Gesellschaft in the years 1902 and 1903 under the direction of Walter Andrae. Multiple excavation trenches with lengths up to 900 m transect the 1 km2 wide mound and are still visible today which enables us to georeference the excavation maps. Today, the 2.2 km2 wide archaeological area is dry and without any vegetation. Thousands of deep looting pits are covering the majority of mound which not only destroyed its upper metres but also challenge the application of geophysical prospection methods and their interpretation. The magnetometer prospecting of selected areas on and around the mound was carried out with three devices, two total field magnetometers and one gradiometer. The individual survey areas were combined in post‐processing by applying a high‐pass filter on the total field data sets and multiplying the vertical gradiometer data sets by a factor of two. This approach provides visually uniform magnetograms, despite being obtained by different devices, which simplifies subsequent visual interpretation. These magnetograms enable us to review, and to extend the results of the old excavations. The comparison show a good correlation in accuracy to the old drawings and positive identification of the already excavated features with magnetometry. Highlights of the survey are the discovery of the city wall confirming its existence, the layout of a unique building complex in the centre of the mound, likely a temple, traces of canals inside the city and an evaluation of magnetometer prospection over a looted area.

Prospecting in the marshland: the Sumerian city Fara-Šuruppak (Iraq)

“…The highlights of the survey so far are the discovery of the city wall, evidence of a large harbor complex, traces of ancient agriculture, watercourses and a bridge, among others. The revealed layout of a unique building complex in the center of the mound, likely a temple, complements the ancient excavations by Walter Andrae (Hahn et al 2022).…”

Geoarchaeological investigations in Artanish Peninsula, Armenia: Testing a new geochemical prospecting method for archaeology

“…The advantage is that the resulting magnetogram also includes information for greater depth (more than 1 m). The diurnal variations of the Earth's magnetic field, whose range may be identical to the magnetic anomalies caused by buried anthropologic remains, are removed in the post‐processing (for details, see Hahn et al, 2022). As a complementary method, magnetic susceptibility measurements with the portable kappameter SM 30 (ZH instruments) were performed in situ soil samples and on excavated rocks of the burials and used as a reference for the interpretation of the magnetograms (Bondar et al, 2022; Hahn & Fassbinder, 2021; Hahn et al, 2021).…”

The Flooding of Lagash: Evidence for Urban Destruction under Lugalzagesi, the King of Uruk

“…Administered waterways offered easy transportation, consistent irrigation water and efficient protection from unpredictable inundation during spring floods (Rost 2017). Geoarchaeological and geophysical investigations at contemporary urban sites like Uruk, Fara and Girsu yield signatures of Venice-like population centers crisscrossed by canals (e.g., Egberts et al 2023;Hahn et al 2022;Fassbinder et al 2019).…”