As you may know, after close to 20 years of excavation in one concentrated area, the Expedition changed its area of focus, moving from the Royal Storehouse and residential buildings to an area more closely aligned with public ceremony - the Plaza, associated public buildings, and the Monumental Staircase ascending to the early third millennium Temple BA.

These excavation units are at once complex and very simple - the layers atop the Plaza were essentially sterile, containing little diagnostic cultural material. Other excavation units revealed a complex stratigraphy. About halfway through the Mitanni period (ca. 1500-1400 BCE), the base of the staircase was covered by a huge brickfall (some 30 meters in horizontal extension). For some reason, probably having to do with the shrinking of Ancient Urkesh itself, this brickfall and the partially-buried staircase were allowed to remain in full view and not cleared. The area was slowly covered over by silt and other debris. These are the remains that Giorgio Buccellati visits here with staff member, Patrizia Camatta. (The other side of the accumulation can be seen in film VC14, "Brickfall as Marker".)

Note that there are two kinds of ash deposit seen here - that associated with the brickfall itself, serving as a "seal" of deposits below, sloping down toward the lower Plaza—and the regular, unexceptional accumulation of habitation layers above the "Sacral Area" (as Giorgio Buccellati calls it).

The area is pictured above. This view is looking S/SW, up the Monumental Staircase to Temple BA. The modern village of Mozan can be seen on the plains to the left of the mound. The film begins in an area that lies at the base of the staircase, looking S/SW, as is the line drawing above; then shows structures to the east (those that fell). The shot (prise de vue) changes to examine layers in the N/NE, and continues by looking West at layers in the Sacral Area (including the so-called "curtain walls" that leveled the silted-in Plaza above the staircase).

The film ends as Patricia and Giorgio climb the staircase to the top of the mound. The camera pans left, over the staircase to the accumulation layers to the West.

The sun is beginning to set in the West, above Mozan. Toward the end of the film, a muezzin's call is heard in the distance. To close the film, this call to prayer from the mosques in nearby Amuda has been augmented with a recording from Freesound - Calls to prayer, Adhan, in Istanbul (Turkey) on an early morning recorded from the distance. The recording was done on February 21st 2011 with a Sony PCM-D50. Permission to use the clip here was graciously provided by the recording artist.