Urkesh

The scholarly dimension

Giorgio Buccellati – October 2009

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A chapter of the digital monograph: Site Presentation

Focusing on the whole

It goes without saying that the final goal of the excavator is to understand the larger picture within which the individual pieces fit. In fact, this is one reason for the chronic delay in publishing – the desire to expand our understanding of the fragment by exposing more and more of the whole. And yet, the effort at presenting the site while it is being excavated adds an important stimulus, that of focusing on the whole even while only the fragments are visible. There is a certain dialectics between a single observation and the need to set it within a wider meaning that elicits its deeper meaning. We may look askance at generalizations per se. But properly undertaken, a generalization has the force of a model that points our attention in directions that may well be thought-provoking in the best sense of the word.

Site presentation as documentary publication

When undertaken by the archaeologist, site presentation can acquire an important status as a form of scholarly publication. There are technical aspects that can best be documented in the live reality of a field situation – elements of stratigraphy over a wide exposure; the diverse textures of bricks and mortars from different construction phases even within the same building; and so on.

Beyond the more technical aspect, there are perceptual realities that cannot be consigned in their full reality to an alternative medium, such as the relationship of the built to the natural environment; the vastness of an architectural complex; and so on.

All of this can be gathered with great difficulty by a scholar visiting a site if no adequate effort has been made to alert the visitor to such realities (not to mention the problem that derives from inadequate conservation, which effectively destroys the evidence).

Perceptual analysis

Perhaps the most important contribution that proper attention to site presentation can make to the archaeological process is by directing attention to the issue of perceptual analysis. For it is the same set of concerns that governs both. The point of view that unifies the built environment today for the visitors must, ideally, be the one that did so for the ancients. The search for such unifying point of view is based on the objective congruence of the various elements which are being exposed – and the definition of such perspective and such coherence must indeed be a central aim of the excavation in the first place.

Integration within the excavation strategy

Considerations about perceptual analysis show how site presentation lies at the very heart of the excavation process. Rather than coming from the outside, after the fact, decisions along these lines should be inscribed in the excavation strategy in the first place. I am not advocating that site presentation should determine the progress of the excavation, only that pertinent concerns be seriously considered from the start. Everything else being equal, one would then opt for the solution that best suits the pertinent needs. It is the initial sensitivity that matters, one that will avoid an even greater measure of extrinsicism after the fact.

Such a procedure not only helps in planning for a successful implementation of a full site presentation program; it also elicits those considerations that pertain to the benefit of focusing on the whole The strategy moment is when all aspects come into play (from stratigraphy to availability of resources), and it is indispensable that site presentation (just as conservation) be an integral part of the full picture.

Examples from the UGR

Unit S6 is an example of how an entire operation, however limited in scope, has been started in function of site presentation.

Unit J1, on the other hand, is an example of how a major operation, which has been under excavation for a number of years, has benefited immensely from the ever present undercurrent of concerns for site presentation.