The Urkesh Global Record (UGR): Overview

The Urkesh Global Record is at the core of the Urkesh website.

In terms of file size, it occupies approximately 99% of the total of the website.

It contains the full record of the excavations, for the units represented.

Finally, it offers the implementation of the grammar and the embodiment of the theory as given in the Critique of Archaeological Reason (CAR). It also was the humus for the origin and development of the Critique.

In this section, I will address some of the basic issues that are treated in as many subsections (listed in the left side bar) relating to the conceptual approach and to the structure of the system.

Concept and principles. – The presuppositions that underlie the UGR make it unlike other approaches to the excavation process as such and to the resulting record. I will here explain the overall concept and the factors that have guided me in designing the system as a concrete implementation of specific conceptual premises.

Data structure and processing. – The system is primarily based on program driven processing of text based journal entries. While the details of the grammar are left for a separate digital book, here I will address in a more general way the interaction between the various types of input and the data as ultimately displayed.

Digital publication. – The UGR is part of a broadly based approach to digital publishing, which, in the case of archaeology, has a unique epistemological status. The full intellectual impact of this is developed in the Critique of Archaeological Reason (CAR), and partly also in the digital monograph on Digital Thought: the goal here is to show how the UGR fits within tghis persepctive.

Format. – The UGR consists of multiple digital books, i. e., distinct websites devoted each to a specific excavation unit or topical entity. The page format differs from that of the Urkesh website, and it is explained here.

History of UGR. – Work on the UGR started with the excavations at Ashara (Terqa) and then developed in parallel with the excavations at Mozan (Urkesh). The stages through which it evolved were conditioned by technical innovations that enhaced the results while confirming the overarching conceptual design. They are described in this conclusive section.