The work on J4 was enlightening in many ways. Despite being a small unit, excavated for only one season, bringing it to completion was both challenging and interesting, especially giving the fact that I did not excavate there. Now that it is as complete as it could be, I can define very clearly the challenging and the interesting aspects, and I can say with certainty that it was an excellent exercise for me as an archaeologist and as a person.
The challenges can be summarized in reconstructing a narrative from raw excavation data. Having excavated in J6, not only an adjacent excavation unit, but also a unit that subsumed parts of J4, played a major role in my understanding of the stratigraphical situation of J4. However, the main factor in the process of building the narrative is the unit director sC’s phase and strata assignment.
On a more personal note, I was able to get to know sC better, and follow her thought process through her notes and observations as she gained a better understanding of the area with the progress of the excavations. An important aspect in order to be able to bring the unit book into a cohesive whole. And on a wider scale, Placing J4 in its larger context as part of the temple area, entailed going through other units in the area (J1, J2, J3, J5 and especially J6), creating that virtual bond with other team members through an intangible cooperation as I was navigating and “reading their unit books”, and a tangible one as we discussed core issues related to format and contents, making “writing this book” a rich journey stretching on a large spectrum of personal and communal work, solo reflection and group collaboration, all meeting at the central goal of writing the history of Urkesh.
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