Aknowledgments

Giorgio Buccellati – November 2025

Introduction

The very long history of the project is indicative of the range of individuals and entities who made it possible. The UGR project gives the most eloquent affirmation possible to the fact that archaeology is by definition a collaborative effort. Given the novelty of the approach, and the difficulties in making it fully operative, what was required was a high degree of confidence in the ultimate value of the project and in our ability to carry it out. Thus my acknowledgments are particularly motivated and heartfelt.

I will here concentrate on the UGR, but it is clear that the UGR was, at all times, a component of the larger excavation process. In this regard, our acknowledgments would include all the entities and individuals that made the whole project possible: they are listed in the overall Urkesh website and in the sitewide website.

Institutions

The two major institutions that have supported the project are:

the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA and
IIMAS – The International Institute for Mesopotamian Area Studies.

The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology has housed the archives and the server (the latter until 2025), offering space in the Mesopotamian Lab (room A311). This has served as the fulcrum for the implementation of the UGR, in two major ways. (1) It provided space for our meetings and for visiting scholars who served as Research Associates working on the UGR. (2) It saw with a long list of students take part in the process of digitization of earlier material and the reorganization of the archives.

IIMAS served as the major financial hub for the UGR, and has managed all the necessary funding, administering a variety of grants that were made for this purpose.

Fundamental for the realization of all our aims has been the Syrian Directorate General of Antiquities and Museum. Throughout the years, there was an unfailing support in a variety of ways, without which the realization of the UGR would have been unthinkable. The “DGAM” was truly a model of what “administering” means: a constant collegial sense of bringing about the best, rather than imposing bureaucratic strictures on the process. Going to their offices was always something we looked forward to, expecting to find colleagues who shared our enthusiasms and helped with our problems. Digital work at the site of Mozan was an indispensable presupposition for the success of the UGR, since all the primary input was done there: it is fair to say that the without the DGAM we would not have the UGR as we have it today.

In particular, as it concerns the UGR, we may mention:

their help in getting permits when importing equipment, especially the first computers, that needed justification withe custom officers;
their help when dealing with local authorities, for issues such as the provisioning of electricity and, in the last year of our excavations, access to the internet;
a general appreciation of the goals we had set for our digital project, especially at a time when computers were regarded with suspicion.

Foundations

Funding for the UGR was always linked to the overall funding for the excavations. It was especially after the suspension of the excavations in 2011 that funding was obtained specifically for the publication of our material, hence for the UGR. In particular I will mention:

the UCLA senate provided yearly grants for the hiring of students for the digitization of archives in the Mesopotamian lab of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology;
the Ahmanson Foundation provided yearly grants through the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology for the hiring of doctoral students working on given digital books
the Mellon Foundation provided an Emeritus grant that was uniquely geared to the UGR;
the Catholic Biblical Association provided a grant for the publication of a rather unique find that elicited special work on the website of the pertinent excavation unit (A15);
the Catholic University of Milan provided a grant for a seminar which proved to be a seminal ground not only for the volume and website relating to the Critique of Archaeological Reason but also to the UGR in general;
the Kaplan Fund provided funds earmarked specifically to the heritage aspects of the project, but it included provisions for the website on conservation and site presentation
the Balzan Prize gave major impetus to the whole project, with a large grant that made it possible to arrive at the closure of this phase of the project.

Staff

The collaborative nature of archaeology is particularly evident within a project which has been lasting for so long and which is as complex as the UGR is. There is one particular aspect of the UGR that relates to this, and that is the importance we attribute to authorship. The direct participation of every member of the staff, as recognized through the UGR authorship feature, is the best acknowledgment one can make for their contribution to the success of the project.

With particular regard to the UGR, there are a few individuals who stand out in a special way, to whom goes my heartfelt gratitude:

Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati introduced the concepts of roster and lexicon in the typological analysis of ceramics and glyptics, concepts that became central to the whole UGR system, beyond typology; fundamental was also the implementation of a field approach for the application of these principles to an immense body of ceramic and glyptic data, which entailed the setting up of well defined procedures and the training of a large staff in applying the principles to several hundred thousand exemplars;
Federico Buccellati was “present at creation,” as I said in my dedication to him of the Critique of Archaeological Reason (p. xviii) : he followed from within the process from its very start, contributing to the very establishment of the system, to the necessary hardware support, to the integration of the data into the UGR as a unified organism;
James L. Walker has become the institutional memory of the project, and besides authoring the largest number of digital books, draws with utmost generosity on his operational knowledge of the system to answer a myriad questions coming to him from all of us on the team;
Marco De Pietri joined the team late and left us so very much too early! He had become the central point of reference for the system, serving as the key interface between the technical and the substantive aspects of the project, and guiding us through some of its operational hurdles;
Bernardo Forni has become our pillar for the digital implementation of the system, with all its intricacies, and bringing, next to his top technical competence, a degree of wisdom and insight into the substantive aspect of the data that make him as much of an archaeologist as he is a programmer;
Lorenzo Crescioli has brought to completion a number of digital books that were started by others, and has served as the mentor for all new members of the staff, following them with great skill and generosity and producing tools for them to learn how to operate the system;
Fanxi Xu got me started on conceiving of the browser as the way to not only store data, but to also articulate the concomitant argument, what turned out to be the central methodological goal of the whole enterprise;
Mary Stancavage has been and remains the key for our access to the archives at UCLA and for the use of the server, while it was there, and now keeping a backup server at her home;
Yasmine Mahmoud has kept the lifeline going with the site of Mozan during the long intermission, which lasts to this day, ensuring that all our records housed there be digitized and made available;
Laerke Recht has become a key contributor, working from within the system in establishing new aspects of the analysis of ceramics and overseeing the processing of ceramic data from all the unit books.
William Orrange worked tirelessly on the proper codification of the very extensive photographic archive, both in the field working closely with the photographers and in Los Angeles reviewing old files;
Kamiran Mustafa did most of the vector rendering of drawings during excavations, and scanned the older material archived in the expedition house after suspension of the excavations;
Hammade Hamza became the chief assistant of the ceramic analysis team, and continued after suspension of the excavations, giving presentations to local college students and to visitors;
Ibrahim Khellu has kept a perfect record of the Palace wall monitoring project as well as of the temperature and humidity data. which are an essential component of the UGR system.
Amer? Diadin?

Colleagues

A number of colleagues shared their views on the UGR over the years, some working with us at the site, some exchanging views after the excavations stopped. I would like to remember especially:

Lucio Milano and Massimo Maiocchi took active part in the excavations, and contributed with their critique as the system was developing; in 2019, Maiocchi rewrote the early version of the programs in Perl;
Maurizio Forte and Nicolò Dell’Unto worked on a comprehensive approach to virtual reality, and we benefitted greatly from an ongoing dialog with them relating to the UGR system;
Peter Pfälzner joined our project in 1998, with the intention that his team would use the UGR methodology; while this did not work out as expected, we engaged in a constructive dialog that helped us refine our approach;
Eric Kansa has followed our work from without and his critique has been very useful in refining key points of the system;
Lothar von Falkenhausen has looked at the UGR from the broader perspective of archaeological method, and has introduced it to a number of colleagues and students, some of whom have also joined us as active members of our staff.