History of the UGR

Giorgio Buccellati – January 2025

Introduction

The history of the UGR has been traced in the Cybernetica Mesopotamica website in the section dealing with the excavations. Here I will summarize the major stages of this history, as it pertains to especially to the UGR recording system.

Also pertinent is the historical development of the Grammar, which focuses on specific aspects of the basic presuppositions for the system.

The page on the “Axioms” opens a window onto an earlier stage of the project.

The section on references gives a list of presentations and publications that have marked the growth of the system over the years.

The year 2026 is the year when the project is reaching its closure, marking the end of a half a century long process that has remained as coherent in its goals as it has been protracted in its unfolding. There are several reasons for the long delay:

the complexity of the system was a conditioning factor since the beginning: it was as if planned in function of a browser approach long before browsers became available, and when that happened the adjustment required a considerable effort;
the quantity of the data had grown to in ways that justify the appellation of “big data” in terms of both the size and the internal differentiation;
the very concern for coherence meant that each change, however minimal, had to be calibrated against the overall structure of the system;
the interplay of theory and practice was particularly sensitive during the excavation period (until 2011): in this regard, the interruption of the excavations beginning in 2011 was a positive factor in allowing us to concentrate on dealing with the very extensive record we had accumulated.

The formative period (1976-96)

For more details see the section on theory and on sites in Cybernetica Mesopotamica.

While excavations at Mozan/Urkesh started in 1984, the conceptual effort that resulted in the UGR had started earlier, with the excavations at Terqa. From the beginning at Mozan, our goals were clear, and were so stated in the first printed report, Mozan 1.

More specifically, this was the beginning of the digital era with regard to field work, made possible by the availability of (relatively) portable computers that could be taken to the excavation. The Encoding Manuals (e. g., the one of 1996) held the promise that would materialize in the Grammar.

We started entering our data in relational data bases: this served as a check on the functioning of the manuals, and helped us develop a sense of how the data, as fragments, could be not just juxtaposed, but interconnected in ways that were heretofore impossible when using card based files. This was the deeper meaning of the “relational” approach: we could bring to life, as it were, the fragments by eliciting clusters that arose from the attributes associated with the data.

A major step was taken in this period at the suggestion of Fanxi Xu, then a student in the UCLA doctoral program. He was the first to suggest that we experiment as well with an HTML based system, and began designing what ended up being the web based system we are now using.

Static outputs

Development of the interplanar approach (1997-2013)

For more details see the section on theory and on sites in Cybernetica Mesopotamica.

Following on Fanxi Xu’s early work, the system developed fully in the following years. The notion of interplanarity was taking shape, even though the term as such was not used yet.

Excavations were in full swing until 2010, and the system came to be tested in a variety of different ways, in particular as a result of the installation of the LAN system at Tell Mozan. This made it possible for all members of the staff to feed data directly into the local server, so as to have a unified system throughout the workrooms of the expedition house.

Indicative of how well developed the system was already by the time excavations were suspended are two video clips from May 2011, which are the antecedents of todays “Guide for the perplexed“. The first one is a general introduction to the UGR, and the second a special introduction to the descriptive portion of the UGR.

An important turning point was the awarding of a Mellon Foundation grant: it helped us to define clearly our goals, and to implement them in practice with regard to the Urkesh data (see in cyb-mes.net). This is clearly shown in the text of the proposal and in the final report. These texts give a good indication of how the larger methodological picture was developing, and how the data were being successfully integrated into the system (see under excerpts).

Formalization of the system (2013-2021)

For more details see the section on theory and on sites in Cybernetica Mesopotamica.

In the period following the interruption of field work we could concentrate on three major aspects of the project.

Individual digital books and topical books. – A number of excavation units needed to be brought up to date, and intensive work was carried out on the ceramics digital book.
Programming. – Major programming changes took place, including a thorough revision of the original ones, plus the introduction of others dealing with more specialized areas (see Cybernetica Mesopotamica 1 and 2)
Printed publications and presentations. – A considerable number of articles and presentations were given in this period, dealing with the UGR as a whole and with specific aspects of it. See the list in the section on references below, for both presentations and publications.

A major impulse for the project came from a grant by the Catholic University in Milan. While the main focus was on the hermeneutic aspect of the project, the UGR played a major role in the presentations and the discussions, and some of the participants joined the UGR project, above all Marco de Pietri, who served as a key point of reference for everyone involved until his untimely death in 2025.

Closure (2022-2026)

The Balzan Prize research project was the catalyst that made it possible for all the various strands of the project to come to a closure. The substantial funding made available allowed us to muster a number of collaborators working on a variety of different digital books. The extensive synchronization among all participants was indispensable to achieve the central aim: it was as if the notion of interplanarity had taken shape physically as we were together comparing with each other the work we were all doing on our respective “digital books.”