The concept of surface finds refers to archaeological artifacts that were collected on the archaeological site and that came out as a result of weather factors, the most important of which is the rain which scrapes the soil (and thus the artifacts come out). Even, these findings can be caused by the action of wild animals, and a number of archaeological materials were unearthed as the result of their digging on the surface of the archaeological site.
Surface finds are still recovered at Tell Mozan and they are carefully collected, recorded, and documented by a small team of local people under the direction of Amer Ahmad. This is a further evidence of the engagement of local population in taking care of their own heritage and past, embedded in these ancient, but still "living" objects. These operations also allow to continue studying the materials recovered at Mozan even at a distance, in the frame of the UGR ("Urkesh Global Record") project.
During the absence of the archaeological mission of the Urkesh site (Tell Mozan), our work was not limited to maintenance and awareness activities, but we collected several archaeological materials that were placed in the storerooms of the excavation house. Recently, Amer Ahmad supervised the documentation and preservation of many of these artifacts.
Over two days (June 26-27, 2022), we photographed (with the assistance of a professional photographer, Muntaser Qasem) these small finds, determined their color and sizes, put them in bags, then transferred them to the storage of the excavations house at the site of Tell Mozan. The artifacts included different typologies, including wheels (of small clay figurines), incomplete animal and human figurines, portions of chariot, pottery, bronze materials, and in addition even two bronze coins (just to mention the most common finds).
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