Stony Brook profs excited about Iraq dig

Two Stony Brook University professors say they unearthed new evidence about ancient civilizations during a recent trip to Iraq and are excited at the prospect of future digs in an unexplored area that was once part of Mesopotamia.

Elizabeth Stone and Paul Zimansky, who are married, led a team of six who worked during the school winter break at a dig in Tell Sakhariya, a marshy area about 4 miles from Ur, the ancient city that is thought to be the birthplace of Abraham about 2000 BC.

They found animal bones and other evidence of a settlement by a nomadic people 4,000 years ago, the outlines of the foundation of a building that might have been a temple and parts of 10 cuneiform inscriptions -- early script symbols.

"One of the things about Mesopotamia is that we have known forever, essentially, that there were people living in the marshes, but nobody had seen anything of it, and so it was nice to have real data about what people were doing there," she said.

Zimansky said the foundation was probably that of a temple. "It was clearly a big, mud platform. People were walking out from the city to celebrate festivals. . . . [It was] probably a religious place," he said.

It is also notable, Stone said, that the team was even allowed into the country by Iraqi officials. The country was off limits during the final years of Saddam Hussein's rule and has been a war zone. Her team of six arrived Dec. 17, began to dig a week later and left Jan. 21.

"This was the first visit outside of the Kurdistan area of Iraq by a foreign archaeological team in a decade, and the first by an American team in more than 20 years," she said. "It was interesting that as we were coming into Basra a convoy of the last American troops was leaving."

The trip was financed in part by a $25,000 grant from the National Geographic Society, which has been sponsoring Stone periodically since 1983, according to Barbara Moffet, a spokeswoman for the society.

Moffet said Stone was among a handful of archeologists who flew over Iraqi sites in 2003 to assess damage caused by war and looting. "She is an accomplished archeologist who is well-versed in one of the hot spots in the history of archaeology," Moffet said.

The latest work was monitored by both a local and a national Iraqi official, and the Iraqis decided whether artifacts would be given to local or national institutions, or be taken back to the United States for further testing, Stone said.

"We can't be sure of what we've found yet, until we conduct further testing," she said.

"We hope to be back in the area next January. We have a permit signed by the minister of culture, but other ministries are involved in the process," she said.