The Amuq Valley Regional Project, 1995-1998

The Amuq plain in southeast Turkey is of major importance to the developmen t of Near Eastern cultural sequences. Recent investigations of geoarchaeolo gy, settlement patterns, and individual sites now provide a framework for t he assessment of the original work by the University of Chicago and Sir Leo nard Woolley. Geoarcheological investigations provide a dynamic context for the interpretation of settlement patterns and show that sedimentation over the plain has been variable and patchy. The density and patterning of sett lement has changed though time, partly in response to changes in the politi cal economy. Excavations at Tells Kurdu and al-Judaidah as well as section- cleaning operations at other sites in the area have started to provide a ra diocarbon framework for the original chronology and are filling in gaps in that sequence. At the site of Kurdu, approximately 15 hectares in area, dom estic and perhaps public architecture are now being defined more coherently than in the first investigations, and the excavations are supplying insigh ts into a subsistence economy that tapped into a verdant mosaic of local en vironments.