Tall Halaf/Syria
Tall Halaf, situated in the North-East of Syria at the source of the river Habur, is among the most famous find spots of the Near East. It was eponymous of a period within the ceramic Neolithic ("Halaf period", approx. 6000-5300 B.C.). After a long interruption of settlement it first was the capital of an Aramean principality under the name of Guzana in the first century B.C., and later on the residential town of an Assyrian governor. In the Old Testament, this town is mentioned under the name of Gosan. Until well beyond the Hellenistic period, the region around Tall Halaf was called Gauzanitis.
The excavations conducted on the hill of ruins in 1899, from 1911-1913, and in 1929 by the German diplomat and private scholar Max Freiherr von Oppenheim - offspring of a rich banker's family - brought to light numerous important pieces of pictorial art, amongst which the decor of an Aramean palace.
After an interruption of 77 years, excavations on Tall Halaf could be resumed in summer 2006 by the cooperating teams of the General Direction of Antiques and Museums of Damascus, the Near Eastern Museum of Berlin, the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg and the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen. Since 2010, this teams has been extended to the Ludwig-Maxililians-Universität München. Already during the first three campaigns we were able to gain valuable insight into the history of the place and the chronology of the monumental structures on the citadel.
According to our present knowledge, the prehistoric settlement seems to have taken place during the entire Late Neolithic ("Halaf period") and Chalcolithic ("Obed and Uruk period"), i.e. over a period of approx. 6500-3200 B.C.. At the northern hill side and in the area of the more recent Aramean palace, buildings from the Middle Halaf Period were uncovered: both round buildings with rectangular porches ("tholoi") and rectangular buildings.
To the south of the citadel we discovered hitherto unknown buildings from the Neo Assyrian period (9th-7th century B.C.) resting on artificial terraces. Among the rich inventory there was a.o. a certificate of indebtedness from the 8th century B.C..