Significance and Impact of the Diyala Project
With the Diyala on-line database, the Oriental Institute will launch an innovative, web-based publication
of fundamentally important archaeological data from ancient Mesopotamia (modern Iraq).
During the 1930s the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago conducted excavations on four
major sites in the Diyala Region, an area northeast of Baghdad in Iraq. To the present day, these
excavations have remained the basis of comparison for all excavations in Mesopotamia. The archeological
material recovered from Diyala sites provides the chronological backbone for much of Mesopotamia's
early history, making its full publication imperative. An ambitious program of publication resulted in nine
monographs of temples, palaces, houses, and classes of artifacts such as pottery and seals, but the great
majority of objects, numbering 12,000, have yet to be published. A web-based publication with a
relational and expandable database backend will allow fully dynamic data management. A “virtual
archive” with previously published and unpublished Diyala records will enable continued research on this
material not only in Chicago but literally anywhere in the world therefore providing an important
milestone in the introduction of electronic publication for the field of Near Eastern archaeology. In
addition, the website will make this database accessible to multiple user groups, ranging from scholars to
the general public and to school children. Having all Diyala material available in electronic format will
facilitate a reanalysis of the older publications in light of newly available data; manipulating them in a
variety of ways will result in fresh insights, new interpretations of important material, and more nuanced
presentations of ancient Mesopotamian culture and society.
The tragic looting of the Iraq Museum in April 2003, resulting in the loss of an as yet uncertain
number of objects (at least 15,000 as of February 2004) and the damage and disorganization of Museum
records, has given the Diyala Objects Project new importance and an urgency to be completed.
Approximately half of all objects found in the Diyala excavations were retained by the Iraqi authorities for
the museum’s collections. It is already known that there are numerous Diyala objects among the stolen
artifacts. A speedy completion of our database and website will make available to the Iraq Museum, U.S.
Customs, and Interpol and other official bodies, as well as the scholarly community, essential records and
photographic images of thousands of items that may help to recover stolen artifacts.
(back to top)
I. Project Description
1. Significance of Diyala Excavations
By the early twentieth century sensational archaeological finds had put Iraq onto the
archaeological map of the world. Yet early excavations often lacked a systematic
approach to digging and recording, paying little attention to stratigraphy (the
super-imposed cultural phases of an archaeological site). Objects recovered in
those early excavations became prized museum items, but selective sampling and
poor record-keeping of archaeological proveniences rendered many of them
useless for functional analyses of architectural units,
making it difficult to establish a reliable chronological
sequence of cultural artifacts. This was the situation
when the Oriental Institute launched its Diyala
Expedition in 1930, in which four sites (Tell Agrab, Tell
Asmar, Ishchali, Khafaje) in the Diyala Region northeast of Baghdad were excavated (Figures 1, 2).
Over the following six years a team of archaeologists uncovered temples, palaces, domestic
quarters, and workshops dating between 3200 and 1800 B.C., a crucial time span during which large
territorial states emerged in Mesopotamia, large urban centers developed, and writing was invented.
The data recovered during these excavations exposed a cross-section through most aspects of urban
life in ancient Mesopotamia, such as its political organization, religion and cult, social organization,
and economic interactions. In spite of the large scale of excavations, exceptional care was taken
with the systematic recording of find contexts, using procedures that were uncommon at that time in
Near Eastern archaeology. Architectural spaces such as rooms, courtyards, or corridors were divided
into loci, clearly defined spatial units that were given unique numbers. This recording system not
only helped to establish a sound chronological framework for artifacts based on their archaeological
provenience, but also made it possible to identify the functions of distinct spatial units within a
building by studying their artifact patterns. Such a precision in data recording has been surpassed
only in the past twenty years through use of computers on projects of this scope in Mesopotamian
archaeology, a fact that highlights the significance of this data.
2. History of Publication
Following the end of the excavations in 1937, several printed volumes were prepared for
publication, but World War II interrupted this work and dispersed the group of scholars that had
worked in the field. Persistent analysis by a few of the
collaborators between 1939 and 1988, however, produced
monographs on almost all of the architecture and some of the
major finds (statuary, cylinder seals, pottery). Over 12,000
objects, however, have so far remained unpublished. According
to the excavators’ publication schedule, they would have
appeared in a volume called “Miscellaneous Objects from the
Diyala Region.” In the past decades several attempts were started
to publish this material, but the large number of objects made data
management difficult if not impossible. Perhaps it is fortunate
that this book never materialized—its title would have severely understated the significance of this
material which, after all, represents the large majority of finds from the Diyala excavations,
consisting of objects that touched upon all sections of Mesopotamian life. Among these items are
stone vessels, tools, weapons, jewelry, cosmetic sets, weights, figurines, stone and metal vessels,
inlays, and stamp seals (Figures 3, 4, 5). Many of these items are truly artworks, while others
provide valuable information of everyday life. In addition, some 1,200 clay tablets with cuneiform
texts written in the Sumerian and Akkadian languages and over 250 clay sealings with impressions,
many of them also bearing inscriptions, have also remained unpublished (Figure 6). In the division
of finds undertaken by Iraq Museum authorities during the 1930s, half of the objects had been
allocated to the Oriental Institute, the other half to the Iraq Museum. Most of the objects had been
photographed and described in the field, resulting in thousands of unpublished photographs, field
object registers, and catalogue cards that detail the Diyala holdings of both the Iraq Museum and the
Oriental Institute (Figure 7).
3. Creation of a Computer Database
In 1992, with the support of an NEH grant, McGuire Gibson launched the Diyala Project as
a computer-based database project. Using DBase 3 and 4, students entered data from field object
catalogues and object cards into database files, while
volunteers started scanning thousands of object
photographs taken during the excavation. The initial data
entry was done into flat files, but their limitations soon
became apparent. Quite often, several units of information
had to be entered in one field. More often than not, for
example, archaeological objects were composed of more
than one material; some of them may had been assigned to
more than one “descriptive” or “functional” category by the
excavators; some objects had been photographed once, others many times. The problems with our
flat-file data structure grew when information from cuneiform texts was entered. Clay tablets with a
single account, receipt, or distribution list can record dozen of manufactured, received, or traded
commodities; any such operations would have involved many people whose names also could be
listed in the text. Needless to say, many of these information units were only relevant to one
particular type of object—personal names, for example, only show up in written texts. The need for
a complex relational database layout, which would allow us to store such units of information as
distinct entries in searchable and sortable form, became apparent. When we
changed our supporting database software in 1995 to Microsoft FoxPro, initial
structural changes were implemented. When several project members moved
from entering catalogue data to analytical work on artifacts for dissertation
and paper research, however, the need for a much more dynamic data layout
that went far beyond our initial concept became apparent. Soon after Clemens
Reichel started analyzing personal names on cuneiform texts from the
governor's palace of Eshnunna (the ancient name of Tell Asmar) for his
dissertation, he discovered the existence of genealogical continuity in certain
office holdings that extended over four generations. He also noted that the
activities of many officials could be correlated with the archaeological
findspots of the cuneiform texts, allowing the reconstruction of ancient office locations and even
“paper trails.” Reichel quickly learned to appreciate the usefulness of related database files while
trying to reconstruct hundreds of family lines. Stored procedures, integrated into the structural
layout of the database, allowed him to update his genealogical diagrams automatically each time he
entered a new text. In short, what initially had been conceived of as a publication database was
expanded rapidly into a sophisticated research database, allowing highly individualized data
management for such different object categories as stone vessels, inlays, cylinder seals, sealings,
weights, and cuneiform texts. By 2001 our database contained over sixty major tables, managed and
navigated by over 2,000 programs, procedures, and screens.
Years of work have shown clear results. In June 2001 Reichel, who has acted as the project’s
coordinator and its data architect since 1999, submitted his dissertation "Political Changes and
Cultural Continuity at the Palace of the Rulers in Tell Asmar (Eshnunna) from 2070 to 1850 B.C."
His ground-breaking synthesis, which depended almost exclusively on the Diyala database as
source material, proved that our concept of a publication and research-oriented database worked.
(back to top)
II. Project Activities and Methodology
1. Revised Publication Plan: A “Virtual Diyala Archive”
Over the years, the changes in data management mentioned above also had modified our
outlook on publication. The dynamic nature of our data structure allows us to accept new
collaborators, add new tables, and revise existing entries at any given time, but it also changed our
notion of a “final” version as a print publication. We therefore dispensed with the idea of a printed
book version and instead opted for a web-based publication. Making data available over the web
has many advantages—it is free for users and will reach a much larger audience within, as well as
outside, the field of archaeology; it can be queried for specific data, and it is possible to correct and
update the data when needed. Publication, which had seemed so remote in the distant future,
suddenly
became
imminent.
While the publication of the objects remains our primary goal, we also began to see another
potential of a web-based publication: the creation of a “Virtual Diyala Archive.” Since these
artifacts were recovered in controlled excavation they offer research potentials that go far beyond
that of most museum collections. The function of an architectural unit, for example, can be
identified by studying the nature and distribution pattern of
the artifacts found in it. Conversely, the function and
significance of many objects only become clear when
studying their provenience and their spatial association
with other artifacts. This work is possible thanks to
extensive documentation made during the recovery of the
objects; these records were kept in notebooks, on plans,
section drawings, excavation photographs, locus cards, sketches, in unpublished manuscripts, and
generally contain a level of detail that surpasses any published excavation account (Figure 8). In
the past decades several scholars have shown the promise and potential of “re-excavating” old
excavations on paper by re-examining excavation records, and Reichel's dissertation has shown an
unusually high level of potential for the Diyala sites. At present, however, scholars from outside the
Oriental Institute would know little if anything about the Diyala field recording system. Even if they
came to Chicago to examine the records, they would not even know what to ask for. We decided
therefore to scan ALL archival material, published and unpublished, to include it in our database,
and to make it available to the scholarly community worldwide via the World Wide Web. This will
not only stimulate more research on the Diyala material, but also create an important virtual
backup of this data. The very real danger of losing irreplaceable documentation can not be
overstated. Some of the plans and notebooks at the Oriental Institute have already deteriorated
significantly and will soon be too fragile to be handled. Gradual decay, however, is only one of the
perils that paper records face. The ransacking of the Iraq Museum’s archives in April not only
made it a slow process for museum officials to provide an exact tally of stolen objects, but will also
make it significantly more difficult for scholars to study archaeological corpora such as the Diyala
material in Baghdad. Having all of our records available on the web will not only be of invaluable
help in scholarly research but also in the reconstruction of the museum’s collection.
2. An Oracle Backend Database
Since Microsoft's FoxPro does not support many of the functions required for this new
concept, we decided to switch to OracleTM as supporting software for the database backend, for
which the University of Chicago has held a site license since 2002. We were fortunate that George
Sundell, a retired data architect from SBC / Ameritech, joined our project as a volunteer in
November 2000. Under his guidance the structural layout of the Diyala database was revised
substantially and expanded in its capabilities.
Figure 9 shows Sundell’s present fundamental model, which
shows many but not all of the tables. Structurally this layout can be
divided into six "zones" (Zones I - VI):
• Zone I contains the final, "revised," information on each artifact;
this is the nodal point of the layout to which every table is linked
directly or indirectly.
• Zone II contains tables with information relating to the material
composition of an object, allowing the listing of all composites as well
as the ranking of primary and secondary materials.
• Zone III contains “dynamic data” specific to particular classes of objects, reflecting
preliminary results as well as ongoing research undertaken by individual scholars.
Personalized log-ins will allow authorized scholars [i.e., team members from the University
of Chicago] to add or modify data and be credited for it. Varying interpretations from
different scholars will be stored and displayed separately, a feature that we believe to be vital
in ongoing research. The tables shown in Figure 9 reflect Clemens Reichel's work on
cuneiform tablets and clay sealings; tables for other object categories, however, will be
added
as
required.
• Zones IV and V contain information on the objects’ archaeological provenience. While
physical descriptions of an object always can be updated, corrected, and improved as long as
the object itself is available for analysis, we cannot add to an excavator's observations for
archaeological provenience made in the field; retaining data integrity in this section is
therefore of vital importance. Zone IV contains our own master layout of areas, levels, and
loci of each site in a revised and standardized form. Original field notes as well as published
archaeological summaries given by the excavators are provided in the tables of Zone V,
giving the user the possibility to examine, evaluate, and even question our reconstruction of
the archaeological sequence.
• Zone VI contains the "reference" items necessary for analysis, which include publication
references, maps, plans, site and object photos, drawings and sketches of objects, as well as
metadata.
3. Current State of Affairs (December 2004)
The data entry on some 15,000 objects is essentially complete; some editing remains to be
done. All available object photos taken in the field (2,240) and almost all excavation photos (1,600)
have been scanned from either positives or negatives. In addition, 6,500 new object photographs
were taken. The transfer of data from the FoxPro to the OracleTM database is presently ongoing and
about halfway completed. One of the major tasks remaining to be done is the scanning of the field
notes, catalogues, and plans. Descriptions of archaeological contexts mostly remains to be done.
Most of the object photos have been scanned.
(back to top)
III. Project Results
1. Target Audiences
The size and scope of the Diyala website will be unprecedented not only in the world of Near
Eastern archaeology but also related fields, so its impact should be noticed far beyond the limits of
this field. Our goal, however, is not only reach audiences in the academic world but also in the
educational system as well as in the general public:
a) School / general education: Our site will feature educational components that could easily be
used as teaching tools in schools. By “walking” on the computer screen through the plan of a
selected building, for example, students will be able to call up images and descriptions of artifacts
found in each room. By showing typical information that archeologists use to date and interpret
objects or to explain the function of a building, such highly interactive pages will explain visually
the archaeological methods used by scholars in the field. Users will understand the significance of
properly recorded archaeological provenience and see the limited scientific “value” of
unprovenienced objects from the antiquities market. We hope that these pages will make the general
public more aware of the irreversible damage and loss of knowledge caused by the looting of
archaeological sites in search for artifacts to supply the illegal antiquities market, as it is presently
happening in Iraq.
b) Academic world (Ancient Near Eastern Studies): With new questions emerging following each
new publication, and with new technologies for analysis constantly becoming available, no
archaeological corpus in our field can ever be considered “fully” analyzed. For that reason we
plan not only to retain our “dynamic data section” (= Zone III in Figure 9) indefinitely but also to
expand it continuously to enable scholars to add data and to actively pursue their research through
this database. Much of the analyses on Diyala material could be done as research for Ph.D.
dissertations on topics addressing political, social, and economic history, and chronology of the
ancient Near East. What makes this idea particularly attractive is that, once the Diyala material is
up on the web, these dissertations could be written not just in Chicago but literally anywhere in the
world, making it possible for students at institutions with very limited funds to work on this
material. These studies could be added as narrative extensions to our site and cross-linked with
descriptions of object or archaeological contexts in our database.
c) Academic world (interdisciplinary): On an interdisciplinary level we hope that our project may
further the exchange of ideas and conceptual approaches between Near Eastern archaeology and
related academic disciplines. Compared to Near Eastern scholars, for example, scholars working in
European and Meso-American archaeology have developed much more sophisticated theoretical
frameworks for topics such as state formation, political ideology, social complexity, economic
interactions, and craft specialization. This is regrettable since ancient Mesopotamia not only
provides a wealth of archaeological data but also an abundance of socio-political and socioeconomic data in the form of textual records, while many of the European and Meso-American
models are actually based on studies of non-literate societies. The surprising absence of
interdisciplinary cooperation is largely due to the high degree of specialization found in most
publications on ancient Near Eastern archaeology and history, making this data inaccessible not
only to lay persons but also interested scholars in other disciplines. The Diyala material could
provide a large yet easily accessible data pool to test theories developed in non-Near Eastern
context on political, technological, and social mechanisms in a different cultural and geographical
setting, allowing scholars to evaluate the universal applicability of their models. In return, these
models could help to develop more refined theoretical frameworks for Near Eastern archaeology.
2. The Diyala as a “Template” for other Projects
Since the database backend and the web face of the Diyala Virtual Archive are based on a
very flexible and dynamic layout, they could easily be adapted for other projects willing to follow
our approach. At the Oriental Institute alone, several recent and older excavation projects could be
put on-line in a similar fashion. This could also include the Oriental Institute Museum itself, which
contains one of the largest collections of Mesopotamian artifacts from controlled excavations
outside the Iraq Museum and which does not yet have a fully computerized catalogue. We will also
encourage projects elsewhere in the world to adapt our model. Since our data entry is unicode
based, even projects in languages other than English could adapt our layout. If data is entered
using the same or similar standards, search criteria could query a data pool that goes far beyond
the Diyala material and therefore open totally new and, until recently, unimaginable venues of data
exchange in Near Eastern archaeological research.