Report

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Introduction

After the workshop “Beola 5” (September 2023), the Cybernetica Mesopotamica research group gathered again in Beola (Piedmont, Italy) on September 12-14, 2024 to continue the work on the many aspects related to the project.

Many scholars gathered again in Beola on September 12-14, 2024 for a workshop (labelled “Beola 6“) which is considered both the continuation and an update on the efforts developed specifically in the last-year workshop “Beola 5” (September 11-15, 2023).

Some members were physically present in Beola (coming from Syria, USA, Austria, and other Italian regions), while other colleagues where linked online on ZOOM from Germany and other cities in Italy:

• in presence: Samer Abdel Ghafour, Lorenzo Crescioli, Bernardo Forni, Daria Lucini, Marco De Pietri, Yasmine Mahmoud, Laerke Recht, Jessica Scaciga, Mary Stancavage, James Walker;
• from remote: Amer Ahmad, Sarah Comelli, Daniel Shimabuku, Fanxi Xu, Zichan Wang.

Thanks to the online medium, even people from Mozan were “virtually” a significat presence in Beola, since the team was pleased to talk to their Syrian colleagues still intensively working on the site granting, through their inexhaustible monitoring, its full preservation and constant conservation.

The daily work of the team was divided into a morning session (9:00 AM to 1:00 PM) and an afternoon session (3:00 PM to 7:00/7:30 PM), as delineated in the schedule.

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Reports by individual collaborators

Hereafter, we offer some relevant brief reports written by our team members.

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Report by Lorenzo Crescioli on A20 Unit Book

I have been working on the A20 unit book in the past few months, but only as a part-time. I mainly focused on the right-hand side, checking for all the data in the system, searching for any missing information, and creating the missing graphic files (templates) that were not completed during the last excavation campaign in 2010.

My next task was to address errors and inconsistencies that were identified in the JD (a program about data generation) log elaborated by the program itself. These problems were mainly related to incorrect roster and lexicon codes, typing mistakes, and a few minor unresolved issues (which will be amended as soon as possible). We discussed potential solutions and ideas. My plan for the coming months is to reach an end to the review of these issues and then begin writing the left-hand side –- basically, the syntheses portion of the unit book I am responsible for.

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Report by Daria Lucini

I started scanning Beola’s material about ceramics and glyptics in January 2023 and finished in December 2024. Jessica Scaciga then divided the material by topic and uploaded it onto the server in the folder “2024 scans of notes from Beola” which contains four other sub-folders:

• glyptics overall
• glyptics in field books
• ceramics overall
• ceramics in field books

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Report by Laerke Recht on Ceramics and Glyptics

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Ceramics for unit books

The work on the ceramics for the individual unit books is continuing. This includes both the review of all the ceramics for each unit in the form of the cumulative files and checking of drawings, and the writing of the LH side ‘ceramics’ page. The latter can only be written once the review has been completed. Previous examples of such LH overviews can be found for A16, J1, J3 and J5.

In the recent (Balzan) stage of the project, I decided to create more detailed overviews, starting with Unit A15, since we have just finalised the ceramics review of this book. Although the page needs updated based on new information concerning the presence of a small amount of Mittani sherds (as informed by James Walker), the page can be found at this link.

In addition to the usual overall statistics concerning wares and shapes, this overview describes the ceramic corpus by the main horizons present in A15. There are also specific sections showing examples of wares and sherds scanned for the Colormod project, examples of types of decoration, and examples of complete vessels. The complete vessels are particularly interesting because they represent on the one hand caches and kiln material related to a workshop and, on the other hand, vessels from Khabur-period burials.

Finally, a new section not previously part of these pages is a description of the review process itself, to provide full documentation and transparency of the process from field to digital publication. Here, additional files record the exact q-lots (“quantity lots”) that were included in the analysis, along with ‘error’ files of entries that were either corrected or removed during the review process.

For A15, this page needs a small update, but is otherwise complete. The only other thing needed now in terms of the ceramics for A15 is the assemblages. Bernardo Forni (our webmaster) is currently working on creating a program that will allow us to enter this information, and it is expected that this will be possible in the next few months.

For the other unit books currently being worked on, or planned to start soon, the status of the ceramics review is as follows:

• A6: Not started, yet. The files here are challenging because it is quite an old unit and the format is a bit different. However, since I understand it to be a high priority as part of Amer Ahmad’s PhD dissertation, this will now be high priority.
• A9: The A9 cumulative files were reviewed some time ago and are nearly done. The drawing corrections made then do not seem to have been implemented, so I need to check this, but otherwise the right-hand side should be done. In order to write the lefe-hand side page in detail, I will need the strata assignments, which I understand James Walker is already working on, so I will wait for these before continuing.
• A10 and A12: Both of these units are similar to A6 – i.e., I do not yet have cumulative files to start the review – and the format is a bit different, so it takes a bit longer to sort out. This will be the first step to starting on these units.
• A14: Cumulative files have been created; they need to be cleaned and I can then start the review of this unit.
• A19: Cumulative files have been created, and they are in a fairly good state, but still needs to be cleaned/polished. Once they have been run in the UGR (the “Urkesh Global Record”), the review can also be started.
• A20: Cumulative files have been created, and they are in a fairly good state, but still needs to be cleaned. Once they have been run in the UGR, the review can also be started. (For both A19 and A20, the preliminary cumulative files have been sent to Lorenzo Crescioli, author of these specific unit books).
• J4: I have cumulative files and have started the review. In the process, I saw that quite a few q-lots are missing, but it does not seem that they will be available, so I will continue with what I do have (with explanation of this in the LH page and error files), and will very soon send the cumulative files to Yasmine Mahmoud to run them for the UGR.
• J6: I need to check this in more detail, but it looks like the review was started already in 2015, and since it’s quite a small unit I would expect to be able to do this fairly quickly. It has not, however, been marked as a priority over the other units listed here.

The review of the ceramics for the unit books is carried out with the help of student assistants from the University of Graz.

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Early Dynastic glyptics

A separate topical book has been created for the ED III glyptics. I have only just started adding content for this, based on a preliminary catalog (in .pdf format) made a few years ago. To have an idea of what the book and digital catalog would look like, I have so far just added the seal impressions from J1 and K1. I need to work in more detail on the categorisation and more precise formatting of these.

For K1, since there is no unit book to link to for the individual seal impressions, it was decided to create the page for this, which was already done during the meeting by Marco De Pietri. I will be using this to add the UGR entries for the K1 “si” (i.e., “seal impressions”). Once the digital catalog is more complete, I will also start adding other contents to the right-hand side and left-hand side of the topical book, in line with what Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati is doing for the Akkadian seals (including sections on style, function, context, themes, etc). My hope is to have a fairly complete version of the book by the time of the meeting next year.

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Report by Jessica Scaciga

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TGL = Glyptics

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Catalog by field number: entry model

In the main page of the catalog by field number, the table structure is organized by field number. In the A6 unit section, there is a link to the A6 unit book, followed by the drawing of the seal impression with the photo of item 102 next to it, and finally, the link to the notes. The structure of the notes/notes and more is similar to that of the catalog, but it contains all the images and photos of the relevant reference item.

(MZ/A/TGL/I/PAGES/C1/catalog.md)

(MZ/A/TGL/I/PAGES/C1/notes/)

SEC The Data
T A6.102
AU gB
D June 2024
TO A6.102: notes

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Standards

The drawings for the “catalog by field number” in TGL come from both the W# folders and the non-canonical folders. In the case of the non-canonical folders, such as drawings from folders related to scanned material in PDF format, they are extracted and converted into JPG format, then made canonical by assigning them a correct label see: https://cyb-mes.net/RESERVED/4-reserved.htm#VWX/JD and placed in the W23N folder related to the current study season.

In the W# folders, if there are images in .tiff format, they should be exported to .jpg format. These should then be inserted in their reference folder.

Image size standards:

T_ (= Thumbnails): 150 x 80 pixels (width) and maximum 65 KB

TN_ (= Thumbnails): 800 x 500 pixels and 50 KB

Note: I use two types of thumbnails:
(T_) thumbnails on the main page of the catalog and (TN_) thumbnails inside the notes.

L_ (LORES = Low Resolution): 1024 x 853 pixels (width) and maximum 250 KB

Please, be aware that these are general guidelines. It is indeed very important to assess each specific case individually. Some images may already have a reduced format, so resizing or adjusting their file size may not be necessary. In such cases, you can use the image as it is by making a copy and placing it in the required folder with the correct label.

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Irfanview

Irfanview is a versatile program with various features, such as exporting images in different formats and adjusting parameters to suit our needs.

I frequently use the Batch conversion/rename function to quickly change the image formats of multiple files. This can be done by opening the program, clicking on “File,” and selecting the function. Additionally, resizing images is made simpler by clicking on “Image > Resize/Resample” and setting the image’s file size in KB.

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Report by James Walker

I arrived in Beola on 8 September and departed on 17 September. In addition to attending the formal sessions of Beola 6, I spent the days before preparing the first draft of a complete UGR for excavation unit A15.

At the formal sessions I first presented my interpretation of the guidelines for the preparation of the ‘synthetic view’ of A15. These were based on formal criteria in the GRAMMAR.

I then talked about how I specifically prepared, the sections on Stratigraphy and Typology, which form the core of the synthesis leading to an understanding of how the unit was built up by successive occupations. Major development of this part of the site occurred during the Akkadian (king Tupkish palace) period, the reign of queen Tar’am Agade reign, the Khabur town occupation and the western expansion of the Mittani settlement.

After the formal session I divided work between A15 and J5 which will join A16 as the first units to be published.