420 ANNUAL EEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 193 3 



Following a return to teaching duties at the University of Penn- 

 sylvania, I was delegated to lead another expedition to northern Iraq 

 in the autumn of 1930, the University Museum and the American 

 Schools cooperating in the undertaking. Our principal object was 

 the excavation of Tell Bilia, a large mound situated 8 miles east 

 of Gawra. But the latter site had not been forgotten. Through the 

 generosity of one of its governors the Dropsie College was enabled to 

 participate with the two other institutions in further work at Tepe 

 Gawra, to which we devoted 6 weeks in the spring of 1931 and 5 

 months in the season of 1931-32. The brief account which follows 

 is based on the results of these three campaigns which required a 

 total of 7 months of increasingly intensive work. 



n 



Owing to its conical shape, the upper stages of Tepe Gawra con- 

 tained strata that were small in extent and easy to excavate. They 

 were speedily studied and removed to make room for the layers 

 below. Nor were the topmost layers notable for their depth. The 

 later inhabitants of the site were compelled to remove the accumu- 

 lated debris of the preceding occupations virtually down to their 

 respective floor-levels, before new structures could be erected ; other- 

 wise the available area would have been too limited for practical 

 purposes. With each lower level there is an increase in size and 

 generally also in depth. Stratum VI was a crowded settlement com- 

 pressed into a space of some 130 by 200 feet. Additional space was 

 obtained by terracing the slopes of the mound. The buildings were 

 preserved in several instances to a height of 6 feet, and they generally 

 bore traces of repeated alterations. Stratum VIII was considerably 

 larger. It proved to consist of three distinct/ sublayers, representing 

 three phases of the same archaic civilization. The latest township 

 of this stratum had survived to a height of 15 feet, imparting a 

 remarkable depth to a layer that was to be followed by seven others, 

 each superimposed on the preceding one. 



By the end of our third campaign we had succeeded in removing 

 eight main levels (not counting the substrata), the Gawra cone 

 becoming truncated down to one-half of its original height. It is 

 as yet impossible to estimate accurately the total number of layers 

 that remain to be excavated. The lower and older half of the 

 mound is known to us so far from the results of our trial soundings, 

 hence the picture of the period can be given only in the broadest 

 outlines. The upper half, however, is now exclusively a matter of 

 record, for it exists no more in reality except in a series of secondary 

 heaps of recently sifted debris. It is on this period that we shall 

 naturally wish to concentrate. 



