The Animal Remains of Tell Sweyhat, Syria

Abstract

In the later part of the sixties and the beginning of the seventies a number of excavations took place along the Middle Euphrates in Northern Syria. In the years 1973-1975 Dr. T. A. Holland, a member of the British School of Archeology, excavated the settlement mound of Sweyhat. Tell Sweyhat is located c. 3 km from the east bank of the Euphrates River in the Jezireh. At present the evidence at Tell Sweyhat suggests a major occupation period towards the end of the third millennium B.C. A fortified town with a town-wall of 2.50 m thick with regularly spaced towers was uncovered on the western part of the tell. Tell Sweyhat is situated on a Pleistocene terrace of the Euphrates, that occupies a crescentic embayment on the left bank of the present-day Euphrates in the steppe of the Syrian Jezireh.