Amorites

Research themes
The Amorites
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Introduction
Linguistics
Philology
Archaeology
History

Introduction

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Linguistics
     Following the 1966 book entitled The Amorites of the Ur III Period, a study devoted to the archaic period of Amorite, and my a review of Huffmon's Amorite Personal Names in 1968, I have maintained an active personal interest in linguistic matters, culminating in my Structural Grammar of Babylonian (which deals marginally with Amorite), and in a major article on Akkadian and Amorite phonology for a volume entitled The Phonology of Selected Asian and African Languages; a shorter article on Eblaite and Amorite onomastics has appeared in 1995.
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Philology
     I published several new texts bearing on the Amorites in the 1966 book The Amorites of the Ur III Period; additional evidence was briefly presented in my article on a Terqa text (SMS 1977) and in my recent publication on the seal impressions of Mozan/Urkesh (AfO 1996). I have also held the overall responsibility for the publication of the texts found there, which I have entrusted to Olivier Rouault for publication, and which are closely related to those of Mari.
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Archaeology
     As Director of the Joint Expedition to Terqa, I have worked for ten seasons in the Amorite “heartland.” The analysis of faunal remains from our site (undertaken by my former student Kathleen Galvin) has brought to light some significant new evidence concerning Amorite animal husbandry. I have authored several site reports on our excavations, and supervised the overall publication for our project. As Director of the Mozan/Urkesh Archaeological Project I work currently in the Khabur plains which represent the northern limit of Amorite expansion.
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Geography and ethnography
     Extensive field research not only in Syria, but also in Iraq, Turkey and even the Caucasus has yielded a deeper insight of the impact of landscape on historical development. My work with geo-morphologists working on our expeditions to Terqa and Urkesh has contributed to my understanding of technical aspects of the landscape. A Guggenheim Fellowship (1994-95) brought to a culmination these interests, allowing me to travel in the area at a time when I was not absorbed with commitments to the excavations, and especially to study from an ethnographic point of view the Winter habits of the shepherd families which I had come to know well during their Summer transhumance.
add salt project
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History
     My 1966 book The Amorites of the Ur III Period remains the only full-length treatment of the Amorites in the third millennium. Also, in my other book Cities and Nations of Ancient Syria (1967) I proposed a framework for an understanding of the political development of tribal configurations, which I am now applying to the Amorites. I have elaborated my new approach to Amorite history in a number of recent articles in BASOR (1988), the Kupper Volume (1990), the Tell al-Hamidiya Volume (1990), a French volume on Techniques et pratiques hydro-agricoles traditionelles (1990), the Gevirtz Volume (1991), Eblaitica (1992), the Italian Exhibition Catalog L'Eufrate e il tempo (1993), a review of Anbar's volume Les tribus Amorites (1996) and the article on Amorite Art for the just published multi-volume Dictionary of Art.
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