Untitled Document

The Raqqa Ancient Industry Project
1999 - 2002

Principal Investigators
Julian Henderson - (Project Director) Archaeological materials scientist
Sarah O'Hara - Palaeoenvironmentalist
Adam Gardner - Palaeoenvironmentalist
Keith Challis - GIS and remote sensing
Gary Priestnall - GIS and remote sensing

Funding
Arts and Humanities Research Board

Project Overview
The city of ar-Raqqa ('the Morass') in north central Syria was an important trade centre during the early Islamic period. Situated at the interfluve of the Euphrates and the Balikh rivers, the first settlement of the site was in the third century BC (2.2 - 2.3 ka BP) when the Hellenistic city of Nikephorion was founded by Seleucus I Nikator. Nikephorion was invaded by the Moslem army in AD 640/AH (Anno Hijrah) 19 and the important military centre now known as ar-Raqqa was created. Between AD 796/AH 175 and AD 808/AH 187 the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid built a new city (ar-Rafika = 'the companion') next to ar-Raqqa, and the site grew in importance as the centre of Islam and as a military frontier against the Byzantine empire. Archaeological investigations in the 1980s identified a large industrial area on the site of ar-Raqqa containing numerous kilns and evidence for incipient glass and ceramic production, in addition to evidence for metalworking. The palaeoenvironmental component of the AHRB-funded Raqqa Ancient Industry Project placed the excavations of the industrial area into an environmental context with the aid of remotely sensed data to determine the effects of this industry in terms of vegetational impacts from fuel-gathering and effects of pollutant deposition. Analytical techniques included pollen, geochemical, magnetic, charcoal and sedimentological analyses supported by a 14C timescale. A sedimentary sequence was collected from swamp deposits adjacent to the excavations and the results from analyses supported the archaeological study but contributed significantly to the current knowledge of Middle Eastern palaeoenvironments.

Research Outcomes

Henderson, J., Challis, K., O’Hara, S., McLoughlin, S., Gardner, A., and Priestnall, G. (2005) Experiment and innovation: early Islamic industry at al-Raqqa, Syria Antiquity 79: 130–145

Challis, K., Priestnall, G., Gardner, A., Henderson, J. and O’hara, S. (2004) Corona Remotely‑Sensed Imagery in Dryland Archaeology: The Islamic City of al‑Raqqa, Syria Journal of Field Archaeology, 29, No. 1/2,139-153

Challis, K and Priestnall, G (2002) An Ancient Cityscape Revealed Geoworld June 2002

Henderson, J, Challis, K, Gardner, A, O’Hara, S and Priestnall, G (2002) The Raqqa Ancient Industry Project Antiquity 76: 33-4