U. archaeologists find ancient tomb

The remains of 10 people were found in an Early Bronze Age tomb in Syria. The Associated Press The skeletal remains of at least 10 people and a trove of daggers, beads and unbroken pottery vessels have been found by University archaeologists in an Early Bronze Age tomb under a farm field in Syria. The tomb, believed to be a family burial, dates from about 2500 B.C. to 2250 B.C. and is part of an extensive cemetery that may contain as many as 150 tombs still untouched by looters, the University's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology announced yesterday. Archaeologists discovered the tomb in April at Tell es-Sweyhat on the Euphrates River. They said the site promises to yield important new information about the people who inhabited ancient northern Mesopotamia, including their diet, disease, death rates and even quality of life. ''The most exciting thing about this site is the potential there,'' said Richard Zettler, associate curator of the museum's Near Eastern section. ''If in fact we have about 150 tombs, we have a population to study.'' Also found were remains of a pig, birds, sheep, goats and cows. Intact bird eggs were found in the eye sockets of one animal, which was determined to be either a sheep or a goat. ''I'm not sure what that is all about but I assume it's funerary objects,'' Zettler said. He added that they may have been intended as food in the afterlife or for a meal consumed as part of a burial ritual. The roughly oval tomb is about 13 feet by 16 feet and about 6 feet in height. It contained two intact skeletons while pieces of others were piled together to make room for the later additions, Zettler said. ''They just literally took the bodies and pushed them aside,'' he explained. Daggers, axes, a javelin with a string notch and a model cart with wheels were among a variety of other objects found in the tomb. Archaeologists hope to use DNA analysis and other scientific techniques to look for biological relationships among the tomb's occupants, the museum said. Comparisons to other finds could provide insights into the people's social organization, trade and economy. Tombs of comparable age have been found previously in northern Syria, but many of those have been looted, limiting the information available to archaeologists. ''Any well-preserved cemetery is potentially a very significant discovery; and we are still very ignorant of many aspects of society in Early Bronze Age Syria,'' said Joan Oates, a University of Cambridge archaeologist, who said she was not familiar with the unpublished findings. University archaeologists already working around Tell es-Sweyhat were led to the new find when a sinkhole appeared in a recently irrigated field. ''We knew immediately that must be the location of one of these tombs,'' Zettler said. Mesopotamian civilization long was understood mostly through excavations in what is now Iraq, but those perspectives have been altered significantly through discoveries in Syria during the past 25 years. For example, while archaeologists once considered people of northern Mesopotamia to be illiterate, Italian excavations of Tell Mardikh, ancient Ebla, turned up some 15,000 tablets in a Semitic language, Zettler said.