23 Novembre 2016 NEWS: Dara - Beit Ras -
INSTITUT SUPERIEUR D'ANTHROPOLOGIE
INSTITUTE OF ANTHROPOLOGY
ONLINE COURSES / COURS A DISTANCE
WINTER TERM : JANUARY 2017
REGISTER NOW
TURQUIE – 
Dara - Excavations in the southeastern province of Mardin’s ancient city of Dara have unearthed a 6th century cistern. The Roman-era cistern was found in a field used as a barn. Nihat Erdoğan, the director of the Mardin Museum, said excavation works have been ongoing in the 3,000-year-old ancient city of Dara, located on the road to Mardin’s Nusaybin district. Erdoğan said the majority of the Roman city of Dara remained under village houses. “As excavations continue in Dara, artifacts from the Roman and Persian eras come to light. The latest excavations discovered the Roman-era cistern, which is 18 meters in depth and 15 meters by width. This place was filled with earth that we later emptied. Its ruined ground has been restored as part of a project led by the cultural and natural heritage conservation board,” he added. Erdoğan said the cistern met the water needs for guests who came from Mardin during the Roman and Persian eras. “What is particularly interesting about this cistern is that it is behind a four-kilometer wall located in the western part of the city. Even though guests from Mardin were not given permission to enter the city, we believe the cistern was built to meet their water needs,” he added.
JORDANIE – 
Beit Ras - An ancient tomb has been discovered in Jordan in the northern town of Beit Ras during an excavation project to expand a local waste-water sanitation network. The tomb includes a cave with two burial chambers. The larger chamber contains a basalt stone rock-cut tomb decorated with raised etchings of two lion heads and with several human bones enclosed. This tomb is made unique by the fascinating oil frescoes decorating the walls of the chamber. The frescoes portray human figures, horses and other mythological scenes, some of which have partly eroded but remain intact for the most part giving us great insight into the burial rites of the past. The second chamber contains two more rock-cut tombs without any artefacts. These breath-taking frescoes include paintings of grape vines which represent the social and agricultural life prevalent during Classical antiquity thought to most likely belong in the Hellenistic period/ Early Roman period. The inscriptions and some artefacts found in the tomb are being analysed to give a more accurate time-frame of when this tomb was built and who it was built for.