Excavating Zincirli’s Archives. The Discovery of the Southern City Gate

This contribution deals mainly with the beginning of the excavation at Zincirli (ancient Sam’al, in southeastern Turkey) and with the selection and rejection of information in the course of proceeding from excavations to publication. It shows how the process of selecting data according to specific research focuses entailed progressive loss of information, which can be compensated only by careful archival work. The main aim of this paper is, on the one hand, to provide the “lost” information concerning one specific structure at the site, and on the other to use this as a case study in support of working on long dormant excavations’ archives, showing why archaeological projects on previously excavated sites should never neglect to study the archives of the previous excavations.