Archaeology Magazine - January 1966 - 64

fired the imagination of many who
followed in the train of the early
discoverers of ancient cultures.
This volume delightfully and interestingly portrays the life and
work of the "Father of Assyriology
and Biblical Archaeology," Sir
Austen Henry Layard (1817-1894).
He was an intrepid traveler, a daring adventurer, an impatient explorer, a capable linguist and sometime diplomat. He discoveredin the
mounds of Mesopotamia Ashurnasirpal's Nimrud (Calah), Sennacherib's Nineveh (Kuyunjik and
Nebi Yunus) and Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon, which are fully
described in this readable volume.
In addition Layard, by his extensive
travels, assisted in the identification
of other important sites and areas
in Mesopotamia, Persia and Syria
such as Ur, Erech, Susa, Nippur,
Sumer, Akkad, Larsa and Kish.
Sir Henry Rawlinson's labors
with Darius' inscription on the
Behistun monument, Paul Emile
Botta's activity at Khorsabad (Dur

*'s 4

Sharrukin), Sargon II's capital, and
George Smith's discovery with
Hormuzd Rassam of the Gilgamesh
Epic (the eleventh tablet of which
is the Babylonian Flood account)
are also referred to, though briefly.
These men were Layard's friends
and had a common interest in the
numerous mounds dotting the Euphrates-Tigris valleys.
Many thousands of clay tablets
with cuneiform inscriptions were
found in these excavations, and
these, after the deciphermentof the
script, opened the vast arcana of
Mesopotamian lore.
Layard said of his work that it
provided "convincing evidence of
that magnificenceand power which
made Nineveh the wonder of the
ancient world, and her fall the
theme of the prophets . . . without them we might have doubted
that the great Nineveh ever existed, so completely had she become 'a desolation and a waste.' "
Through the labors of Layard,
his contemporaries and subsequent

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64

archaeologists, the Bible has literally come alive and many of its
historical and geographical references have been substantiated. Assyrian names like Shalmaneser,
Tiglath-Pileser (Pul), Sennacherib "
and Esarhaddon, recorded in the
Bible and now discovered on the
monuments, confirm the historicity
of the Old Testament record.
Even for those not primarily interested in the theological implications of the science of archaeology
or, indeed, interested in archaeology
at all, this volume, devoid of wearisome technical details, will prove
delightful and profitable reading.
August W. Brustat
Trinity Lutheran Church
Scarsdale, New York
THE FORMATIVE
CULTURES
OF THE
CAROLINA
PIEDMONT,
by JOFFRE
Lanning Coe. 130 pages, 117 figures, 15 tables. The American
Philosophical Society, Philadelphia
1964 (Transactions, New Series,
Vol. 54, Part 5) $3.50
In this report, the culmination
of almost thirty years of research
in piedmont North Carolina, Coe
describesthree sites whose common
denominator is deep stratification.
At the Doerschuk site on the Yadkin River flood-plain,Coe trenched
as deep as fourteen feet and found
a successionof buried humus layers containing evidence of human
activities. Each occupation level
yielded a single stone industry. On
a nearby hilltop, the Hardaway site
contained a three-foot-thick deposit
of refuse, mostly chippage from the
manufacture of stone implements.
Here, too, Coe was able to sort the
materials vertically and to identify
the cultural sequence. The third
site is at Gaston, North Carolina,
on the Roanoke River, just above
the fall line. Here again, discrete
cultural levels were found separated by flood-depositedsilt, with
a total depth reaching eight feet.
From these excavations and his
analyses Coe demonstrates the
seemingly full sequence of projectile points for the area's Archaic
period. Since Coe excludes from
consideration any deposit or materials which might have become
tainted by intrusion, the resultant
findings are extremely reliable.
Further, Coe reports six radiocarbon dates obtained at the Gaston

Archaeology Magazine - January 1966

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - January 1966