The researchers say they have good reason to believe they'll find more in future dig seasons: A 10-foot-deep (3 m) geophysical survey showed that there are more layers of ruins underground.
At the center of Erbil one of the largest cities in northern Iraq and the capital of the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan is a reminder of its roots: an ancient citadel on an imposing mound containing a layer cake of ruins from millennia of occupation.
After hearing Dr. Hiebert explain the excavation methods, colleagues at Penn said they agreed that the seal belonged where it was found, in a layer of the ruins dated at 2300 B.C.
They dug through the layers of Galatian ruins to get to the city as it was in Alexander's time, 332 B.C., and the even earlier city of Midas, ruler of Phrygia, probably in the eighth century B.C. Dr. Voigt said archaeologists were also put off by the seeming impossibility of finding anything distinctive to confirm the Galatian presence in the city.
An eerie orange glow permeates layers of underwater ruins covered with slime and inhabited by weird creatures.
The Banksy is protected by anti-graffiti paint but we are in a race against time because the paint could seep through the layer of protection and ruin the artwork".
Subsequently, a thick layer of mud engulfed the ruins and the victims, preserving them for discovery in the 1990s.
Freud famously described psychoanalysis as archaeology, the unearthing of meaning layered deep beneath an "expanse of ruins".
And as much as we are in Nineveh or Jericho, we are also among the ruins of Baghdad and the destroyed German cities at the end of the second world war, what Kiefer describes as the last nano-layer of an interminable heap of ruins.
It is a place we all know, the bit of woodland where kids come to smoke and drink beer, where broken bikes and washing machines get dumped, where a lovely layer of autumn leaves is ruined by an empty prawn cocktail crisp packet.
