Excavations at Gritille (1982–1984): the Medieval Period A Preliminary Report

Abstract

Gritille is the modern name for a mound lying on the right bank of the Euphrates River in southeast Turkey. Four years of excavation by a team led by Professor Richard S. Ellis of Bryn Mawr College concentrated on uncovering two main occupation levels bracketing the site's long sequence, the Neolithic and the Medieval. This article will focus on the last three seasons of excavation on top of the mound. The mound of Gritille lies 10 km. upstream from Samsat (Greek Samosata, Arabic Sumaisāṭ), a major halting point on the medieval road from North Syria through Urfa (Greek Edessa, Arabic ar-Ruhā) to Malatya (Greek Melitene) and central eastern Anatolia. It was at Samsat that the crossing of the Euphrates was attempted. Samsat was also a stop for East–West traffic from Diyarbakır (Āmid) to Birecik (Bīra) and beyond, but the road through Nisibin (Nusaybin) and Harran (or Urfa) to Birecik seems to have been heavily travelled in the late Middle Islamic period (Fig. 1).

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