Why Archaeologists Think They’ve Found the Lost City of Natounia

[Imperial Dave]

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/why-archaeologists-think-theyve-found-the-lost-city-of-natounia-180980453/

hopefully of interest....

[DBS]

Very much so, thank you.  The Antiquity article is well worth a read, and itself notes that one of the most interesting finds, if the identification as barracks of seven buildings within the citadel is correct, is the evidence that offers for a possible standing military force.  One can then speculate wildly as to whom said force owed allegiance - an Adiabene king, or a Parthian king of kings with his garrison reminding the regional monarch to mind his ps and qs.  (Personally, I would assume the former...)

Although not mentioned at all, one blessing is that this site is near Sulaymaniyah, the safest spot in all of northern Iraq during the height of Daesh terrorism, and thus a location that was never at risk from their cultural vandalism.

[Jim Webster]

Interesting, to quote from Antiquity

"These include seven rectangular buildings of standard design, approximately 8–9m wide and 20–22m in length, each with five rooms of roughly equal size. Based on parallels with Roman/Sasanian forts, these structures presumably served, in part, as barracks"

The Roman barracks at South Shields

The barracks at Arbeia housed 40 soldiers and a Centurion who lived there with his family.
The barracks had two small rooms for every eight soldiers. Some historians think that
soldiers might have shared a bed with another soldier (hot- bedding) but there is no clear
evidence of this or that Roman soldiers used bunk beds at Arbeia.
Archaeological evidence has informed the reconstruction of the Barrack Block, as it was in
the Arbeia Fort in the 3rd Century. The barracks were33m long and 7m wide, which we know
from the remaining foundations. The external walls were of stone and built up to the roof.
The interior walls were constructed of waddle and daub, a combination of wood, mud, straw
and dung.


So the Natounia examples were smaller than the Roman and even if they held 50 men, that's only 350. I would have said that having that many bodyguards/standing military force is probably not all that surprising.

[DBS]

Absolutely, though one wonders whether there is any evidence as to how many storeys these structures had, since the recent excavators of the Gorgan Wall Sasanian sites used the South Shields and other Hadrianic forts' barrack blocks to guide their estimates, but reckoned that the Sasanian blocks were at least two storeys high, either doubling human capacity or allowing for stables or storage on the ground floor.  Personally, I would tend to assume that barracks in a Adiabene or Parthian citadel were perhaps more likely a permanent garrison - for which a couple of hundred bodies would seem more than enough - rather than necessarily being a royal bodyguard, which might have been found from noble youth with different accommodation expectations?

[Duncan Head]

Very interesting find - thanks, Dave.