How archaeologists discovered an ancient Assyrian city – and lost it again

Turkey's Ilisu dam will flood hundreds of ancient sites, including the city of TuAhan, but there is now a rich record of what will be lost

It's a sad fact of archaeological life that we can often only find things when they're about to be lost forever, but such is the unhappy marriage between rescue archaeology and infrastructure development. Construction of the Ilisu dam, on the river Tigris in southeast Turkey, is now complete and the flooding of 300km² of land behind it may begin as early as this spring. The dam will provide water security and electricity to the local region, as well as further restrict the diminishing flow of water downstream to Iraq, displace at least 70,000 people and flood up to 500 archaeological sites.

Related: Turkey's 12,000-year-old Hasankeyf settlement faces obliteration