265 the archaic style of the reliefs in Zincirli’s citadel gate and south city gate, it has always been assumed that it was Gabbār who refounded the site as his capital, refortifed the central citadel, and enclosed the large circular lower town with a double ring of fortifcations (e.g., Landsberger 1948, 40; Orthmann 1971, 462; Sader 1987, 174–75; Lipiński 2000, 234). Our new investiga- tions in both the citadel and lower town are atempting to put this theory to the test as we consider alternative chronologies and motivations for the city’s expansion. Our starting point is the brief contribution of David Ussishkin concerning the ‘Alte Bau’, a struc- ture found by the German expedition underlying the internal citadel Gate E (1968). Ussishkin argued that this structure was actually an earlier gate through a casemate wall that enclosed the upper part of the acropolis mound. The wall would have run on quite a diferent orientation than the later ‘Quermauer’, how- ever, theoretically lining up with the southeast edge of Hilani I (Fig. 24.2). A 2010 test trench of 5 by 5 m just to the southeast of these two gates below the German excavations in the ‘Lions’ Pit’ found only sloping layers of burnt Iron Age II destruction debris going down to virgin soil, with no trace of Bronze or Iron Age occupation beneath. One possible explanation is that the Bronze Age mound and the stronghold of Gabbār were limited to the north- western two-thirds of the present-day citadel mound, defned by Ussishkin’s hypothesized casemate wall. In that case, the lower terrace in the southeast, includ- ing the citadel Gate D and the connected ‘Burgmauer’ fortifcation, was only added later in the Iron Age II through a massive flling operation. This hypothesis is now being tested through investigations of the sequence of fortifcations and construction in diferent areas of the southern mound (Areas 3, 3A, and 3B). In the north lower town, recent excavations in Areas 5 and 6 have shown that occupation remains are quite shallow (c. 1.5 m), and the earliest potery does Chapter 24 Assyrian impact on the kingdom of Sam’al: the view from Zincirli Virginia Herrmann and David Schloen The site of Zincirli Höyük, in southern Turkey, was made famous by the extensive and striking stone sculptures and reliefs of the Iron Age Aramaean rulers of Sam’al (also known as Y’DY), discovered by the late nineteenth-century German expedition led by Felix von Luschan (AiS I–V). The royal inscriptions found at the site provide intriguing glimpses of the kingdom’s evolving relationship with the Assyrian superpower to the east, which is illuminated by connections to Assyria in the sculpture, architecture, and other material cul- ture recovered by the von Luschan excavations. From 2006 to 2013, the new investigations at Zincirli by the Neubauer Expedition of the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute have focused especially on the late eighth- to seventh-century bc period of maximum Assyrian impact on this kingdom, producing new information through excavation and remote sensing in the city’s lower town, extramural area, and citadel mound, and are now beginning to reach earlier peri- ods, when Assyrian infuence was more indirect (Fig. 24.1). 1 Just as the political history of the kingdom of Sam’al was closely entwined with that of Assyria, as it passed from independent principality to Assyrian tributary, client-kingdom, and fnally province, these new results show that the development of the city of Sam’al, too, was profoundly infuenced by interaction with the great empire. The ninth century: urban foundation and fortifcation The setlement and fortifcation of the höyük at Zin- cirli began already in the Early Bronze Age and likely continued in the Middle Bronze Age, but there seems to be an occupation gap in the Late Bronze and early Iron Ages. According to local and Assyrian inscrip- tions, a man named Gabbār founded the Iron Age II Aramaean kingdom of Y’DY/Sam’al probably in the late tenth or beginning of the ninth century bc. Due to