{"id":544,"date":"2011-01-19T02:42:00","date_gmt":"2011-01-19T02:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ajaonline.org\/2011\/01\/19\/360\/"},"modified":"2024-08-13T03:46:40","modified_gmt":"2024-08-13T03:46:40","slug":"360","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/article\/360\/","title":{"rendered":"Stratagems, Combat, and \u201cChemical Warfare\u201d in the Siege Mines of Dura-Europos"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Sasanian Persian siege that destroyed Roman-held Dura-Europos, Syria, ca. 256 C.E. left some of the best evidence ever recovered for the nature and practices of ancient warfare. Perhaps the most dramatic of the archaeological deposits, excavated in the early 1930s, were those resulting from the mining duel around Tower 19 on the city&iacute;s western wall, during which at least 19 Roman soldiers and one Sasanian became entombed. Recent reanalysis of the excavation archive suggested that the mine evidence still held one unrecognized deadly secret: the Roman soldiers who perished there had not, as Robert du Mesnil du Buisson (the original excavator) believed, died by the sword or by fire but had been deliberately gassed by the Sasanian attackers. This article discusses the implications of this conclusion for our understanding of early Sasanian military capabilities and reviews the question of possible reexcavation in search of the casualties of Tower 19, whose remains were neither studied nor retained.<\/p>\n<p><strong>See also:&nbsp;<\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.archaeology.org\/online\/features\/dura_europos\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Dura-Europos: Crossroad of Cultures<\/a> on Archaeology.org.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Sasanian Persian siege that destroyed Roman-held Dura-Europos, Syria, ca. 256 C.E. left some of the best evidence ever recovered for the nature and practices of ancient warfare. Perhaps the most dramatic of the archaeological deposits, excavated in the early 1930s, were those resulting from the mining duel around Tower 19 on the city&iacute;s western [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":543,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[904],"tags":[22,25,29,39,41,50],"issues":[126],"region":[807],"class_list":["post-544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article","tag-smallfinds","tag-osteoarchaeology","tag-romanperiod","tag-warfare","tag-historyofarchaeology","tag-excavation","issues-126","region-neareast"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Stratagems, Combat, and \u201cChemical Warfare\u201d in the Siege Mines of Dura-Europos | January 2011 (115.1) | American Journal of Archaeology<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/article\/360\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Stratagems, Combat, and \u201cChemical Warfare\u201d in the Siege Mines of Dura-Europos | January 2011 (115.1) | American Journal of Archaeology\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Sasanian Persian siege that destroyed Roman-held Dura-Europos, Syria, ca. 256 C.E. left some of the best evidence ever recovered for the nature and practices of ancient warfare. 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