Governor’s House

Overview

The entrance to the governor’s house, so named for its multi-purpose design, is located prominently off the public plaza inside the city gate. This house was built in Stratum II. It consists of three wings: a ceremonial wing, a service wing, and a residential wing, and covers 194 square meters. Stairs inside the entrance indicate the house had a second story. The ceremonial wing has long narrow rooms, of which the eastern hall is the best preserved. Here the excavators found a plastered gutter that would have collected water from the roof and diverted it into the city’s main drainage channel. This is a rare example of a preserved gutter. The central hall has a tamped earthen floor and seems to be the house’s main corridor. A large stone mortar was found in this room. The excavators assumed that this hall was unroofed; However, burnt remains found on the floor raise the possibility that it had been roofed. The western hall of the ceremonial wing was partially damaged by later intrusions. Not much pottery was found in this room, which could be due to the later disruption, or suggest that this room was reserved for formal occasions and intentionally left empty.

The central courtyard of the governor’s house, which measures about 9 m. x 2 m., was the central nucleus of the building through which communication passed among all three wings. The courtyard was entered from the street and led into six different rooms. The service quarter on the southern side of the house included a kitchen, so designated by the discovery of two ovens found inside it. The kitchen is small, measuring only 4.7 square meters, and follows the curve of the road this house backs up to. The adjoining room to the right has a niche with a raised stone bench on the eastern side.

The northeast section of the governor’s house was the residential quarter. This was a Stratum III house that was later annexed into the governor’s building and included three rooms. The first is an oblong room that was either a corridor or a courtyard in the residential wing. The easternmost room was likely a storage room, because the excavators found a lot of restorable vessels inside it. The northernmost room was partially damaged by a later granary; however, in the Stratum II layer the excavators found several iron and stone tools, a cooking pot, storage jars, and a flask. Initially, the excavators thought that the section to the north of the residential quarter was also a part of the governor’s house. However, no doorway connects the two buildings, so this building was likely an independent residential building.