The second season of excavations at Tell Taya lasted from the beginning of December, 1968, to the end of February, 1969. They were again sponsored by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, which provided equipment and the loan of the Rimah dig-house, and were financed largely from the School's Jebel Sinjar Fund, set up by an anonymous donor to assist research on northwest Iraq during the third millennium B.C.; part of a grant to the writer, given by the Gerald Averay Wainwright Fund (Oxford University) for work on this period, was also used.

The staff consisted of the writer as director; Mr. Hugo Blake, who worked mainly on site Si, as assistant-director; Miss Nina Shaw, who was responsible for the conservation and registration of objects, and also did much of the photography; and Miss Ann Hechle, who recorded the pottery. Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Postgate were with us for a time, and in the absence of inscribed material the former undertook part of the surface survey while the latter helped on the excavation generally. All members of the staff, however, did far more than this bare list of assignments might imply, and I am deeply grateful for their devoted perseverance through what was said, at Tel'afar, to be the worst winter in living memory. The Iraq Directorate-General of Antiquities was represented by Sd. Mahfudh Abdullah and Sd. Nehad ar-Rawi, and we were as usual indebted, both to them and to many other government officials in Baghdad, Mosul, and Tel'afar, for their invaluable interest and support.