at the turn of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries the arrival of German scholars on the flat plains of Mesopotamia brought about a transformation in te discipline:

• koldeway--> began to develop the technique of tracing and excavating mudbrick. a genuine revolution in the methodology of the discipline.
• Walter Andrae --> Deep stratigraphic sounding through the Istar Temple at Assur, Representing the first occasion in Mesopotamian archaeology where a chronological sequince of buildings was excavated and recorded through application of the principles of archaeological stratigraphy