Books by Andrea Squitieri
Exploring Assur 1, 2024
Download the Open Access version: https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/115818/
This first volume of... more Download the Open Access version: https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/115818/
This first volume of the new series „Exploring Assur“ presents the results of the fieldwork conducted at Assur, modern Qal’at Sherqat, in 2023, with a focus on the New Town in the south of the settlement, and contains contributions by Mark Altaweel, Silvia Amicone, Katleen Deckers, Jörg Fassbinder, Holger Gzella, Sandra Hahn, Jean-Jacques Herr, Veronica Hinterhuber, F. Janoscha Kreppner, İnci Nurgül Özdoğru, Karen Radner, Jana Richter, Jens Rohde, Lena Ruider, Claudia Sarkady, Michaela Schauer, Annette Paetz gen. Schieck, Andrea Squitieri, Andreas Stele, and Marco Wolf.
At Assur, the team is based in the excavation house first used by Walter Andrae from 1903-1914, and as this building is a protected monument within the UNESCO World Heritage site of Assur, a chapter is dedicated to its history. The early years come to life through the letters of Andrae and many photographs that he and his staff took of the building, reproduced courtesy of the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft zu Berlin.
The fieldwork undertaken in 2023 included a program of magnetometer and electrical resistivity tomography prospecting and sediment coring in the New Town of Assur, whose results are presented together with a study of soil and sediment magnetism based on coring samples. The magnetogram of the New Town substantially deepens our knowledge of the settlement’s organisation in the first centuries AD when the city was part of the Parthian world. The excavations conducted in the southern part of the New Town, directly adjoining an area excavated by the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage in 2002, brought to light a sizeable chamber tomb of 46 m2 from that period, with over a dozen skeletons.
Moreover, the excavations yielded highly welcome new evidence for the Hellenistic occupation of Assur, namely Building A and two burials (Graves 3 and 4). The dead were placed underneath clay sarcophagi of an ovoid-elliptical shape. One bears an incised alphabetic inscription dated to the month Ab in the year 153 of the Seleucid era, that is July/August 158 BC. Brief as the text is, it provides precious insights into writing and dating practices at Assur after the end of local cuneiform writing and before the rise of the Eastern Mesopotamian scribal tradition that would eventually spread to Hatra and other areas. This burial also contained calcinated textile fragments of at least six different types of cloth.
New data for the Assyrian occupation of Assur originates from some small-scale work undertaken on the edge of the Iraqi trench of 2002, from the partially excavated Building B and from Grave 5, which contained typical 7th century BC items including a bronze fibula and a glazed miniature vessel. A deep sounding dug down from this burial to the virgin soil yielded pottery types that are well known from sites in the Assyrian heartland and the Syrian Jazirah in the 13th century BC, including fragments of carinated bowls and beakers with elongated bodies and nipple bases, as well as a piece of charcoal with a radiocarbon dating range of 1506-1440 calBC (95.4% probability). This date corresponds well with the oldest mention of the construction of the wall and the gates of the New Town in the inscriptions of Puzur-Aššur III, whose reign is conventionally dated to 1521-1498 BC. In total, the 2023 excavations produced 17 radiocarbon dating ranges, derived from the analysis of charcoal, seeds and human teeth; these are the very first 14C dates available from Assur.
Another first for Assur is the palaeobotanical analysis of 133 charred wood fragments and 8,655 carbonised plant remains, which provides an entirely new dataset for reconstruction of the ancient environment. Chapters on the pottery, with first steps towards a fabric classification for Assur by means of portable X-ray fluorescence and petrographic analyses, the small finds and the epigraphic finds (cuneiform and alphabetic) round off the volume.
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Peshdar Plain Project Publications 5, 2020
Download the Open Access version: https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/74269/ Order the print volume: ... more Download the Open Access version: https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/74269/ Order the print volume: https://www.pewe-verlag.de/?page_id=2301
The fifth volume of the annual Peshdar Plain Project’s reports presents a comprehensive account of the 2019 fieldwork activities at the Dinka Settlement Complex, which included excavations, environmental studies and the continuation of the geophysical survey by Electrical Resistivity Tomography (ERT).
On the one hand, our 2019 fieldwork focused on further improving our understanding of the large-scale urbanised settlement in the upper valley of the Lower Zab river that its good state of preservation and excellent archaeological accessibility make a key site for the study of the Iron Age in the Zagros mountain range of northeastern Iraq and northwestern Iran. Our excavations on Qalat-i Dinka, the settlement’s Upper Town, completed the unearthing of the monumental Building P and also brought to light substantial evidence for cremation and inhumation burials around this building; burial inventories include such diagnostic materials as fibulae, cylinder seals and a bronze drinking vessel. The volume presents a discussion by Jean-Jacques Herr and Silvia Amicone of the pottery and an overview by Andrea Squitieri of the small finds retrieved during the 2019 excavation. The latter is complemented by Friedhelm Pedde’s study of the five bronze fibulae and Anja Fügert’s study of the three cylinder seals in the “Assyrian provincial style”. Also on Qalat-i Dinka, the partially excavated fortifications first identified by magnetometer prospecting in 2015 were further investigated using ERT surveying under the direction of Jörg Fassbinder, which confirmed the previous interpretation of the structures as a combination of a glacis and a palisade wall. Down in the Lower Town and the surrounding Bora Plain, ERT prospecting and sediment coring were used to gain new data on the qanat system and the ancient environment of the Dinka Settlement Complex, greatly aided by Eileen Eckmeier’s ongoing analysis of soil samples as well as faunal and plant remains (macro-botanical and phytoliths), on all of which reports are presented in the present volume.
On the other hand, also much earlier periods of the occupation of the Bora Plain have come into sharper focus in 2019, chiefly through the excavation of a Chalcolithic pottery kiln under the Iron Age structures of the Lower Town excavation area DLT3.
Moreover, the volume presents the results of analyses of materials previously excavated at the Dinka Settlement Complex. Anja Hellmuth Kramberger discusses all Iron arrowheads found between 2015-2019, mainly on Qalat-i Dinka. The bodkin-type specimen found in 2015 at Gird-i Bazar is the subject of a micro-CT study by Thilo Rehren, Raouf Jemmali, Silvia Amicone and Cristoph Berthold. Anja Prust presents the identification and analyses of the animal remains recovered from 2015-2019 as well as a discussion of all artefacts made of faunal remains. Fatemeh Ghaheri offers first results on her ongoing study of the phytolith samples taken during the excavations from 2015-2019 while Melissa S. Rosenzweig and Anne Grasse present preliminary outcomes of their analyses of the macrobotanical remains collected from 2015-2018.
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Peshdar Plain Project Publications 4, 2019
Download the Open Access version: https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/68561/ Order the print volume: ... more Download the Open Access version: https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/68561/ Order the print volume: http://en.pewe-verlag.de/index.php?page=near-eastern-archaeology
The good state of preservation and the excellent archaeological accessibility directly below the modern surface make the 60 hectare large Dinka Settlement Complex (DSC, including Gird-i Bazar and Qalat-i Dinka) in the Bora Plain a key site for the investigation of the Iron Age in the Zagros mountains of northeastern Iraq and northwestern Iran. In 2018, the Peshdar Plain Project's excavations and its continuing geophysical survey and palaeo-environmental investigations have further improved our understanding of the extended Iron Age settlement, and also brought to light new information on other periods of the Bora Plain’s long history, both much older (Late Chalcolithic 1-2) and much younger (Middle Islamic Period) than the Iron Age occupation on which our research continues to focus. The present work offers a comprehensive report of the 2018 fieldwork activities, which included excavations, a programme of environmental studies (geology, geomorphology, soil analysis) and the continuation of the geophysical survey.
Excavations took place in three parts of the settlement: in the Upper Town on the western slope of Qalat-i Dinka, in a new area of the Lower Town ("Dinka Lower Town operation 3" = DLT3), and in Gird-i Bazar where anthropologist Kathleen Downey exposed and interpreted more of the accumulation of human skeletons in the well of Room 49 in Building I (Grave 71).
The excavations on Qalat-i Dinka revealed on the one hand the monumental Building P, occupied by elite inhabitants as suggested by the high quality and value of the finds encountered there (including ivory fittings, beads of carnelian and Egyptian Blue and other jewellery as well as nine identical iron arrowheads), and on the other hand an elaborate fortification that once consisted of a high wooden palisade (of which the base survives) and a glacis that protected its more sensitive stretches. Radiocarbon dates and the pottery finds make it clear that this part of the settlement was occupied during the same broad Iron Age horizon as the areas excavated in the Lower Town of the settlement.
DLT3 was chosen for excavation because radiocarbon analysis of a charcoal sample recovered in 2015 from the section of the geoarchaeological trench GA42 had produced a probable date range of 830-789 calBC (95.4 % probability). Our work there aimed at investigating continuities and discontinuities that might have resulted from the annexation of the Bora Plain and the DSC into the Assyrian Empire and the establishment of the Border March of the Palace Herald in the second half of the 9th century BC. In addition to evidence for two distinct building phases during DSC’s Iron Age main occupation period, this area yielded good contexts dating to the Late Chalcolithic period, including a pottery kiln.
The volume presents the pottery and the small finds from the 2018 excavation areas. Among the Iron Age materials from Qalat-i Dinka, Egyptian faience covered in the synthetic pigment Naples Yellow was identified by archaeometric analysis while a broken brick from DLT3 can be assigned to the Neo-Assyrian period because of a title preserved in its fragmentary cuneiform inscription, most likely to Shalmaneser III (r. 859-824 BC), the founder of the Border March of the Palace Herald. The volume also includes analyses of some materials previously excavated at Gird-i Bazar. Tina Greenfield presents results of the identification and quantitative analyses of the animal bones recovered in 2015 and 2016 while Patrick Arneitz and Roman Leonhardt offer an archaeomagnetic study of the pottery kiln first identified in 2015.
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Stone Tools in the Ancient Near East and Egypt: Ground stone tools, rock-cut installations and st... more Stone Tools in the Ancient Near East and Egypt: Ground stone tools, rock-cut installations and stone vessels from Prehistory to Late Antiquity is about groundstone tools, stone vessels, and devices carved into rock throughout the Near East and Egypt from Prehistory to the late periods. These categories of objects have too often been overlooked by archaeologists, despite their frequent occurrence in the archaeological record. Most importantly, a careful study of these tools reveals crucial insights into ancient societies. From the procuring of raw materials to patterns of use and discard, they provide us with a wealth of information about the activities they were involved in and how these activities were organised. These tools reveal patterns in the trade of both raw materials and finished products, inform us about economic aspects of food production and consumption, cast light on industrial activities, help establish intercultural connections, and offer hints about the relationship between sites and their environment. The aim of this book is to explore all aspects of these ubiquitous tools and to stimulate debate about the new methodologies needed to approach this material.
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Peshdar Plain Project Publications 3, 2018
Download the Open Access version: https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/57255/ Order the print volume: ... more Download the Open Access version: https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/57255/ Order the print volume: http://en.pewe-verlag.de/index.php?page=near-eastern-archaeology
This report of the 2017 activities of the Peshdar Plain Project presents new data for the Dinka Settlement Complex and for the occupation of the Bora Plain on the upper reaches of the Lesser Zab near the modern district centre of Qaladze in the Neo-Assyrian and Sassanian periods, including a range of additional 14C dates derived from single year crops and human and animal remains.
Firstly, the volume details the third and final season at Gird-i Bazar, completing the excavation of all previously identified buildings and of two more pottery kilns. The star find is a pivoted stone that constitutes the upper-bearing for a potter’s wheel. As the three pottery kilns, this piece highlights the importance of pottery making at Gird-i Bazar. The surprise discovery of human remains in the filling of the private well of Building I produced the first Iron Age bodies unearthed at the Dinka Settlement Complex.
Secondly, the book reports on the first season of excavations in another area in the Lower Town, dubbed “Dinka Lower Town operation 2” (DLT2), where a test trench unearthed parts of three major structures: Buildings K (280 m2), L (800 m2) and M (650 m2), which can be demonstrated to all have been used during a common occupation phase. The pottery retrieved closely marches that known from Gird-i Bazar, and the volume includes a first typological assessment as well as data from the petrographic and residue analyses of the new pottery material. The so-called “Groovy Pottery” is now attested both in Gird-i Bazar and DLT2, and its local production can be demonstrated.
The DLT2 excavations also confirmed the accuracy of the results of the magnetometer survey in this area. The book presents the data of the 2017 continuation of this survey and offers a detailed interpretation of the lower town’s layout, its buildings and other features on the basis of the magnetogram. In addition, the book offers geographer Eileen Eckmeier’s assessment of the soils and sediments encountered in the Dinka Settlement Complex and the surrounding Bora Plain and considers their significance for landscape and site formation processes.
While the majority of the book will be of interest to anyone studying the Assyrian Empire and its eastern border region, the volume also presents new data for the occupation of the Bora Plain in the Sasanian period in the form of anthropologist Kathleen Downey’s discussion of the extensive Sasanian cemetery overlying the buildings of the Iron Age occupation of Gird-i Bazar.
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This book investigates the long-term continuity of large-scale states and empires, and its effect... more This book investigates the long-term continuity of large-scale states and empires, and its effect on the Near East’s social fabric, including the fundamental changes that occurred to major social institutions. Its geographical coverage spans, from east to west, modern-day Libya and Egypt to Central Asia, and from north to south, Anatolia to southern Arabia, incorporating modern-day Oman and Yemen. Its temporal coverage spans from the late eighth century BCE to the seventh century CE during the rise of Islam and collapse of the Sasanian Empire.
The authors argue that the persistence of large states and empires starting in the eighth/seventh centuries BCE, which continued for many centuries, led to new socio-political structures and institutions emerging in the Near East. The primary processes that enabled this emergence were large-scale and long-distance movements, or population migrations. These patterns of social developments are analysed under different aspects: settlement patterns, urban structure, material culture, trade, governance, language spread and religion, all pointing at movement as the main catalyst for social change. This book’s argument is framed within a larger theoretical framework termed as ‘universalism’, a theory that explains many of the social transformations that happened to societies in the Near East, starting from the Neo-Assyrian period and continuing for centuries.
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Peshdar Plain Project Publications 2, 2017
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This book focuses on the characteristics and the development of the stone vessel industry in the ... more This book focuses on the characteristics and the development of the stone vessel industry in the Near East during the Iron Age and the Persian period (c. 1200 – 330 BCE). Three main aspects of this industry are investigated. First, the technology behind the manufacture of stone vessels, the tools and techniques, and how these changed across time. Second, the mechanisms of exchange of stone vessels and how these were affected by the changing political landscape through time. Third, the consumption patterns of stone vessels in both elite and non-elite contexts, and how these patterns changed through time. The aim is to evaluate how the formation of new regional states, occurred in the Iron Age I-II, and their subsequent inclusion within large-scale empires, in the Iron Age III and Persian period, transformed the Near Eastern societies by exploring how the stone vessel industry was affected by these transformations. For the period and area under analysis, such a comprehensive study of stone vessels, covering a wide area and connecting this industry to the broader socioeconomic and political landscapes, has never been attempted before.
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Peshdar Plain Project Publications 1, 2016
Download the Open Access version: https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/29236/
Order the print volume:... more Download the Open Access version: https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/29236/
Order the print volume: http://en.pewe-verlag.de/index.php?page=near-eastern-archaeology
The Peshdar district is part of the province of Sulaymaniyah in the Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq. In its centre lies the Peshdar Plain, surrounded by the glorious mountainscape of the Zagros and bounded in the south by the valley of the Lesser Zab, which connects the region to the Assyrian heartland and Western Iran. The international and interdisciplinary Peshdar Plain Project was inaugurated in 2015 with the goal of investigating the region in the Neo-Assyrian period (9th to 7th century BC). It formed part of the Border March of the Palace Herald which served to negotiate relations with the adjoining client kingdoms in the Zagros, most importantly Mannea (south of Lake Urmiye), Ḫubuškia in the Sardasht Plain and Muṣaṣir in the Rowanduz Plain.
Work in 2015 focused on two closely connected sites in the small Bora Plain, a sub-unit of the Peshdar Plain: the tiny single-phase site Gird-i Bazar and impressive Qalat-i Dinka, looming on a rocky outcrop high over the river, both part of the Dinka settlement complex. This book presents the results of this first season of field work. Karen Radner offers an analysis of the historical geography of the region on the basis of the textual sources, including the private contract of 725 BC found at Qalat-i Dinka. Mark Altaweel and Anke March provide a geoarchaeological assessment of the Bora Plain while Jessica Giraud presents an evaluation of the Dinka settlement complex based on the results of the survey of the Mission archéologique française du Gouvernorat de Soulaimaniah (MAFGS). Jörg Fassbinder and Andrei Ašandulesei discuss the results of their geophysical survey at Gird-i Bazar and Qalat-i Dinka. The bulk of the volume is dedicated to the 2015 excavations at Gird-i Bazar, with contributions on the fieldwork by F. Janoscha Kreppner, Christoph Forster, Andrea Squitieri, John MacGinnis, Adam B. Stone and Peter V. Bartl. Tina Greenfield introduces the bioarchaeological sampling strategy. On the basis of the analysis of 666 diagnostic ceramic sherds from key find contexts and by drawing on parallels from the Assyrian heartland and western Iran, Jean-Jacques Herr presents a first assessment of the technical aspects, the fabrics and the shapes of the pottery excavated at Gird-i Bazar. Eleanor Barbanes Wilkinson, Andrea Squitieri and Zahra Hashemi present the small finds from the 2015 excavations.
In an appendix to the volume, Jörg Fassbinder presents the promising results of the 2014 magnetometer survey in Mujeser in the Soran district of the province of Erbil, the possible site of the capital of the kingdom of Muṣaṣir, a client state of the Assyrian Empire, and its famous Ḫaldi temple.
The research presented in this book throws light on a hitherto little known eastern frontier region of the Assyrian Empire. Gird-i Bazar is the first unequivocally Neo-Assyrian site to be excavated in the region. The occupation layers beginning to be uncovered there offer the rare opportunity to explore an Assyrian non-elite settlement. Its well stratified ceramic repertoire is of special importance as it allows us for the first time to synchronise the Western Iranian pottery cultures (with the key sites Hasanlu, Godin Tepe, Nush-i Jan and Baba Jan) with the Assyrian material of the 8th and 7th centuries BC.
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Book Chapter by Andrea Squitieri
Karen Radner & Andrea Squitieri (eds.), Assur 2023: Excavations and Other Research in the New Town. Exploring Assur 1. Gladbeck: PeWe-Verlag, 2024. ISBN 978-3-935012-66-9, 2024
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Encyclopedia of Archaeology (Second Edition), 2023
Crisis and recovery at the start of the Iron Age • Formation of regional states and their materia... more Crisis and recovery at the start of the Iron Age • Formation of regional states and their material culture traditions • Technological innovations of the Iron Age • Emergence and expansion of the Neo-Assyrian Empire • Impact of the Neo-Assyrian Empire on societies • Collapse of the Neo-Assyrian Empire • Neo-Babylonian Empire
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The subject of the investigations of the Peshdar
Plain Project is a major Iron Age settlement
who... more The subject of the investigations of the Peshdar
Plain Project is a major Iron Age settlement
whose ancient name is presently unknown.
Because its perimeter encompasses
two previously identified archaeological sites
(Gird-i Bazar: UTM 38S 512696 E; 3999290 N;
Qalat-i Dinka: UTM 38S 511928 E; 3999154
N), we call it the Dinka Settlement Complex
(DSC), after the larger of these sites.
DSC is located in the Peshdar Plain in
the Province of Sulaymaniyah in the Kurdish
Autonomous Region of Iraq. With surface of
about 350 km2, this crescent-shaped plain is
bordered in the southwest by the meandering
valley of the Lower Zab while the curve of
the Qandil mountain range encircles it. The
Qandil is part of the greater Zagros chain constituting
the border between Iraq and Iran,
in which the highest peak, called Kuh-e Haji
Ebrahim, reaches the impressive altitude of
about 3,587 m. Several tributaries of the Lower
Zab come down from their springs in the
Qandil and traverse the plain to join the main
branch of the river (Radner 2016) (Fig. 1).
Downstreams, the Lower Zab breaks
through the mountains into the Ranya Plain
through a narrow gorge, known as Darband-i
Ranya and Darband-i Sangasur after the two
settlements closest to it on either side. Much
of the Ranya Plain is covered by the artificial
lake of c. 200 km2 created by damming the
Lower Zab at Dokan in the late 1950s. Beyond
Lake Dokan, the Lower Zab continues in
southwestern direction and joins the river Tigris
about 30 km south of Qal’at Sherqat, the
ancient city of Ashur.
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In: K. Radner, J. Kreppner & A. Squitieri (eds.), The Dinka Settlement Complex 2019: Further Archaeological and Geophysical Work on Qalat-i Dinka and in the Lower Town. Peshdar Plain Project Publications 5. , 2020
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K. Radner, F. J. Kreppner, A. Squitieri (eds.). The Dinka Settlement Complex 2019. Further Archaeological and Geophysical Work in Qalat-i Dinka and in the Lower Town. Peshdar Plain Project Publications 5. Gladbeck: PeWe-Verlag. , 2020
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K. Radner, F. J. Kreppner, A. Squitieri (eds.), The Dinka Settlement Complex 2019. Further Archaeological and Geophysical Work in Qalat-i Dinka and in the Lower Town. Peshdar Plain Project Publications 5. Gladbeck: PeWe-Verlag, 2020
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The Reach of the Assyrian and Babylonian Empires Case studies in Eastern and Western Peripheries, edited by S. Hasegawa and K. Radner, 2020
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K. Radner, F. J. Kreppner and A. Squitieri, The Dinka Settlement Complex 2018: Continuing the excavations at Qalat-i Dinka and the Lower Town. Peshdar Plain Project Publications, Vol. 4. Gladbeck: PeWe-Verlag. pp. 126-136, 2019
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A. Squitieri and D. Eitam, Stone Tools in the Ancient Near East and Egypt Ground stone tools, rock-cut installations and stone vessels from the Prehistory to Late Antiquity. Archaeopress, 2019
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Exploring the Neo-Assyrian Frontier with Western Iran: The 2015 Season at Gird-i Bazar and Qalat-i Dinka. Peshdar Plain Project Publications 2, 2017
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Books by Andrea Squitieri
This first volume of the new series „Exploring Assur“ presents the results of the fieldwork conducted at Assur, modern Qal’at Sherqat, in 2023, with a focus on the New Town in the south of the settlement, and contains contributions by Mark Altaweel, Silvia Amicone, Katleen Deckers, Jörg Fassbinder, Holger Gzella, Sandra Hahn, Jean-Jacques Herr, Veronica Hinterhuber, F. Janoscha Kreppner, İnci Nurgül Özdoğru, Karen Radner, Jana Richter, Jens Rohde, Lena Ruider, Claudia Sarkady, Michaela Schauer, Annette Paetz gen. Schieck, Andrea Squitieri, Andreas Stele, and Marco Wolf.
At Assur, the team is based in the excavation house first used by Walter Andrae from 1903-1914, and as this building is a protected monument within the UNESCO World Heritage site of Assur, a chapter is dedicated to its history. The early years come to life through the letters of Andrae and many photographs that he and his staff took of the building, reproduced courtesy of the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft zu Berlin.
The fieldwork undertaken in 2023 included a program of magnetometer and electrical resistivity tomography prospecting and sediment coring in the New Town of Assur, whose results are presented together with a study of soil and sediment magnetism based on coring samples. The magnetogram of the New Town substantially deepens our knowledge of the settlement’s organisation in the first centuries AD when the city was part of the Parthian world. The excavations conducted in the southern part of the New Town, directly adjoining an area excavated by the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage in 2002, brought to light a sizeable chamber tomb of 46 m2 from that period, with over a dozen skeletons.
Moreover, the excavations yielded highly welcome new evidence for the Hellenistic occupation of Assur, namely Building A and two burials (Graves 3 and 4). The dead were placed underneath clay sarcophagi of an ovoid-elliptical shape. One bears an incised alphabetic inscription dated to the month Ab in the year 153 of the Seleucid era, that is July/August 158 BC. Brief as the text is, it provides precious insights into writing and dating practices at Assur after the end of local cuneiform writing and before the rise of the Eastern Mesopotamian scribal tradition that would eventually spread to Hatra and other areas. This burial also contained calcinated textile fragments of at least six different types of cloth.
New data for the Assyrian occupation of Assur originates from some small-scale work undertaken on the edge of the Iraqi trench of 2002, from the partially excavated Building B and from Grave 5, which contained typical 7th century BC items including a bronze fibula and a glazed miniature vessel. A deep sounding dug down from this burial to the virgin soil yielded pottery types that are well known from sites in the Assyrian heartland and the Syrian Jazirah in the 13th century BC, including fragments of carinated bowls and beakers with elongated bodies and nipple bases, as well as a piece of charcoal with a radiocarbon dating range of 1506-1440 calBC (95.4% probability). This date corresponds well with the oldest mention of the construction of the wall and the gates of the New Town in the inscriptions of Puzur-Aššur III, whose reign is conventionally dated to 1521-1498 BC. In total, the 2023 excavations produced 17 radiocarbon dating ranges, derived from the analysis of charcoal, seeds and human teeth; these are the very first 14C dates available from Assur.
Another first for Assur is the palaeobotanical analysis of 133 charred wood fragments and 8,655 carbonised plant remains, which provides an entirely new dataset for reconstruction of the ancient environment. Chapters on the pottery, with first steps towards a fabric classification for Assur by means of portable X-ray fluorescence and petrographic analyses, the small finds and the epigraphic finds (cuneiform and alphabetic) round off the volume.
The fifth volume of the annual Peshdar Plain Project’s reports presents a comprehensive account of the 2019 fieldwork activities at the Dinka Settlement Complex, which included excavations, environmental studies and the continuation of the geophysical survey by Electrical Resistivity Tomography (ERT).
On the one hand, our 2019 fieldwork focused on further improving our understanding of the large-scale urbanised settlement in the upper valley of the Lower Zab river that its good state of preservation and excellent archaeological accessibility make a key site for the study of the Iron Age in the Zagros mountain range of northeastern Iraq and northwestern Iran. Our excavations on Qalat-i Dinka, the settlement’s Upper Town, completed the unearthing of the monumental Building P and also brought to light substantial evidence for cremation and inhumation burials around this building; burial inventories include such diagnostic materials as fibulae, cylinder seals and a bronze drinking vessel. The volume presents a discussion by Jean-Jacques Herr and Silvia Amicone of the pottery and an overview by Andrea Squitieri of the small finds retrieved during the 2019 excavation. The latter is complemented by Friedhelm Pedde’s study of the five bronze fibulae and Anja Fügert’s study of the three cylinder seals in the “Assyrian provincial style”. Also on Qalat-i Dinka, the partially excavated fortifications first identified by magnetometer prospecting in 2015 were further investigated using ERT surveying under the direction of Jörg Fassbinder, which confirmed the previous interpretation of the structures as a combination of a glacis and a palisade wall. Down in the Lower Town and the surrounding Bora Plain, ERT prospecting and sediment coring were used to gain new data on the qanat system and the ancient environment of the Dinka Settlement Complex, greatly aided by Eileen Eckmeier’s ongoing analysis of soil samples as well as faunal and plant remains (macro-botanical and phytoliths), on all of which reports are presented in the present volume.
On the other hand, also much earlier periods of the occupation of the Bora Plain have come into sharper focus in 2019, chiefly through the excavation of a Chalcolithic pottery kiln under the Iron Age structures of the Lower Town excavation area DLT3.
Moreover, the volume presents the results of analyses of materials previously excavated at the Dinka Settlement Complex. Anja Hellmuth Kramberger discusses all Iron arrowheads found between 2015-2019, mainly on Qalat-i Dinka. The bodkin-type specimen found in 2015 at Gird-i Bazar is the subject of a micro-CT study by Thilo Rehren, Raouf Jemmali, Silvia Amicone and Cristoph Berthold. Anja Prust presents the identification and analyses of the animal remains recovered from 2015-2019 as well as a discussion of all artefacts made of faunal remains. Fatemeh Ghaheri offers first results on her ongoing study of the phytolith samples taken during the excavations from 2015-2019 while Melissa S. Rosenzweig and Anne Grasse present preliminary outcomes of their analyses of the macrobotanical remains collected from 2015-2018.
The good state of preservation and the excellent archaeological accessibility directly below the modern surface make the 60 hectare large Dinka Settlement Complex (DSC, including Gird-i Bazar and Qalat-i Dinka) in the Bora Plain a key site for the investigation of the Iron Age in the Zagros mountains of northeastern Iraq and northwestern Iran. In 2018, the Peshdar Plain Project's excavations and its continuing geophysical survey and palaeo-environmental investigations have further improved our understanding of the extended Iron Age settlement, and also brought to light new information on other periods of the Bora Plain’s long history, both much older (Late Chalcolithic 1-2) and much younger (Middle Islamic Period) than the Iron Age occupation on which our research continues to focus. The present work offers a comprehensive report of the 2018 fieldwork activities, which included excavations, a programme of environmental studies (geology, geomorphology, soil analysis) and the continuation of the geophysical survey.
Excavations took place in three parts of the settlement: in the Upper Town on the western slope of Qalat-i Dinka, in a new area of the Lower Town ("Dinka Lower Town operation 3" = DLT3), and in Gird-i Bazar where anthropologist Kathleen Downey exposed and interpreted more of the accumulation of human skeletons in the well of Room 49 in Building I (Grave 71).
The excavations on Qalat-i Dinka revealed on the one hand the monumental Building P, occupied by elite inhabitants as suggested by the high quality and value of the finds encountered there (including ivory fittings, beads of carnelian and Egyptian Blue and other jewellery as well as nine identical iron arrowheads), and on the other hand an elaborate fortification that once consisted of a high wooden palisade (of which the base survives) and a glacis that protected its more sensitive stretches. Radiocarbon dates and the pottery finds make it clear that this part of the settlement was occupied during the same broad Iron Age horizon as the areas excavated in the Lower Town of the settlement.
DLT3 was chosen for excavation because radiocarbon analysis of a charcoal sample recovered in 2015 from the section of the geoarchaeological trench GA42 had produced a probable date range of 830-789 calBC (95.4 % probability). Our work there aimed at investigating continuities and discontinuities that might have resulted from the annexation of the Bora Plain and the DSC into the Assyrian Empire and the establishment of the Border March of the Palace Herald in the second half of the 9th century BC. In addition to evidence for two distinct building phases during DSC’s Iron Age main occupation period, this area yielded good contexts dating to the Late Chalcolithic period, including a pottery kiln.
The volume presents the pottery and the small finds from the 2018 excavation areas. Among the Iron Age materials from Qalat-i Dinka, Egyptian faience covered in the synthetic pigment Naples Yellow was identified by archaeometric analysis while a broken brick from DLT3 can be assigned to the Neo-Assyrian period because of a title preserved in its fragmentary cuneiform inscription, most likely to Shalmaneser III (r. 859-824 BC), the founder of the Border March of the Palace Herald. The volume also includes analyses of some materials previously excavated at Gird-i Bazar. Tina Greenfield presents results of the identification and quantitative analyses of the animal bones recovered in 2015 and 2016 while Patrick Arneitz and Roman Leonhardt offer an archaeomagnetic study of the pottery kiln first identified in 2015.
This report of the 2017 activities of the Peshdar Plain Project presents new data for the Dinka Settlement Complex and for the occupation of the Bora Plain on the upper reaches of the Lesser Zab near the modern district centre of Qaladze in the Neo-Assyrian and Sassanian periods, including a range of additional 14C dates derived from single year crops and human and animal remains.
Firstly, the volume details the third and final season at Gird-i Bazar, completing the excavation of all previously identified buildings and of two more pottery kilns. The star find is a pivoted stone that constitutes the upper-bearing for a potter’s wheel. As the three pottery kilns, this piece highlights the importance of pottery making at Gird-i Bazar. The surprise discovery of human remains in the filling of the private well of Building I produced the first Iron Age bodies unearthed at the Dinka Settlement Complex.
Secondly, the book reports on the first season of excavations in another area in the Lower Town, dubbed “Dinka Lower Town operation 2” (DLT2), where a test trench unearthed parts of three major structures: Buildings K (280 m2), L (800 m2) and M (650 m2), which can be demonstrated to all have been used during a common occupation phase. The pottery retrieved closely marches that known from Gird-i Bazar, and the volume includes a first typological assessment as well as data from the petrographic and residue analyses of the new pottery material. The so-called “Groovy Pottery” is now attested both in Gird-i Bazar and DLT2, and its local production can be demonstrated.
The DLT2 excavations also confirmed the accuracy of the results of the magnetometer survey in this area. The book presents the data of the 2017 continuation of this survey and offers a detailed interpretation of the lower town’s layout, its buildings and other features on the basis of the magnetogram. In addition, the book offers geographer Eileen Eckmeier’s assessment of the soils and sediments encountered in the Dinka Settlement Complex and the surrounding Bora Plain and considers their significance for landscape and site formation processes.
While the majority of the book will be of interest to anyone studying the Assyrian Empire and its eastern border region, the volume also presents new data for the occupation of the Bora Plain in the Sasanian period in the form of anthropologist Kathleen Downey’s discussion of the extensive Sasanian cemetery overlying the buildings of the Iron Age occupation of Gird-i Bazar.
The authors argue that the persistence of large states and empires starting in the eighth/seventh centuries BCE, which continued for many centuries, led to new socio-political structures and institutions emerging in the Near East. The primary processes that enabled this emergence were large-scale and long-distance movements, or population migrations. These patterns of social developments are analysed under different aspects: settlement patterns, urban structure, material culture, trade, governance, language spread and religion, all pointing at movement as the main catalyst for social change. This book’s argument is framed within a larger theoretical framework termed as ‘universalism’, a theory that explains many of the social transformations that happened to societies in the Near East, starting from the Neo-Assyrian period and continuing for centuries.
Order the print volume: http://en.pewe-verlag.de
Order the print volume: http://en.pewe-verlag.de/index.php?page=near-eastern-archaeology
The Peshdar district is part of the province of Sulaymaniyah in the Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq. In its centre lies the Peshdar Plain, surrounded by the glorious mountainscape of the Zagros and bounded in the south by the valley of the Lesser Zab, which connects the region to the Assyrian heartland and Western Iran. The international and interdisciplinary Peshdar Plain Project was inaugurated in 2015 with the goal of investigating the region in the Neo-Assyrian period (9th to 7th century BC). It formed part of the Border March of the Palace Herald which served to negotiate relations with the adjoining client kingdoms in the Zagros, most importantly Mannea (south of Lake Urmiye), Ḫubuškia in the Sardasht Plain and Muṣaṣir in the Rowanduz Plain.
Work in 2015 focused on two closely connected sites in the small Bora Plain, a sub-unit of the Peshdar Plain: the tiny single-phase site Gird-i Bazar and impressive Qalat-i Dinka, looming on a rocky outcrop high over the river, both part of the Dinka settlement complex. This book presents the results of this first season of field work. Karen Radner offers an analysis of the historical geography of the region on the basis of the textual sources, including the private contract of 725 BC found at Qalat-i Dinka. Mark Altaweel and Anke March provide a geoarchaeological assessment of the Bora Plain while Jessica Giraud presents an evaluation of the Dinka settlement complex based on the results of the survey of the Mission archéologique française du Gouvernorat de Soulaimaniah (MAFGS). Jörg Fassbinder and Andrei Ašandulesei discuss the results of their geophysical survey at Gird-i Bazar and Qalat-i Dinka. The bulk of the volume is dedicated to the 2015 excavations at Gird-i Bazar, with contributions on the fieldwork by F. Janoscha Kreppner, Christoph Forster, Andrea Squitieri, John MacGinnis, Adam B. Stone and Peter V. Bartl. Tina Greenfield introduces the bioarchaeological sampling strategy. On the basis of the analysis of 666 diagnostic ceramic sherds from key find contexts and by drawing on parallels from the Assyrian heartland and western Iran, Jean-Jacques Herr presents a first assessment of the technical aspects, the fabrics and the shapes of the pottery excavated at Gird-i Bazar. Eleanor Barbanes Wilkinson, Andrea Squitieri and Zahra Hashemi present the small finds from the 2015 excavations.
In an appendix to the volume, Jörg Fassbinder presents the promising results of the 2014 magnetometer survey in Mujeser in the Soran district of the province of Erbil, the possible site of the capital of the kingdom of Muṣaṣir, a client state of the Assyrian Empire, and its famous Ḫaldi temple.
The research presented in this book throws light on a hitherto little known eastern frontier region of the Assyrian Empire. Gird-i Bazar is the first unequivocally Neo-Assyrian site to be excavated in the region. The occupation layers beginning to be uncovered there offer the rare opportunity to explore an Assyrian non-elite settlement. Its well stratified ceramic repertoire is of special importance as it allows us for the first time to synchronise the Western Iranian pottery cultures (with the key sites Hasanlu, Godin Tepe, Nush-i Jan and Baba Jan) with the Assyrian material of the 8th and 7th centuries BC.
Book Chapter by Andrea Squitieri
Plain Project is a major Iron Age settlement
whose ancient name is presently unknown.
Because its perimeter encompasses
two previously identified archaeological sites
(Gird-i Bazar: UTM 38S 512696 E; 3999290 N;
Qalat-i Dinka: UTM 38S 511928 E; 3999154
N), we call it the Dinka Settlement Complex
(DSC), after the larger of these sites.
DSC is located in the Peshdar Plain in
the Province of Sulaymaniyah in the Kurdish
Autonomous Region of Iraq. With surface of
about 350 km2, this crescent-shaped plain is
bordered in the southwest by the meandering
valley of the Lower Zab while the curve of
the Qandil mountain range encircles it. The
Qandil is part of the greater Zagros chain constituting
the border between Iraq and Iran,
in which the highest peak, called Kuh-e Haji
Ebrahim, reaches the impressive altitude of
about 3,587 m. Several tributaries of the Lower
Zab come down from their springs in the
Qandil and traverse the plain to join the main
branch of the river (Radner 2016) (Fig. 1).
Downstreams, the Lower Zab breaks
through the mountains into the Ranya Plain
through a narrow gorge, known as Darband-i
Ranya and Darband-i Sangasur after the two
settlements closest to it on either side. Much
of the Ranya Plain is covered by the artificial
lake of c. 200 km2 created by damming the
Lower Zab at Dokan in the late 1950s. Beyond
Lake Dokan, the Lower Zab continues in
southwestern direction and joins the river Tigris
about 30 km south of Qal’at Sherqat, the
ancient city of Ashur.
This first volume of the new series „Exploring Assur“ presents the results of the fieldwork conducted at Assur, modern Qal’at Sherqat, in 2023, with a focus on the New Town in the south of the settlement, and contains contributions by Mark Altaweel, Silvia Amicone, Katleen Deckers, Jörg Fassbinder, Holger Gzella, Sandra Hahn, Jean-Jacques Herr, Veronica Hinterhuber, F. Janoscha Kreppner, İnci Nurgül Özdoğru, Karen Radner, Jana Richter, Jens Rohde, Lena Ruider, Claudia Sarkady, Michaela Schauer, Annette Paetz gen. Schieck, Andrea Squitieri, Andreas Stele, and Marco Wolf.
At Assur, the team is based in the excavation house first used by Walter Andrae from 1903-1914, and as this building is a protected monument within the UNESCO World Heritage site of Assur, a chapter is dedicated to its history. The early years come to life through the letters of Andrae and many photographs that he and his staff took of the building, reproduced courtesy of the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft zu Berlin.
The fieldwork undertaken in 2023 included a program of magnetometer and electrical resistivity tomography prospecting and sediment coring in the New Town of Assur, whose results are presented together with a study of soil and sediment magnetism based on coring samples. The magnetogram of the New Town substantially deepens our knowledge of the settlement’s organisation in the first centuries AD when the city was part of the Parthian world. The excavations conducted in the southern part of the New Town, directly adjoining an area excavated by the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage in 2002, brought to light a sizeable chamber tomb of 46 m2 from that period, with over a dozen skeletons.
Moreover, the excavations yielded highly welcome new evidence for the Hellenistic occupation of Assur, namely Building A and two burials (Graves 3 and 4). The dead were placed underneath clay sarcophagi of an ovoid-elliptical shape. One bears an incised alphabetic inscription dated to the month Ab in the year 153 of the Seleucid era, that is July/August 158 BC. Brief as the text is, it provides precious insights into writing and dating practices at Assur after the end of local cuneiform writing and before the rise of the Eastern Mesopotamian scribal tradition that would eventually spread to Hatra and other areas. This burial also contained calcinated textile fragments of at least six different types of cloth.
New data for the Assyrian occupation of Assur originates from some small-scale work undertaken on the edge of the Iraqi trench of 2002, from the partially excavated Building B and from Grave 5, which contained typical 7th century BC items including a bronze fibula and a glazed miniature vessel. A deep sounding dug down from this burial to the virgin soil yielded pottery types that are well known from sites in the Assyrian heartland and the Syrian Jazirah in the 13th century BC, including fragments of carinated bowls and beakers with elongated bodies and nipple bases, as well as a piece of charcoal with a radiocarbon dating range of 1506-1440 calBC (95.4% probability). This date corresponds well with the oldest mention of the construction of the wall and the gates of the New Town in the inscriptions of Puzur-Aššur III, whose reign is conventionally dated to 1521-1498 BC. In total, the 2023 excavations produced 17 radiocarbon dating ranges, derived from the analysis of charcoal, seeds and human teeth; these are the very first 14C dates available from Assur.
Another first for Assur is the palaeobotanical analysis of 133 charred wood fragments and 8,655 carbonised plant remains, which provides an entirely new dataset for reconstruction of the ancient environment. Chapters on the pottery, with first steps towards a fabric classification for Assur by means of portable X-ray fluorescence and petrographic analyses, the small finds and the epigraphic finds (cuneiform and alphabetic) round off the volume.
The fifth volume of the annual Peshdar Plain Project’s reports presents a comprehensive account of the 2019 fieldwork activities at the Dinka Settlement Complex, which included excavations, environmental studies and the continuation of the geophysical survey by Electrical Resistivity Tomography (ERT).
On the one hand, our 2019 fieldwork focused on further improving our understanding of the large-scale urbanised settlement in the upper valley of the Lower Zab river that its good state of preservation and excellent archaeological accessibility make a key site for the study of the Iron Age in the Zagros mountain range of northeastern Iraq and northwestern Iran. Our excavations on Qalat-i Dinka, the settlement’s Upper Town, completed the unearthing of the monumental Building P and also brought to light substantial evidence for cremation and inhumation burials around this building; burial inventories include such diagnostic materials as fibulae, cylinder seals and a bronze drinking vessel. The volume presents a discussion by Jean-Jacques Herr and Silvia Amicone of the pottery and an overview by Andrea Squitieri of the small finds retrieved during the 2019 excavation. The latter is complemented by Friedhelm Pedde’s study of the five bronze fibulae and Anja Fügert’s study of the three cylinder seals in the “Assyrian provincial style”. Also on Qalat-i Dinka, the partially excavated fortifications first identified by magnetometer prospecting in 2015 were further investigated using ERT surveying under the direction of Jörg Fassbinder, which confirmed the previous interpretation of the structures as a combination of a glacis and a palisade wall. Down in the Lower Town and the surrounding Bora Plain, ERT prospecting and sediment coring were used to gain new data on the qanat system and the ancient environment of the Dinka Settlement Complex, greatly aided by Eileen Eckmeier’s ongoing analysis of soil samples as well as faunal and plant remains (macro-botanical and phytoliths), on all of which reports are presented in the present volume.
On the other hand, also much earlier periods of the occupation of the Bora Plain have come into sharper focus in 2019, chiefly through the excavation of a Chalcolithic pottery kiln under the Iron Age structures of the Lower Town excavation area DLT3.
Moreover, the volume presents the results of analyses of materials previously excavated at the Dinka Settlement Complex. Anja Hellmuth Kramberger discusses all Iron arrowheads found between 2015-2019, mainly on Qalat-i Dinka. The bodkin-type specimen found in 2015 at Gird-i Bazar is the subject of a micro-CT study by Thilo Rehren, Raouf Jemmali, Silvia Amicone and Cristoph Berthold. Anja Prust presents the identification and analyses of the animal remains recovered from 2015-2019 as well as a discussion of all artefacts made of faunal remains. Fatemeh Ghaheri offers first results on her ongoing study of the phytolith samples taken during the excavations from 2015-2019 while Melissa S. Rosenzweig and Anne Grasse present preliminary outcomes of their analyses of the macrobotanical remains collected from 2015-2018.
The good state of preservation and the excellent archaeological accessibility directly below the modern surface make the 60 hectare large Dinka Settlement Complex (DSC, including Gird-i Bazar and Qalat-i Dinka) in the Bora Plain a key site for the investigation of the Iron Age in the Zagros mountains of northeastern Iraq and northwestern Iran. In 2018, the Peshdar Plain Project's excavations and its continuing geophysical survey and palaeo-environmental investigations have further improved our understanding of the extended Iron Age settlement, and also brought to light new information on other periods of the Bora Plain’s long history, both much older (Late Chalcolithic 1-2) and much younger (Middle Islamic Period) than the Iron Age occupation on which our research continues to focus. The present work offers a comprehensive report of the 2018 fieldwork activities, which included excavations, a programme of environmental studies (geology, geomorphology, soil analysis) and the continuation of the geophysical survey.
Excavations took place in three parts of the settlement: in the Upper Town on the western slope of Qalat-i Dinka, in a new area of the Lower Town ("Dinka Lower Town operation 3" = DLT3), and in Gird-i Bazar where anthropologist Kathleen Downey exposed and interpreted more of the accumulation of human skeletons in the well of Room 49 in Building I (Grave 71).
The excavations on Qalat-i Dinka revealed on the one hand the monumental Building P, occupied by elite inhabitants as suggested by the high quality and value of the finds encountered there (including ivory fittings, beads of carnelian and Egyptian Blue and other jewellery as well as nine identical iron arrowheads), and on the other hand an elaborate fortification that once consisted of a high wooden palisade (of which the base survives) and a glacis that protected its more sensitive stretches. Radiocarbon dates and the pottery finds make it clear that this part of the settlement was occupied during the same broad Iron Age horizon as the areas excavated in the Lower Town of the settlement.
DLT3 was chosen for excavation because radiocarbon analysis of a charcoal sample recovered in 2015 from the section of the geoarchaeological trench GA42 had produced a probable date range of 830-789 calBC (95.4 % probability). Our work there aimed at investigating continuities and discontinuities that might have resulted from the annexation of the Bora Plain and the DSC into the Assyrian Empire and the establishment of the Border March of the Palace Herald in the second half of the 9th century BC. In addition to evidence for two distinct building phases during DSC’s Iron Age main occupation period, this area yielded good contexts dating to the Late Chalcolithic period, including a pottery kiln.
The volume presents the pottery and the small finds from the 2018 excavation areas. Among the Iron Age materials from Qalat-i Dinka, Egyptian faience covered in the synthetic pigment Naples Yellow was identified by archaeometric analysis while a broken brick from DLT3 can be assigned to the Neo-Assyrian period because of a title preserved in its fragmentary cuneiform inscription, most likely to Shalmaneser III (r. 859-824 BC), the founder of the Border March of the Palace Herald. The volume also includes analyses of some materials previously excavated at Gird-i Bazar. Tina Greenfield presents results of the identification and quantitative analyses of the animal bones recovered in 2015 and 2016 while Patrick Arneitz and Roman Leonhardt offer an archaeomagnetic study of the pottery kiln first identified in 2015.
This report of the 2017 activities of the Peshdar Plain Project presents new data for the Dinka Settlement Complex and for the occupation of the Bora Plain on the upper reaches of the Lesser Zab near the modern district centre of Qaladze in the Neo-Assyrian and Sassanian periods, including a range of additional 14C dates derived from single year crops and human and animal remains.
Firstly, the volume details the third and final season at Gird-i Bazar, completing the excavation of all previously identified buildings and of two more pottery kilns. The star find is a pivoted stone that constitutes the upper-bearing for a potter’s wheel. As the three pottery kilns, this piece highlights the importance of pottery making at Gird-i Bazar. The surprise discovery of human remains in the filling of the private well of Building I produced the first Iron Age bodies unearthed at the Dinka Settlement Complex.
Secondly, the book reports on the first season of excavations in another area in the Lower Town, dubbed “Dinka Lower Town operation 2” (DLT2), where a test trench unearthed parts of three major structures: Buildings K (280 m2), L (800 m2) and M (650 m2), which can be demonstrated to all have been used during a common occupation phase. The pottery retrieved closely marches that known from Gird-i Bazar, and the volume includes a first typological assessment as well as data from the petrographic and residue analyses of the new pottery material. The so-called “Groovy Pottery” is now attested both in Gird-i Bazar and DLT2, and its local production can be demonstrated.
The DLT2 excavations also confirmed the accuracy of the results of the magnetometer survey in this area. The book presents the data of the 2017 continuation of this survey and offers a detailed interpretation of the lower town’s layout, its buildings and other features on the basis of the magnetogram. In addition, the book offers geographer Eileen Eckmeier’s assessment of the soils and sediments encountered in the Dinka Settlement Complex and the surrounding Bora Plain and considers their significance for landscape and site formation processes.
While the majority of the book will be of interest to anyone studying the Assyrian Empire and its eastern border region, the volume also presents new data for the occupation of the Bora Plain in the Sasanian period in the form of anthropologist Kathleen Downey’s discussion of the extensive Sasanian cemetery overlying the buildings of the Iron Age occupation of Gird-i Bazar.
The authors argue that the persistence of large states and empires starting in the eighth/seventh centuries BCE, which continued for many centuries, led to new socio-political structures and institutions emerging in the Near East. The primary processes that enabled this emergence were large-scale and long-distance movements, or population migrations. These patterns of social developments are analysed under different aspects: settlement patterns, urban structure, material culture, trade, governance, language spread and religion, all pointing at movement as the main catalyst for social change. This book’s argument is framed within a larger theoretical framework termed as ‘universalism’, a theory that explains many of the social transformations that happened to societies in the Near East, starting from the Neo-Assyrian period and continuing for centuries.
Order the print volume: http://en.pewe-verlag.de
Order the print volume: http://en.pewe-verlag.de/index.php?page=near-eastern-archaeology
The Peshdar district is part of the province of Sulaymaniyah in the Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq. In its centre lies the Peshdar Plain, surrounded by the glorious mountainscape of the Zagros and bounded in the south by the valley of the Lesser Zab, which connects the region to the Assyrian heartland and Western Iran. The international and interdisciplinary Peshdar Plain Project was inaugurated in 2015 with the goal of investigating the region in the Neo-Assyrian period (9th to 7th century BC). It formed part of the Border March of the Palace Herald which served to negotiate relations with the adjoining client kingdoms in the Zagros, most importantly Mannea (south of Lake Urmiye), Ḫubuškia in the Sardasht Plain and Muṣaṣir in the Rowanduz Plain.
Work in 2015 focused on two closely connected sites in the small Bora Plain, a sub-unit of the Peshdar Plain: the tiny single-phase site Gird-i Bazar and impressive Qalat-i Dinka, looming on a rocky outcrop high over the river, both part of the Dinka settlement complex. This book presents the results of this first season of field work. Karen Radner offers an analysis of the historical geography of the region on the basis of the textual sources, including the private contract of 725 BC found at Qalat-i Dinka. Mark Altaweel and Anke March provide a geoarchaeological assessment of the Bora Plain while Jessica Giraud presents an evaluation of the Dinka settlement complex based on the results of the survey of the Mission archéologique française du Gouvernorat de Soulaimaniah (MAFGS). Jörg Fassbinder and Andrei Ašandulesei discuss the results of their geophysical survey at Gird-i Bazar and Qalat-i Dinka. The bulk of the volume is dedicated to the 2015 excavations at Gird-i Bazar, with contributions on the fieldwork by F. Janoscha Kreppner, Christoph Forster, Andrea Squitieri, John MacGinnis, Adam B. Stone and Peter V. Bartl. Tina Greenfield introduces the bioarchaeological sampling strategy. On the basis of the analysis of 666 diagnostic ceramic sherds from key find contexts and by drawing on parallels from the Assyrian heartland and western Iran, Jean-Jacques Herr presents a first assessment of the technical aspects, the fabrics and the shapes of the pottery excavated at Gird-i Bazar. Eleanor Barbanes Wilkinson, Andrea Squitieri and Zahra Hashemi present the small finds from the 2015 excavations.
In an appendix to the volume, Jörg Fassbinder presents the promising results of the 2014 magnetometer survey in Mujeser in the Soran district of the province of Erbil, the possible site of the capital of the kingdom of Muṣaṣir, a client state of the Assyrian Empire, and its famous Ḫaldi temple.
The research presented in this book throws light on a hitherto little known eastern frontier region of the Assyrian Empire. Gird-i Bazar is the first unequivocally Neo-Assyrian site to be excavated in the region. The occupation layers beginning to be uncovered there offer the rare opportunity to explore an Assyrian non-elite settlement. Its well stratified ceramic repertoire is of special importance as it allows us for the first time to synchronise the Western Iranian pottery cultures (with the key sites Hasanlu, Godin Tepe, Nush-i Jan and Baba Jan) with the Assyrian material of the 8th and 7th centuries BC.
Plain Project is a major Iron Age settlement
whose ancient name is presently unknown.
Because its perimeter encompasses
two previously identified archaeological sites
(Gird-i Bazar: UTM 38S 512696 E; 3999290 N;
Qalat-i Dinka: UTM 38S 511928 E; 3999154
N), we call it the Dinka Settlement Complex
(DSC), after the larger of these sites.
DSC is located in the Peshdar Plain in
the Province of Sulaymaniyah in the Kurdish
Autonomous Region of Iraq. With surface of
about 350 km2, this crescent-shaped plain is
bordered in the southwest by the meandering
valley of the Lower Zab while the curve of
the Qandil mountain range encircles it. The
Qandil is part of the greater Zagros chain constituting
the border between Iraq and Iran,
in which the highest peak, called Kuh-e Haji
Ebrahim, reaches the impressive altitude of
about 3,587 m. Several tributaries of the Lower
Zab come down from their springs in the
Qandil and traverse the plain to join the main
branch of the river (Radner 2016) (Fig. 1).
Downstreams, the Lower Zab breaks
through the mountains into the Ranya Plain
through a narrow gorge, known as Darband-i
Ranya and Darband-i Sangasur after the two
settlements closest to it on either side. Much
of the Ranya Plain is covered by the artificial
lake of c. 200 km2 created by damming the
Lower Zab at Dokan in the late 1950s. Beyond
Lake Dokan, the Lower Zab continues in
southwestern direction and joins the river Tigris
about 30 km south of Qal’at Sherqat, the
ancient city of Ashur.
BC) from Iraqi Kurdistan. One of the reasons why this method is so seldomly applied is that only rarely can archaeologists rely on enough contextual information to allow the reconstruction of the specific steps of the
pottery production and make inferences about the involvement of specific tools during these stages. In this paper, we present the case study of Gird-i Bazar, an Iron Age site located in Iraqi Kurdistan, where a pottery workshop
yielding fixed installations and associated portable stone tools was recently discovered. We will combine context description and macro/microscopic observations on both stone tools and pottery sherds in order to show how the former were used in some of the steps of the pottery chaîne op´eratoire, and identify the spaces where specific stages of the pottery production possibly occurred. The results from this work will provide comparative material for the technological study of Iron Age pottery from Iraqi Kurdistan and its neighbouring regions in both lowland Mesopotamia and the western Iranian highlands.
Field research in the Autonomous Region of Kurdistan in north-eastern Iraq, as it has been undertaken since 2009, can help decisively here. Since 2015, excavations and geophysical prospections conducted by the Peshdar Plain Project in the so-called Bora Plain, located about 3 km south of the modern town of Qaladze, have revealed an extended Iron Age settlement of around 60 ha (judging by the spread of the surface Iron Age pottery), for which the available radiocarbon dates indicates a settlement development from the last quarter of the 13th to the 6th century BC. Since the ancient name of the settlement is currently unknown and its extent encompasses two previously identified archaeological sites, Gird-i Bazar and Qalat-i Dinka, we call it the Dinka Settlement Complex (DSC) after the larger of the two sites. This paper uses data from DSC to explore the Iron Age in the northern Zagros before and during the Assyrian occupation of the region.
archaeology to make imagery data more publicly available while developing a new application to
facilitate the use of a common deep learning algorithm (mask region-based convolutional neural
network; Mask R-CNN) for instance segmentation. The intent is to provide specialists with a GUIbased tool that can apply annotation used for training for neural network models, enable training
and development of segmentation models, and allow classification of imagery data to facilitate
auto-discovery of features. The tool is generic and can be used for a variety of settings, although the
tool was tested using datasets from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Oman, Iran, Iraq, and Jordan.
Current outputs suggest that trained data are able to help identify ruined structures, that is, structures
such as burials, exposed building ruins, and other surface features that are in some degraded state.
Additionally, qanat(s), or ancient underground channels having surface access holes, and mounded
sites, which have distinctive hill-shaped features, are also identified. Other classes are also possible,
and the tool helps users make their own training-based approach and feature identification classes. To
improve accuracy, we strongly urge greater publication of UAV imagery data by projects using open
journal publications and public repositories. This is something done in other fields with UAV data
and is now needed in heritage and archaeology. Our tool is provided as part of the outputs given.
Sulaymaniyah province of the Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq, where the Peshdar Plain
Project excavated a Sasanian cemetery installed on the older Iron Age structures of the Dinka
Settlement Complex. The characteristics of this cemetery are discussed in the framework of
other Sasanian period cemeteries excavated in both Iraq and Iran. The objects from Gird-i Bazar
cemetery are presented and compared to other similar items coming from graves and other
contexts of the Sasanian period. Particular focus is given to a stamp seal showing a woman
figure found in Grave 47, and the results of the radiocarbon analysis on a sample from the same
grave, which has provided a good chronological anchor for the cemetery and the stamp seal as
well. Finally, a discussion is offered as to the type of community who might have used the
cemetery and its possible religious affiliation in relation to the attested presence of Christian
communities in northern Mesopotamia during the Sasanian period