Late Prehistoric Investigations at Shakar Tepe, the Shahrizor Plain, Iraqi Kurdistan: Preliminary Results of the First Season (2019)

Grdi-Shakar Tapa on the Sharazor plain in Iraq's Kurdistan Region has revealed a new episode of the Neolithic discovery
Shakar Tapa has been known as a conspicuous archaeological site in the south of the
Shahrazor Plain since the mid-20th century. It has an oval plan consisting of a low northeastern mound and a high conical southwestern mound with a flat top. The Darband-i Khan Dam Lake is adjacent to the north of the site and its water occasionally reaches the skirt of the mound, causing crucial erosion of the northern edge of the mound. Many archaeological materials were collected on the surface of Shakar Tapa in the past. Although most of them can be dated to the historical ages, such as the Early-to-Middle Bronze Age, the Iron Age, and the Parthian-Sasanian Period, some artefacts were certainly dated to the prehistoric period.
In 2019 a Japanese archaeological team (directed by Takahiro Odaka, Kanazawa
University) started the excavations of Shakar Tapa to investigate its late prehistoric occupation.
The first operation of a step trench was set at the northwestern skirt of the high mound and yielded the Ubaid deposit and the Late Neolithic stratigraphic sequence covering ca. 6400-6000
BC. Virgin soil was reached at the northwestern end of the trench about 5 m below the highest level of this trench. The second season carried out in 2023 revealed the younger Late
Chalcolithic deposit at the area near the trench in 2019. In addition, a few low satellite mounds were identified west of the main mound and another late prehistoric deposit was uncovered at one of them.