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Image Title calendar2024-01-28

NEW INVESTIGATIONS IN THE ENVIRONMENT, HISTORY, AND ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE IRAQI HILLY FLANKS: SHAHRIZOR SURVEY PROJECT 2009–2011

Recent palaeoenvironmental, historical, and archaeological investigations, primarily consisting of site reconnaissance, in the Shahrizor region within the province of Sulaymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan are bringing to light new information on the region’s social and socio-ecological development.

Image Title calendar2024-03-28

PRELIMINARY REPORT OF THE CHARMO (JARMO) PREHISTORIC INVESTIGATIONS, 2022

The archaeological mission from the University of Tsukuba began to investigate the Neolithic sites in the Iraqi-Kurdistan region in 2014. The purpose of our investigations was to reconsider the issue of Neolithization in Iraqi-Kurdistan, where research began in the 1940s and 50s and was stalled by political issues starting in the 1960s. With the full support of the Directorate General of Cultural Heritage of the Ministry of Culture of the Kurdistan Regional Government and the Slemani Department of Cultural Heritage, we first began our research at the Qalat Said Ahmadan site, located in the Pshdar Plain. We were able to identify the cultural deposits of the end of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period, those of the Hassuna, Samarra, Halaf, Ubaid, and Iron Age, and have clarified the nature of the Neolithic site located at the edge of the fan deposits [Tsuneki et al. 2015, 2016, 2019].

Image Title calendar2024-03-07

HUMAN OCCUPATION ALONG THE FOOTHILLS OF NORTHWESTERN ZAGROS DURING THE LATE PLEISTOCENE AND THE HOLOCENE IN THE RANIA AND PESHDAR PLAINS

The south-western foothills of the Zagros range, in Iraqi Kurdistan, have long been largely unexplored because it has been impossible for archaeologists to carry out fieldwork research in this area for more than half a century.

Shakar Tapa on the Sharazor plain has revealed a new episode of the Neolithic discovery

Article Name

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.