Project

The Zagros Piedmont Prehistoric Project aims to understand a process connecting two "revolutions" in human history, from Neolithisation to Urbanisation, in a broad perspective. Generally speaking, the heartland of the oldest Neolithisation was the so-called Fertile Crescent in the Near East, while the oldest Urbanisation occurred in the Mesopotamian Lowland. In other words, the principal stage of "revolutions" was geographically shifted. This shift must be one of important factors driving people to proceed to the next "revolution." As far as we know, early farmers began to spread into the Mesopotamian Lowland in the late 7th millennium BC. Thus, we are focusing on around 6000 BC between the Fertile Crescent and the Mesopotamian Lowland. 
 
From Neolithisation to Urbanisation in the Near East

In order to reach this objective, we started archaeological fieldwork and material studies in the Shahrizor Plain, the Sulaymaniyah Governorate, the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. This plain is situated in an intermontane valley along the Zagros flanks, well known as a part of the Fertile Crescent. Despite the steep mountain ranges that surround the plain on all sides, the Shahrizor was never geographically isolated. The tributaries of the Tigris River provided paths along the valleys, connecting the Zagros Mountains and the Mesopotamian Lowland. The Diyala River is one of the major tributaries of the Tigris, and is formed by the confluence of the Sirwan River and the Tanjero River. At the junction of the latter rivers lies a deep basin where the Darband-i Khan Dam was constructed in 1961. The Shahrizor Plain stretches on the lakeside of the dam. This location is strategic, as the plain forms a major intersection between intermontane valleys along the Zagros flanks. It also contains a corridor that reaches out to the Mesopotamian Lowland through a range of passes and runs alongside the steep and gradually flattened river valley. Equally, the intermontane passages provided access to the Iranian Highlands. It is not too far-fetched to speculate about regional interaction in the Late Neolithic period in the form of goods, ideas and people flowing from the Shahrizor into the Mesopotamian Lowland, and vice versa.

General view of the Shahrizor Plain and the dim shade of the Zagros Mountains

Until very recently, however, the archaeological evidence for the late prehistoric societies that inhabited this plain was extremely limited. Previous archaeological research in and around the Shahrizor Plain was mostly conducted as part of a salvage project preceding the construction of the dam. It consisted of the mapping of tell sites, limited surface surveys and a handful of targeted excavations at promising sites. This resulted in the identification of just two sites with Halaf occupation (Hijjara 1997). No site dated to earlier, pre-Halaf stage was documented. The available evidence was insufficient to verify the absence of any earlier occupation.

Distribution of prehistoric sites in the Shahrizor Plain (after a map by S. Mühl)

Accordingly, in 2009 the Shahrizor Survey Project (SSP) directed by Simone Mühl, in cooperation with the Slemani Antiquities and Heritage Directorate, started a series of archaeological and palaeo-environmental studies (Altaweel et al. 2012). One of the main aims of this project was to identify surface find markers for these prehistoric societies. The survey recorded over eighty sites in total, of which twenty-two have so far been attributed to the Late Neolithic (Mühl and Nieuwenhuyse 2016; Nieuwenhuyse, Odaka and Mühl 2016). Subsequently, two of these, Tell Begum and Tepe Marani were excavated and yielded the Late Halaf materials dated to ca. 5600-5200 BC (Nieuwenhuyse et al. 2016; Wengrow et al. 2016; Odaka et al. 2019).

Re-excavations at Tell Begum, 2013 (directed by O. Nieuwenhuyse)

While, these recent results still leave a temporal gap between the late 7th millennium BC and the early 6th millennium BC. Is it possible that people in this period started to inhabit small, short-lived sites with low archaeological visibility? Was the plain suddenly abandoned for several centuries? Or, are we still unable to identify the material culture associated with this local "missing link"?

To solve this enigma, a collaborator of the SSP prehistoric studies, Takahiro Odaka considered to establish a specific new project. After the preparatory phase of several years, this our project was officially launched in 2019.


  • Altaweel et al. (2012). New investigations in the environment, history, and archaeology of the Iraqi hilly flanks: Shahrizor Survey Project 2009-2011. Iraq 74: 1-35. 
  • Hijjara (1997). The Halaf Period in Northern Mesopotamia. EDUBBA 6. London: Nabu.
  • Mühl and Nieuwenhuyse (2016). Halaf and Ubaid period settlement: A view from the central Zagros piedmont. Studia Chaburensia 6: 27-56.
  • Nieuwenhuyse, Odaka and Mühl (2016). see Publication
  • Nieuwenhuyse et al. (2016). see Publication
  • Odaka et al. (2019). see Publication
  • Wengrow et al. (2016). Gurga Chiya and Tepe Marani: New excavations in the Shahrizor Plain, Iraqi Kurdistan. Iraq 78: 253-284.


The Zagros Piedmont Prehistoric Project is financially supported by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research from Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS KAKENHI; Grant Numbers JP23H00692, JP21H00003, JP21H00590, JP19H05030, JP19K01111, JP18H05444, JP18H00743) and the CHOZEN Project of Kanazawa University (FY2021).