Excavations at Tell Hassuna in 1943 and 1944 revealed an archaeological assemblage preceding Halaf culture, called "Hassuna culture," for the first time in the Late Neolithic Upper Mesopotamia. Since then, this culture has been always listed on the chronological table of the prehistoric Mesopotamia.
Nevertheless, our knowledge on Hassuna culture is still limited due to a small amount of the subsequent discoveries. Although the excavations until the 1970s at sites like Matarrah, Tell el-Khan, Tell Shimshara and Yarim Tepe I provided significant information, very little data concerning Hassuna culture has since increased.
In this regard, the recent revival of archaeological investigations in Iraqi Kurdistan improves the situation, providing a valuable opportunity to develop our understanding of Hassuna culture. Those investigations including our project are revealing the new evidence on the Late Neolithic, which naturally retain a potential to advance the research of Hassuna culture. At the same time, the new fieldwork encourages re-examination of the extant archaeological materials not only from the viewpoint provided by the new evidence, but also with the new methodologies that were not available earlier.
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Location of Tell Hassuna, Matarrah and the Shahrizor Plain
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Fortunately, such materials from some Iraqi prehistoric sites are available in Tokyo. The Tokyo University Iraq-Iran Archaeological Expedition, headed by Namio Egami, was Japan’s first substantial scientific mission in the Near East. Its field campaigns, carried out between 1956 and 1966, resulted in the formation of one of the
largest Near Eastern archaeological collections available in Japan, stored now at the University Museum, the University of Tokyo (UMUT). Although one of the most important objectives of the campaigns was to excavate Telul eth-Thalathat, the researchers also explored major archaeological sites in Iraq. They collected some artefacts that were scattered on the surface and which form a part of the UMUT collection.
Accordingly, we decided to study the Late Neolithic pottery from two sites, Tell Hassuna and Matarrah, in the collection. The examination of these materials allows us to redefine the Hassuna Standard Ware pottery. Moreover, the comparison with new materials from Shakar Tepe and Shaikh Marif leads us to discuss regional variability of this particular ware of the Late Neolithic, which seems far more complex than previously thought.
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| Hassuna Standard Wares from Tell Hassuna, the UMUT Collection |
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| Fine Mineral-included Wares from Matarrah, the UMUT Collection |
