Slemani Antiquities and Heritage Directorate

Antiquities is our identity, preserving it is a national duty.
Only through excavations and archaeological remains we can write a scientific and accurate history.

Opening a scientific course for training and teaching in photogrammetry program

Training course on photogrammetry program was held from 18/2/2024 to 23/2/2024 in Slemani. The course was taught by archaeologist Tiago Costa for a few days

Archaeological work in the region is concentrated in Slemani

Directorate of Antiquities and Heritage of Slemani, currently has many contracts and partnerships with several foreign universities and institutes for (surveying, excavation, reconstruction and maintenance….. etc) in Slemani province.

Complex local settlement in Zagros Mountains before the Assyrians expanded into this region

About 5 km south of the district town of Qaladze, in the Peshdar Plain on the eastern bank of the Little Zab, lie the two archaeological sites of Qalat-i Dinka and Gird-i Bazar.

Zarzi was used by groups of hunter-gatherers between 18,000 and 14,000 years ago.

The cave here at Zarzi was used by groups of hunter-gatherers between 18,000 and 14,000 years ago. Zarzi Cave was excavated by Dorothy Garrod in 1928 and by Iraqi archaeologist Ghanim Wahida in 1971.

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].

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.

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Im Rahmen eines Forschungsprojektes begab sich ein bayerisches Prospekti onsteam im Oktober des vergangenen Jahres auf eine Forschungsexpedition in den Nordostirak, genauer in die süd kurdischen Provinzen Sulaymaniyah und Halabjah. Hier in der Shahrizor Ebene, nahe der irakisch-iranischen Grenze, sollten an drei Fundorten Un tersuchungen durchgeführt werden.

Archaeological features, such as architecture etc. can be traced by high resolution and large-scale magnetometer prospecting. Moreover, soil magnetic data deliver additional information about the alteration of the ancient landscape. In combination with an archaeological survey, the geophysical results can provide information to reconstruct the spatial organization within these settlements as well as an epoch-spanning analysis of settlements and their role in urbanization processes and within settlement hierarchies.

In the late third and early second millennium bc, the large plain known today as the Shahrizor and its surrounding region, located in the province of Suleymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan, likely formed an important region of the kingdom of Simurrum (Fig. 31.1; Altaweel et al. 2012). For much of the remaining second millennium bc and into the irst two centuries of the irst millennium bc, the region was a contested border zone between northern and southern Mesopotamian kingdoms or became splintered into small kingdoms.

Residential project in Chwartaq district

In the Chwartaq district, there is a residential project. As per the Guidelines for the Implementation of the Law on The Management and Preservation of Heritage the Kurdistan Region of Iraq No. 5 of 2021, which were published in Al-waqa'a Al-iraqiya Newspaper (306), Number (23) on 14/7/2023, Article (10) and paragraph (3) state that if the land area for a commercial project exceeding more than (10 Acres), a test pit needs to be excavated to determine if the land is an archaeological site or not.