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Image Title calendar2024-01-11

The Last Hunters of the Eastern Fertile Crescent Archaeological Project

Ashkawta Rash(ئەشکەوتە ڕەش) is a Palaeolithic cave site located. 35 km northwest of the city of Slemani, near the Bazian Gates.

Image Title calendar2024-01-28

Shakar Tapa on the Sharazor plain 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.

Image Title calendar2024-01-29

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.

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

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


Early Communities


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. 
After the cave was abandoned at the end of the last Ice Age, communities in this valley built stone buildings at Zawi Chemi Razan and used large grinding stones used for preparing food. The site was discovered during a survey in 2013 and excavated from 2022 by the University of Reading in collaboration with Sulaimani Directorate of Antiquities and Heritage. 
The people who sheltered inside Zarzi Cave ate wild sheep, goat, gazelle, tortoise and fish. As today, the valley is rich in plant and animal wildlife, attracted by the abundant fresh water of the Chemi Razan River.
To preserve these rich water supplies, farmlands and wildlife, we need to protect them from climate change, pollution and other threats.