Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T00:20:10.793Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Arpachiyah 1976

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

Ismail Hijara
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The tell at Arpachiyah in Northern Iraq has proved to be a key site in providing detailed information concerning the Halaf culture. At the suggestion of Dr. Joan Oates and Professor David Oates an eight week season of excavations was begun on the site on 5th September, 1976. Mr. Tariq Aziz, the former Iraqi Minister of Information, arranged a grant to help finance this season. The staff consisted of two conservators (Mr. Jalal Ibrahim and Mr. Kalil Qabtan), a photographer (Mr. Mudhir al Khalide) two experienced Shergati excavators with three assistants, and the author as director. I would like to express my gratitude to the staff of the Mosul Museum, Mr. Manhal Jebur, Mr. M. Said al-Iraqi, and Mr. Hazim Abdulhamid. In addition special thanks go to Dr. Isa Salman, the Director General of Antiquities at the time, and to Dr. B. Abu es-Soof. During our two months on the tell we were visited by the late Professor Fuad Safar, Dr. Oates, Mr. M. A. Mustafa and Mr. T. Matsutani, all of whom provided us with sound advice which certainly assisted in the solution of some of the more difficult problems we encountered.

The basic intention of these excavations was to expand on Sir Max Mallowan's 1933 season at Arpachiyah, to check and, if possible, to improve on the archaeological sequence that he established and which was published in this journal in 1935. The information produced in this report is taken in part from the writer's Ph.D. dissertation, The Halaf Culture in Mesopotamia, Institute of Archaeology, London University, to be submitted in 1980.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , Autumn 1980 , pp. 131 - 154
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1980

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Mallowan, and Rose, , Excavations at Tall Arpachiyah, 1933, Iraq 2 (1935), 1–178CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 ibid., Fig. 3.

3 ibid., Fig. 3.

4 ibid., Fig. 65 No. 1.

5 ibid., 140, 157, Fig. 76 No. 4.

6 I wish to thank the British Museum Radiocarbon Laboratory and especially Mr. Richard Burleigh for undertaking this analysis.

7 Oates, D. and Oates, J., The Rise of Civilisation (London, 1976), 106–109Google Scholar.

8 Mallowan, , LAAA 20 (1933), 127–186Google Scholar.

9 Lloyd, and Safar, , JNES 4 (1945), 255–289Google Scholar.

10 I am indebted to Mr. Walid Yasin for the information regarding the Halaf pottery from this site.

11 Oates, J., Iraq 31 (1969), 138–139Google Scholar; Iraq 34 (1972), 49–53Google Scholar.

12 I owe a special expression of gratitude to Professor R. M. Munchaev, the Director of the Soviet Archaeological Expedition to Iraq, for his generous permission to study the material from Yarim Tepe II at the Institute of Archaeology, Moscow.

13 Watson, P. J., Banahilk. An Halafian Site in Northern Iraq, to appear as OIP 105Google Scholar; Braidwood, , Çambel, , Redman, and Watson, , Proc. Nat. Sci. USA, Vol. 68 (1971), No. 6: 1236–1240Google Scholar.

14 Stuckenrath, and Ralph, , Univ. of Penn. Radiocarbon Dates VIII, Radiocarbon 7 (1965), 187–197CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Arpachiyah. P-584. 7027 ± 83 b.p. 5077 B.C. TT-8. Arpachiyah P-585. 8064 ± 78 b.p. 6114 B.C. Well.

15 Silver, I. A., The ageing of domestic animals, Science in Archaeology (Brothwell, D. and Higgs, E., eds., London, 1963), 250–368Google Scholar.

16 Payne, S., On the interpretation of bone samples from archaeological sites, Papers in Economic Prehistory, (Higgs, E. S., ed., Cambridge, 1972), 65–81Google Scholar.

17 Bokonyi, S., The animal remains from four sites in the Kermanshah Valley, Iran: Asiab, Sarab, Dehsavar and Siahbid, British Archaeological Reports Supplementary Series 3 (1977)Google Scholar.

18 Flannery, K. V., The animal bones. In Prehistory and Human Ecology of the Deh Luran Plain by Hole, F., Flannery, K. V. and Neely, J. A., Memoirs of the Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, No. 1 (Ann Arbor, 1969)Google Scholar.

19 Davis, S. J. M. and Valla, F. R., Evidence for domestication of the dog 12,000 years ago in the Natufian of Israel, Nature 276 (1978), 608–610CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Iraq 2 (1933), 15Google ScholarPubMed.

21 Braidwood, R. J. and Howe, B., Prehistoric investigations in Iraqi Kurdistan, Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 31 (1960), 115Google Scholar.

22 Helbaek, H., Iraq 34 (1972), 35–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Hubbard, R. N. L. B., Economic Botany (1979) (in press)Google Scholar.