Presentations

The Shahrizor Plain is an intermontane valley located in the eastern part of the Sulaymaniyah Governorate, Iraqi Kurdistan, where its local prehistory has gradually come into view through various ongoing investigations. As to the chronology of late prehistory, however, there are some ill-defined archaeological gaps we have to fill in. One of these gaps lies in the early 6th millennium cal. BC. In order to approach this issue, new excavations began at Shaikh Marif in 2022, following at Shakar Tepe in 2019. The 2022 season’s work successfully recovered the cultural deposit which yielded a distinctive artefact assemblage from the Late Neolithic period. The dates can be estimated as around 6000 cal. BC, filling a part of the chronological gap in the archaeological record of the local late prehistory.

This paper discusses the mortuary landscape in Wādī Tanūf, Oman, through the lens of mobility and its social context in a geographically limited canyon based on the results of preliminary surveys in a cemetery presumably dating to the 2nd and 1st millennia B.C.E. The society of the Wādī Sūq period (ca. 2000–1600 B.C.E.) shifted to a nomadic lifestyle due to aridification, but the details of their mobility are still unexplained. Earlier research of this period supports mobility in the U.A.E., though few such examples have been evinced in Oman. A newly discovered multi-period cemetery in Wādī Tanūf, named WTN13, can potentially illuminate such a nomadic lifestyle. The cemetery is located on the high terrace of the wādī, and the intensive survey therein during the 2019–20 season revealed 40 tombs, classified into four types based on the well-preserved superstructure. Most seem to have originated in the Wādī Sūq period, and the others may stem from the Early Iron Age (ca. 1300–300 B.C.E.). This discovery supports a millennial-scale recurrent visitation to the canyon, but the societal contexts for the use of these limited spaces are still a matter of scientific inquiry. We tentatively assume that Wādī Tanūf was a destination for nomadic sojourns due to the absence of major occupations nearby and the limited number of tombs despite the long cemetery usage. Thus, the cemetery might have been formed during occasional nomadic visits. Such recurrent usage may indicate an ideological mortuary significance of this cemetery for prehistoric nomads.

This presentation explores the petrographic and geochemical characteristics of the pottery collected from two sites in Wadi Tanuf, Oman–––the cave of Mugharat al-Kahf belonging to the Middle Bronze Age (Wadi Suq period, c. 2000-1600 BCE) and WTN02 in the Early Iron Age (c. 1300-650 BCE). The aim of this research is to clarify interregional similarities and differences in pottery production techniques in southeastern Arabia and examine the long-distance trade of pottery, thereby exploring mobile communities in these periods. We conducted an analysis of thin-section petrography and instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) of ceramic samples from these sites. The petrographic result indicates that various types of clay sources and tempers were utilized in the Middle Bronze Age. On the other hand, there is a region-wide similarity in tempering specific minerals (Oman ophiolite) in the Early Iron Age. The geochemical result suggests the difference in clay sources between the Middle Bronze Age and Early Iron Age in Wadi Tanuf, and the unlikeliness of the interregional trade of ordinary pottery throughout southeastern Arabia. These results will contribute to understanding differences in interregional interaction and the knowledge transfer of pottery production techniques between the Middle Bronze Age and Early Iron Age. Furthermore, the differences between these two periods will shed new light on the socio-economic transformation during the second and first millennia BCE.

The Shahrizor Plain, Iraqi Kurdistan, lies between the Mesopotamian lowlands and the Zagros highlands. The location of this intermontane plain is significant in discussing the expansion process of the Ubaid black-on-buff ceramics into the Zagros Mountains and the subsequent regionalization from the Late Ubaid (c. 4900-4500 BCE) to LC1 (c. 4500-4200 BCE). However, the number of excavated Ubaid sites in the Shahrizor Plain is still limited compared to the northern part of Iraqi Kurdistan. Even though previous studies found Ubaid layers from excavations in the southern part of Kurdistan, the ceramic information during the Late Ubaid is largely preliminary. This presentation reports the first assessment of a new Ubaid ceramic assemblage discovered from Shakar Tepe (SSP24) in the Shahrizor Plain, southern Iraqi Kurdistan, focusing mainly on its ware types, vessel forms, and petrographic groups. Through the detailed ceramic analyses and intersite comparisons, we examine the relative chronology of the Ubaid layers at Shakar Tepe and discuss the regional interactions and settlement dynamics in the Ubaid period of the Shahrizor Plain.