The Qara Dagh Archaeological Landscape: The Relation Between Settlement Patterns and Environmental Contexts

Summary

The Qara Dagh Valley, located 41 km south from the city of Sulaymaniyah in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, is the subject of study of the Qara Dagh Regional Archaeological Project (QDRAP). This project aims to investigate the Qara Dagh Valley’s archaeological history. The valley is generally known for the presence of the Darban-i-Graw relief, which represents a late third millennium king subduing his enemies. Indeed, textual and visual evidence suggest that this region was exposed to frequent foreign invasions, which, together with its natural setting, may have heavily influenced settlement distribution in the valley. In the 1940’s, a team of Iraqi archaeologists carried out a survey of the valley but, until May, 2015, when the QDRAP team initiated an investigation in the Qara Dagh area, no other survey had been conducted. The QDRAP was able to provided fresh information that confirms the archaeological relevance of this area. Although this study is in its early stages, the preliminary analysis of the data collected suggests that the occupation of this area dates at least to the IV Millennium BCE. In this presentation, questions on the environmental characteristics that may have influenced the distribution of the sites identified will be discussed.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• A New Archaeological Frontier: Urban Settlements and Landscapes in Kurdistan, Northern Iraq

Keywords

Spatial Coverage