Lifeworlds of the early first millennium BC in the western Zagros Mountains on the Lower Zab before and after the Assyrian annexation: The civil centre of the Dinka Settlement Complex in the Peshdar Plain

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Florian Janoscha Kreppner
• Subject Area: Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 453121830

From 2015 to 2019, the interdisciplinary and international Peshdar Plain Project conducted nine excavation campaigns and four magnetometer prospections in a settlement inhabited from the Chalcolithic to the Sasanian period. During the Iron Age it reached its largest size of about 60 hectare. Its ancient name is currently unknown. Since the perimeter includes two previously identified archaeological sites, Qalat-i Dinka and Gird-i Bazar, we call it the Dinka Settlement Complex after the larger of the two places. Qalat-i Dinka is located in the Peshdar Plain on the upper stretches of the Lower Zab in the Zagros Mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, right on the border with Iran. Work concentrated on the Iron Age remains of a fortress on Qalat-i Dinka and small-scale residential and workshop buildings on the flat mound Gird-i Bazar which is part of the extensive lower town. In the area between Qalat-i Dinka and Gird-i Bazar, the magnetometer prospection revealed a densely build up settlement. Clearly recognizable is a lower town without an enclosure wall, whose street network and blocks of buildings are organized in a semicircle and oriented around Qalat-i Dinka. Numerous buildings are clearly visible and separated by streets and alleys. Nine 14C-samples from stratified contexts in all operations date the main occupation phase to the Iron Age II (1050-800 BC). Two Neo-Assyrian cuneiform script finds as well as three 14C-datings show that the Dinka Settlement Complex was still inhabited in the Iron Age III (800-600 BC). This application includes an excavation and evaluation programme planned for three years in a prominent part of the settlement. The magnetometer prospection and the results of a test trench excavated in 2017 revealed the remains of three important buildings (K: 280 m2, L: 800 m2, M: 650 m2) with storage facilities. The buildings were much larger and of a completely different character than the houses in Gird-i Bazar or the structures elsewhere visible in the lower town through the magnetometer prospection, which is probably why this is the civil centre. Buildings K, L and M are easily accessible without having been damaged by later erected tombs, modern constructions or plundering under the modern fields, but run the risk of being destroyed by ploughing as the ruins are preserved up to 20-25 cm below the surface. The excavation of the three buildings opens up the possibility to investigate for the first time for the Zagros region of North East Iraq and North West Iran a civil centre of an Iron Age large settlement before and during the period of the Assyrian takeover. The organization of the indigenous society in agriculture and livestock farming, the diet and material culture as well as the effects of the imperial Assyrian expansion on the life of the inhabitants of the Dinka Settlement Complex are the focus of our interest.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professorin Dr. Karen Radner