Reading Archaeology team head to Iraq to investigate the origins of farming life

Thursday, 23 August 2012

Excavations in Bestansur, Iraq

A team of University archaeologists is heading to Iraq for a 6-week season of excavations at the site of Bestansur, near Sulaimaniyah in the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq.

The team is directed by Professor Roger Matthews and Dr Wendy Matthews and includes staff and students from the Department of Archaeology. They will be excavating buildings and features dating to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period, between 9000 and 7000 BC.

A first season of excavations took place in spring 2012, recovering much evidence for early occupation close to a natural spring and in a very fertile area of the Shahrizor Plain.

Professor Matthews explained; "This region of the Fertile Crescent, in the Zagros Mountains, is famous as host to early domestication of animals such as goat and plants such as cereals and pulses. It is also one region where the earliest settled villages are found, after the end of the last Ice Age.

"One of the aims of the project is to study the transformations in human-environment relationships associated with humans becoming increasingly sedentary and their management of plants and animals."

Bestansur excavations are part of the Central Zagros Archaeological Project, a collaborative programme of archaeological research involving archaeologists from the UK, Iraq and Iran. The project is collaborative with the Sulaimaniyah Directorate of Antiquities and Heritage and is currently funded by a major grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. For more details, see http://www.czap.org