Abstract
EXPECTATION of the importance of the results likely to be obtained by the joint expedition of the British Museum and the British School of Archæology in Iraq to Tell Arpachiyah in northern Mesopotamia under Mr. M. E. L. Mallowan is fully confirmed by the report of the first half season's work which appears in the Times of May 5. The expedition left London in January. It will be remembered that this site was selected for excavation as the result of a preliminary reconnaissance from Nineveh in the previous year. Surface finds of painted potsherds then suggested that this site would probably prove of great importance to the little-known earlier pre history of northern Mesopotamia. The discovery of pottery of the Ur and Tell el-Ubaid type in mud-brick dwellings of a humble character on the top of the mound carries the first settlement well back into the fifth millennium B.C., and proves the site to be among the oldest yet discovered in Mesopotamia. As ex cavation proceeds, Arpachiyah is shown to be the centre of convergence for peoples transitional between neolithic and chalcolithic times; while connexions are being traced with Anatolia, Syria, southern Mesopotamia and, through Persia, with Baluchistan. It may be noted, in passing, that Arpachiyah sup ports and extends the evidence obtained by the American School of Oriental Research at Tepe Gawra and Tell Billa that northern Mesopotamia was a place of settlement for peoples from the north and north-east, who were there subjected to strong cultural influences from the south. Among the more noteworthy discoveries now reported at Arpachiyah are a method of fractional burial which is compared with the practice on the prehistoric site of Nal in Baluchistan, the use of a bueranium or ox's head as a motif to an extent which suggests a special cult, female figurines pointing to affinities with the Anatolian mother-goddess, a variety of beads and amulets, and a store of wheat, the earliest probably in Mesopotamia. Excavations are being carried through the lower levels in the hope of reaching virgin soil.
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Excavations in Northern Mesopotamia. Nature 131, 685–686 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/131685b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/131685b0