Tell Dehaila, a large urban settlement in southern Iraq, stood on the right bank of a branch of the Euphrates bearing the Akkadian name Susuka, identified in our previous publications as the Eridu River. High-resolution aerial photography conducted by the Iraqi-Russian Multidisciplinary Project in 2024 has shown that the city was situated in a densely developed agricultural landscape crossed by numerous irrigation canals. Ubaid clay sickles and pottery fragments dating from the Ubaid period to the Neo-Babylonian period indicate this area was inhabited from at least the fifth millennium to the middle of the first millennium BCE, when the flow of Susuka and other Euphrates branches ceased. The evidence from the surroundings of Dehaila complements the results of comparable studies undertaken around Eridu, downstream on the Susuka, and around Larsa, upstream on the main alluvium. Irrigation systems established on river levees possess a relatively simple geometry, yet the shifting dynamics of river channels create a confusing superimposition of waterways belonging to different periods. Hydraulic regulators have also been identified in this area. Archaeological sites associated with these regulators appear to have played a key role in the functioning of irrigation agriculture. New excavations in the South Quarter in September-November 2025 produced cuneiform fragments and diagnostic ceramics that securely date Tell Dehaila to the Neo-Babylonian period. This has made it possible to redate the “Dehaila assemblage,” previously attributed to the Late Larsa period. Sites in the surroundings of Dehaila yielding this assemblage should therefore also be assigned a Neo-Babylonian date.
Alexei Jankowski (Thu,) studied this question.