New excavations at Gird Banahilk, a Halafian site in Iraqi Kurdistan: Farmer and herder communities in the Upper Zagros Mountains

Far less is understood of the nature of Late Neolithic settlement in the interior Zagros region in the 6th millennium BC compared with contemporary halafian settlement on the Tigris-Euphrates plains. This paper presents preliminary results of new excavations being conducted at the site of Banahilk (Soran, Iraqi Kurdistan) where 1950s Braidwood team excavations found evidence of Halaf material. The new work has revealed traces of domestic structures related to farmer and herder activities. New 14C dates indicate occupation in the middle and second half of the 6th millennium BC. The possibility of re-studying this site, as well as initiating a new fieldwork program in 2018, allows us to provide new stratigraphic and analytical data. This research enables inferences in both subsistence strategies and the network of products and objects in “marginal” regions.