Umm Dabaghiyah 1971: A Preliminary Report. An Early Ceramic Farming Settlement in Marginal North Central Jazira, Iraq

A study of Iraq with a view to carrying out prehistoric investigations into the earliest settlements of the northern plain, suggested that one large area offered good possibilities. Not only does it stand away from those regions where, for various reasons, it is impracticable to carry out field work, but it is unknown territory as far as archaeology is concerned. That part of the Hatr a which surrounds Hatra, particularly the region to the west, is rather daunting countryside. Many thousands of square kilometres of slightly rolling, treeless and salty steppelands with seasonal salt lakes and watercourses, brackish springs and waterholes, not to mention an annual rainfall of only about 200 mm. do not seem conducive to early settlement. Nevertheless, one small Hassuna/Samarra settlement, Umm al Dhiabba, situated about 15 km. west of Hatra, had long been known. It seemed reasonable to suppose that more sites would be found in the area. Furthermore, Jebel Sinjar is only three days' walk at most N.W. from Hatr a for an unencumbered man, but moving with sheep the same journey today takes five days. The Sinjar then is close, but more important, beyond it lies the Khabur, the probable diffusion route for that conjectured third region of early cultures lying between those of the Zagros and the Levant-with-Anatolia, and perhaps located somewhere in the Mardin area. Some early settlers fanning out from the Khabur might well have established themselves along the watercourses running down into the Hatr a from Jebel Sinjar as they did across the fertile plain to the north of the area under discussion, as the large Hassuna site at Yarim Tepe and others in the Tell Afar region would seem to indicate. Finally, prehistoric research in Iraq has been largely confined to the Zagros foothills and Tigris banks; the settlements of the central northern plain were unknown. Accordingly the north central Hatr a was chosen for a short preliminary survey using Hatra as a base.