Cultural and political developments in the borderland between Mesopotamia and Iran: Research on the Bronze Age urban center of Bakr Awa

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The aim of the applied project is archaeological research on the site of Bakr Awa in the foothills of the Zagros Mountains in the Sulaimaniya province / Iraq, and work on the excavated Bronze Age material and documented data. In this period Bakr Awa was a major urban center in the Shahrizor Plain, in the borderland between Mesopotamia and Iran. Its cultural and political development reflects the historical processes in this little-known region distinguished by volatile relations to Northern and Southern Mesopotamia as well as to Iran. The city was in controlling position over the surrounding region which was crossed by important military and trade routes. The site provides an excellent opportunity to understand cultural changes on the border of the Mesopotamian civilizations. The research focuses on different questions concerning the Early, Middle and Late Bronze Age: For the early 3rd millennium BC, an Early Dynastic settlement is proven by Early Dynastic pottery and 14C data. However, the late Chalcolithic Uruk traditions seem to continue and should be further investigated. From the Akkadian and Post-Akkadian period well preserved stone foundations of large buildings and a small sanctuary are known. This kind of architecture has its parallels in Northern Mesopotamia. The typical Akkadian pottery can be compared with ware from sites on the middle Tigris. Around 2000 BC the city experienced a period of prosperity. Architecture and artifacts indicate a rapid adoption of ideas and technologies from the Mesopotamian core areas. Compared to southern standards, the local specimens were in no way inferior in quality and execution. Many intramural burials provide grave goods of interregional character, but they reflect also particular local practices. Dating to the second half of the 2nd millennium BC two official buildings and an archive with administrative and religious cuneiform texts were found. Their content as well as pottery and small finds prove an cultural overlap of influences from the Hurrian North and Kassite South in this settlement horizon. Thus, it is necessary to trace the causes of these changing influences, with special focus on local particularities. The archaeological data obtained are supplemented by written sources for political history and historical geography as well as by bioarchaeological and archaeometric analyzes of raw materials, bones, metal artefacts, and pottery, for reconstruction of subsistence economy, production technologies, and origin and structure of Bakr Awa´s population. The planned field research is embedded in a range of international research projects in the region, for which Bakr Awa constitutes the main Bronze Age reference site.