Archaeological Excavations at Kani Shaie, Iraqi Kurdistan, 2013–2016 Campaigns

Excavations at Kani Shaie in the Bazyan Valley (Sulaymaniyah, Iraqi Kurdistan), part of the land of Lullubum during the Bronze Age, documented a 6,000 year history of a community in the borderlands between the Zagros Mountains and the Mesopotamian lowlands. This small valley was repeatedly targeted by Mesopotamian military expansion, documented for the first time on the famous Victory Stele of the Akkadian king Naram-Sin (ca. 2150 BCE), which is echoed on the nearby rock relief at Darband-i Gawr. Its strategic location is highlighted by the contested history of the Bazyan Pass, ancient Babite, where the Neo-Assyrian king Assurnasirpal II led his army through a blockade formed by the local ruler Nur-Adad in 881 BCE, which is a feat that was repeated in 1805 CE when the Ottoman troops were halted at the same pass by a wall constructed by local resistance leader ‘Abd al-Rahman.

During three campaigns of excavation between 2013 and 2016, followed by a first survey campaign in 2018, the Kani Shaie Archaeological Project focused efforts on establishing a stratigraphically anchored sequence of the local material culture, which had remained undocumented in this rarely explored region. The publication project, coordinated by Dr Steve Renette in collaboration with a team of specialists, will make the results from this initial investigation available in the form of a detailed analysis of the site’s long sequence of occupation, as well as an open-access database of the full documentation. The planned publication will present this data in a chronologically structured format with chapters on the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age settlements, the Iron Age and Hellenistic-Parthian occupation of the site’s Lower Town, the Early and Middle Islamic use of the mound, and a Kurdish cemetery from the Ottoman era. This volume will be a key reference for archaeological projects in Sulaymaniyah Governorate and beyond. With a focus on a small-sized archaeological site, this project makes a major contribution to our understanding of rural communities in the border region between Mesopotamia and the Zagros, as well as alternative forms of complexity within small-scale societies that existed independently from the region’s urban centers.

The publication project is directed by Dr. Steve Renette.

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