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Tell al-Hawa

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Archaeological site in Iraq Not to be confused with Tel al-Hawa.
Tell al-Hawa
Tell al-Hawa is located in IraqTell al-HawaShown within Iraq
Coordinates36°48′10″N 42°28′05″E / 36.80278°N 42.46806°E / 36.80278; 42.46806
Typesettlement
History
Founded4th millennium BC
PeriodsUruk, Ninevite 5, Akkadian
Site notes
Excavation dates1986-1888
ArchaeologistsWarwick Ball, Tony Wilkinson
ConditionRuined
OwnershipPublic
Public accessYes

Tell al-Hawa is an ancient Near East archaeological site on the North Jazira Plain of northern Iraq, near the border with modern-day Syria and just west of the Tigris river. It lies 40 kilometers southwest of the site of Tell Hamoukar and about 90 kilometers northwest of modern Mosul. Occupation at the site began in the 5th millennium BC Halaf period and continued, with periods of abandonment, until the Islamic period. Settlement reached a substantial size in the 4th millennium BC Uruk period and the late 3rd millennium BC Akkadian Empire period. A modern village, 26 hectares in size, lies off the east edge of the main mound. Tell al-Hawa was excavated as part of a regional rescue archaeology program resulting from the completion of the Mosul Dam and the subsequent expansion of irrigated agriculture. Beveled rim bowls, diagnostic of the Uruk Culture, were found at the site.

Archaeology

Uruk period beveled rim bowl

Tell al-Hawa consists of a 20 hectare upper town (Acropolis) rising 30 meters above the plain and a 80 hectare lower town which includes multiple small mounds, together having an area of about 100 hectares. The Acropolis is about 6 hectares in area and is disturbed by recent cuts and a modern cemetery with 300 marked graves. A partly graveled strip of road cuts into the south slope of the main mound. The site was first mentioned (as Tall Howa) by James Silk Buckingham in the early 1800s. Sir Aurel Stein noted the large size of the site during his aerial survey of the area in 1938.

"Among the mounds Tall Hawa and Tall Chilparat are so large as to indicate sites of considerable settlements dating from a very early period but probably occupied also down to Roman times. In the case of Tall Hawa which rises to more than 70 feet plenty of ancient pottery, including painted sherds which may be prehistoric in type were picked up on the steep slopes"

Example of a cylinder seal

Also in 1938 Tell al-Hawa was examined by Seton Lloyd who reported it having a diameter at the base of 500 meters and being generally 25 meters high. He noted monumental construction (with large baked slightly plano-convex bricks described as Akkadian-type) on the northeast end of the Acropolis. He also found a large quantity of ceramic shards dating from prehistoric through Neo-Assyrian periods. In the late 1960s the Iraqi Directorate-General of Antiquities surveyed the region. Tell al-Hawa (Site #862) was reported as having "Ubaid, Uruk, Jamdat Nasr and Late Assyrian material".

Example of a Mesopotamian macehead

The site was excavated in three seasons from 1986 to 1988 by a British Archaeological Expedition to Iraq team led by Warwick Ball and Tony Wilkinson as part of the North Jazira project triggered by the construction of the Mosul Dam. Water from that dam was planned to be distributed by pipelines and canals to support agriculture and new settlements which endangered numerous archaeological sites. Work began with an intensive field survey of the site and a coarse grained survey of the 130 square kilometers surrounding Tell al-Hawa. Three areas were excavated on top of the main mound AA (to the east), AB (to the southeast), and AC (to the west), each with a number of small trenches. Several meters of AB had been bulldozed off in modern times to flatten the area. Area AA found Middle Assyrian restorations of a Khabur period monumental building. Area AB found a ziggurat platform, thought to originate in the Mitanni period, with later restorations. Reed mats were placed between the mudbrick layers. Finds included mace heads (one of serpentine), cylinder seals, frit masks, a bronze bracelet, and a large number of beads. A number of small excavations were made in the lower town, primarily at areas C, D, and E, to the north. In the lower town, a single sounding, Trench LP, was put in to the east of the main mound and west of the modern village and finds included obsidian blades and a clay sealing.

A number of inscribed clay cones (sikkatu) were found at the site marking the rebuilding of the temple of Adad by the Neo-Assyrian ruler Shalmaneser III. An administrative building, ziggurat, and temple to Adad is known to have been at that site in the Middle Assyrian period. Also recovered was a damaged top half of an Old Babylonian cuneiform tablet, not found in a stratigraphic context in Area D, which mentions the toponyms Hadnum and Shuruzi and an ostracon, found in Area AB with a short Neo-Assyrian period inscription.

Subsidiary mounds

Sikkatu example
  • Tell al-Hawa South - 2 kilometers south of Tell al-Hawa, 1 hectare, Islamic period, excavated by Sd. Dhanun Yunis in 1988
  • Tell al-Hawa North - 2 kilometers northeast of Tell al-Hawa, group of low mounds, Hellenistic period, excavated by Sd. Abd al-Sam'an in 1988
  • Tell al-Hawa East - 3 kilometers southeast of Tell al-Hawa, "prominent", Neo-Assyrian period, excavated by Sd. Ma'num Ghanim in 1988

History

Uruk expansion and colonial outposts

The site was occupied in the Hassuna period (small), Halaf period, Ubaid period, Uruk period (significant), Ninevite 5 period (moderate), Akkadian Empire period (significant), a period of abandonment where North Mesopotamia experienced depopulation from c 2200 BC to c. 1800 BC, Khabur, Mitanni / Middle Assyrian, Neo-Assyrian periods (small), then after a period of abandonment, small Parthian, Sasanian, and Islamic period occupations. Tell al-Hawa covered an area of about 15 hectares in the Ubaid period, then reached a size of 50 hectares in the Uruk period and was surrounded by a number of villages ranging up to 7 hectares in size. The site grew at least 66 hectares in the 3rd and 2nd millennium BC (24 hectares in the Ninevite 5 period and reaching a peak in the Akkadian Empire period), accompanied by the disappearance of small sites in the area in the late 3rd millennium BC. Occupation in the Mitanni/Middle Assyrian period through the Neo-Assyrian was modest and appears to have largely as a cultic site, possibly becoming a small provincial capital toward the end.

It has been suggested that the site was the location of the Isin-Larsa period city of Razama. It has also been proposed that in the 1st millennium BC it was the Neo-Assyrian provincial capital of Tillule (Tille). Another proposal is that the name of the site in the Khabur period was Kiskis.

See also

References

  1. James Silk Buckingham, "Travels in Mesopotamia Including a Journey from Aleppo to Bagdad By the Route of Beer, Orfah, Diarbekr, Mardin, and Mosul; With Researches on the Ruins of Nineveh, Babylon, and Other Ancient Cities", Volume 2, London, H. Colburn, 1827
  2. Stein, Aurel, and Shelagh Gregory, " Sir Aurel Stein's Limes report: the full text of MA Stein's unpublished Limes report (his aerial and ground reconnaissances in Iraq and Transjordan in 1938-39) edited and with a commentary and bibliography", BAR, 1985
  3. Lloyd, Seton, "Some Ancient Sites in the Sinjar District", Iraq, vol. 5, pp. 123–42, 1938
  4. Abu al-Soof, "Distribution of Uruk, Jamdat Nasr and Ninevite V pottery as revealed by field survey work in Iraq" Iraq 30, pp. 74-86, 1968
  5. Ball, Warwick, et al., "The Tell al-Hawa project: archaeological investigations in the North Jazira 1986–87", Iraq 51, pp. 1-66, 1989
  6. Ball, Warwick, "The Tell al-Hawa Project. The Second and Third Seasons of Excavations at Tell al-Hawa, 1987-88", Mediterranean Archaeology Vol.3, Sydney, 1990
  7. Ball, W. & Wilkinson, T. J., "British Work in the North Jazira Project 1986–87. Preliminary Report, Sumer 46, pp. 7-12, 1989-90
  8. Ball, W. & Wilkinson, T. J., "British Survey and Excavations within the North Jazira", Sumer 48, pp. 11-29, 1996
  9. Grayson, A. Kirk, "Shalmaneser III (858-824 BC) A.0.102", Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC II (858-745 BC), Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp. 5-179, 1991
  10. Tenu, Aline, "Imperial Culture. Some reflections on middle Assyrian settlements", Time and History in the Ancient Near East. Proceedings of the 56th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale at Barcelona, pp. 26-30, 2010
  11. George, A. R., "Inscriptions from Tell al-Hawa 1987–88", Iraq 52, pp. 41-46, 1990
  12. "Excavations in Iraq 1987-88", Iraq, vol. 51, pp. 249–65, 1989
  13. Laura Battini, "The Eastern Tigris Region in the First Half of the 2nd Millennium BC", in Miglus, Peter A., and Simon Muhl. "Between the cultures." The central Tigris region from the 3rd to the 1st millennium BC. Conference at Heidelberg January 22nd–24th, pp 111-141, 2009
  14. W. Ball, "Tell al-Hawa and the Development of Urbanization in the Jazira, al-Râfïdïn 9, pp. 1-26, 1990
  15. Conati Barbaro, Cecilia, et al., "The prehistory and protohistory of the northwestern region of Iraqi Kurdistan: Preliminary results from the first survey campaigns", Paléorient. Revue pluridisciplinaire de préhistoire et de protohistoire de l’Asie du Sud-Ouest et de l’Asie centrale 45-2, pp. 207-229, 2019
  16. Senior, Louise, and Harvey Weiss, "Tell Leilan ‘sila-bowls’ and the Akkadian Reorganization of Subarian Agricultural Production", Orient Express, pp. 16–23, 1992
  17. Vidal, Jordi, "The Siege of Razama An example of aggressive defence in Old-Babylonian times", Altorientalische Forschungen 36.2, pp. 365-371, 2009
  18. Nashef, Khaled, "Archaeology in Iraq", American journal of archaeology 94.2, pp. 259-289, 1990
  19. Hallo, William W., "The Road to Emar", Journal of Cuneiform Studies, vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 57–88, 1964

Further reading

  • Ball, Warwick, "The upper Tigris area: New evidence from the Eski Mosul and North Jazira Projects", in Continuity and Change in Northern Mesopotamia from the Hellenistic to the Early Islamic Period. Proceedings of a Colloquium Held at the Seminar für Vorderasiatische Altertumskunde, Freie Universität Berlin, 6–9 April 1994, edited by Karin Bartl and Stefan R. Hauser, pp. 415–427, Berlin: Reimer, 1994
  • de Gruchy, Michelle, and Emma Cunliffe, "How the Hollow Ways Got Their Form and Kept Them: 5000 Years of Hollow Ways at Tell Al-Hawa", New Agendas in Remote Sensing and Landscape Archaeology in the Near East, 124–143, 2020
  • Iamoni, Marco, "Social Life and Social Landscapes Among Halaf and Ubaid Communities: A Case Study from the Upper Tigris Area", New Agendas in Remote Sensing and Landscape Archaeology in the Near East: Studies in Honour of Tony J. Wilkinson, edited by Dan Lawrence et al., Archaeopress, pp. 26–40, 2020
  • Lupton, A., "Stability and Change, Socio-Political Development in North Mesopotamia and South-East Anatolia 4000-2700 B.C.", Oxford: BAR International Series 627, 1996
  • Peyronel, Luca, and Agnese Vacca, "Socio-economic complexity at the Late Chalcolithic site of Tell Helawa, Kurdistan Region of Iraq", Paléorient. Revue pluridisciplinaire de préhistoire et de protohistoire de l’Asie du Sud-Ouest et de l’Asie centrale 46 1–2, pp. 83–108, 2020
  • Wilkinson, T. J., "The Development of Settlement in the North Jazira between the 7th and 1st Millennia BC", Iraq 52, pp. 49–62, 1990
  • Wilkinson, T. J. & Tucker, D. J., "Settlement Development in the North Jazira, Iraq: A Study of the Archaeological Landscape", Warminster, 1995
  • Wilkinson, Tony J., et al., "The structure and dynamics of dry-farming states in Upper Mesopotamia ", Current anthropology 35.5, pp. 483–520, 1994
  • Wilkinson, Tony J., "Linear hollows in the Jazira, upper Mesopotamia", Antiquity 67.256, pp. 548–562, 1993
  • Wilkinson, Tony J., "Extensive sherd scatters and land use intensity: Some recent results", Journal of Field Archaeology 16.1, pp. 31–46, 1989
  • Wilkinson, T. J., et al., "Contextualizing Early Urbanization: Settlement Cores, Early States and Agro-Pastoral Strategies in the Fertile Crescent During the Fourth and Third Millennia BC", Journal of World Prehistory, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 43–108, 2014
  • Wilkinson, T. J., and Jason Ur, "Reconstruction of Settlement and Land Use as Basis for Simulating Human-environment Interactions in a Third Millennium BC Community", The Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, 2004

External links

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