イラクにおける最近の考古活動

抄録

Iraq or ancient Mesopotamia is one of the richest treasuries of archaeology. From eighteenth century, inspiring by the Bible or religious faith many Europeans visited here and remained their account of the trip. It is, however, from 1899 of R. Koldeway's excavation of Babylon that a comprehensive and scientific archaeological survey begun to start. Since mid-twenties century there were continuously remarkable excavations held by many famous foreign archaeologists.
After independence of the kingdom of Iraq, there brought up several Iraqi archaeologists. During the World War II, these young archaeologists carried out the surveys of some sites on their own country. Tell Uquir, Deir, Aqar Quf, Hassuna are their brilliant achievements.
Survey of Tell as-Sawwan, “Mound of the Flints”, is one of the most important excavations recently held in Iraq. The site is located some ten kilometers south of Samarra on the eastern bank of the middle Tigris river. The site was first noted by Ernest Herzfeld in 1911. Operations carried out five seasons by Behnam Abu as-Soof and others under the auspices of Directerate General of Antiquity since 1964 and not finished until now.
There were five main building-levels and these were numbers I-V from the top downwards. The special feature identified on the site consists of an artificial ditch cut into the natural conglomerate underlying the mound, forming three sides of a square round the eastern side of mound B. It may be regarded of an early defensive system. The pottery is classified 1) coarse ware 2) semi-corase ware 3) fine ware 4) incised, painted, incised-painted ware. Top two levels belong to Samarran type and levels IV and V are Hassunan type. In level III the incised Hassuna ware becomes very popular, but this phase is transitional pierod from Hassuna to Samarra pottery. The most remarkable objects were ‘mother-goddess’ statuettes made of clay or creamy alabaster, using clearly as cult objects.
The significance of Tell as-Sawwan are as follows: 1) in view of Tell as-Sawwan's geographical position, there was a reasonable prospect of cultural contacts between northern and southern Iraq during the sixth millennium B. C. 2) The pottery discovered on the site corresponds fairly closely to the standard Hassuna-Samarra repetoire which is known from Hassuna itself, and the mixture in levels III and II showed that Hassunan type gradually replaced Samarran type without cultural interruption. This also indicates there was no abrupt change of population in the area during this period.
As excavation has not finished, it is impossible to describe full account of this site. But it may provide answers to several important problems of Mesopotamian prehistory after excavation finishes.