Tell Shemshara
Tell Shemshāra is an archaeological site located on the right bank of Little Zab in Sulaymaniyah Governorate, in the Iraqi Kurdistan autonomous administrative division of Iraq. The site was inundated by Lake Dukan until recently.
The site was occupied, although not continuously, from the Hassuna period until the 14th century CE. A small archive recovered from the Middle Bronze Age layers revealed that, at least in that period, the site was called Shusharra and was the capital of a small, semi-independent Turukkean polity called māt Utêm or "land of the gatekeeper" ruled by a man called Kuwari acting as governor under a larger Hurrian state.
Archaeology
The site of Tell Shemshāra consists of four adjacent natural hills:- Main Hill, excavated in 1950s by Danish and Iraqi teams
- Camp Hill, oval, northwest of Main Hill, Iraqi team found Mitanni remains and a small Islamic cemetery
- North Hill A, north of Main Hill, extensive Islamic cemetery on southern slope
- North Hill B, north of North Hill A, 1st millennium BC graves which are heavily robbed out
Beginning in 2012, teams of the Netherlands Institute for the Near East and the Central Zagros Archaeological Project conducted new investigations at the site, as part of a larger archaeological project focusing on the entire Ranya Plain. Finds included terracotta molds for metal objects and two cuneiform tablets. The tablets, administrative
in nature, were found on Level VIIIa and Level VIIIb, dating them to before the previously excavated
archive. High water prevented work in 2016-2017 but in October 2018 low levels allowed a short season of work. At the same
time the University of Reading has focused on prehistoric periods at the site.
The site and its environment
Tell Shemshara sits along the Little Zab, a tributary of the Tigris. Its strategic location in the northeastern corner of the Ranya Plain in the Zagros Mountains gave Shemshara control over travelling routes in all directions, particularly toward the north and east. Shemshara is a tell, or settlement mound, that can be divided in two parts; a high main mound and an elongated lower mound to the south. The main mound is about 75 meters wide at the bottom and about 25 meters wide at the top, whereas the lower town is long and high. Shemshara is now partially submerged under Lake Dukan. It has lost 164,000 cubic meters of volume to erosion since 1957 and at high water levels becomes an island.Occupation history
The excavations at the main mound revealed 16 occupation layers, ranging in date from the Hassuna period to the 14th century CE. A single radiocarbon sample from the basal level of the site, 3m below level 16, provided a date of 7322–7180 BC.Hassuna Period
Layers 16–9 on the northeast flan of Main Hill dated to the Hassuna period. This occupation was characterized by rows of stones that are interpreted by the excavators as foundations for mudbrick walls, a pebble floor and a clay basin in the final occupation layer. Pottery, which has only been found in abundance in layers 13–9, shows stylistic links with that of Hassuna and Tell es-Sawwan. Obsidian was the preferred material for stone tools, with flint making up only 15 percent of the total assemblage. Whereas the flint was procured locally, the obsidian was obtained from two sources in eastern Turkey – one as yet unidentified, the other one being the volcanic Nemrut Dağ more than away from Shemshara. A unique piece in this assemblage is a dagger of over in length, broken in four pieces due to a fire. Other artifacts that have been found at the site include stone bowls, bracelets and quern-stones and small objects made of bone.Uruk and Jemdet Nasr Period
Whereas the main mound seems to have been abandoned after the Hassuna occupation, scarce archaeological material from the Uruk and Jemdet Nasr periods has been found on the lower town.Middle Bronze Age
Both the Main Hill and the lower extension were re-occupied during the Middle Bronze Age. Layers 8–4 on the main mound can be assigned to this period, mainly Hurrian in nature. The excavations found a number of graves with bronze weapons on the main mound, as well as a mudbrick platform. In the lower town, a small part of a palace was excavated, and in three of its rooms a small archive of clay tablets was found. The palace was destroyed by fire, and through analysis of the archive it has been proposed that this happened in year 30 of the reign of Shamshi-Adad I of Ekallatum in the first quarter of the 18th century BCE.The archive consisted of circa 250 clay tablets or fragments thereof, found in two groups in Level 5. The first group, called Archive 1 by the editor, comprises circa 146 documents, of which 100 are letters written to Kuwari, and 39 are administrative. Some fragments were part of the clay envelopes in which these letters were sent. The second group, called Archive 2, comprises circa 104 documents almost all of administrative character. The texts were written in Akkadian. These texts revealed that during this period the site was called Šušarrā, who at that time had already conquered Mari and Shubat-Enlil and was now campaigning in the Zagros Mountains. Together, these two periods do not last longer than 3 years. The letters in the Shemshara archive show that during this period, Kuwari had to deal with Turukkean refugees coming from the east and fleeing a war with Guteans ; events which are also mentioned in the much larger archives found in Mari on the Syrian Euphrates.