The Eastern Fertile Crescent region of western Iran and eastern Iraq
hosted major developments in the transition from hunter-forager to
farmer-herder lifestyles through the Early Neolithic period, 10,000-7000
BC. Within the scope of the Central Zagros Archaeological Project,
excavations have been conducted since 2012 at two Early Neolithic sites
in the Kurdistan region of Iraq: Bestansur and Shimshara. Bestansur
represents an early stage in the transition to sedentary, farming life,
where the inhabitants pursued a mixed strategy of hunting, foraging,
herding and cultivating, maximising the new opportunities afforded by
the warmer, wetter climate of the Early Holocene. They also constructed
substantial buildings of mudbrick, including a major building with a
minimum of 65 human individuals, mainly infants, buried under its floor
in association with hundreds of beads. These human remains provide new
insights into mortuary practices, demography, diet and disease during
the early stages of sedentarisation. The material culture of Bestansur
and Shimshara is rich in imported items such as obsidian, carnelian and
sea-shells, indicating the extent to which Early Neolithic communities
were networked across the Eastern Fertile Crescent and beyond. This
volume includes final reports by a large-scale interdisciplinary team on
all aspects of the results from excavations at Bestansur and Shimshara,
through application of state-of-the-art scientific techniques, methods
and analyses. The net result is to re-emphasise the enormous
significance of the Eastern Fertile Crescent in one of the most
important episodes in human history: the Neolithic transition.
The Ancient World Online: The Early Neolithic of the Eastern Fertile Crescent: Excavations at Bestansur and Shimshara, Iraqi Kurdistan
