Tell Begum (also Gird-i Begum) is a tell, or archaeological settlement mound, in Iraq. It is located near Said Sadiq in the Shahrizor Plain in the Sulaymaniyah Governorate of Iraqi Kurdistan.
Archaeology The site] consists of a steep conical Upper Mound about 20 meters high and an elongated Lower Mound. Overall the site covers an area of hectares. The site was first investigated in 1960 by a team of Iraqi archaeologists led by Muhammed Ali Mustafa, prompted by construction of the Darbandikhan Dam. Work consisted of a step trench on the Upper Mound and a sondage on the Lower Mound. Results of the excavation were not published.Hijara, I., "The Halaf Period in Northern Mesopotamia", London: NABU Publications, 1997 After a surface survey in 2012 (as part of the Shahrizor Survey Project) a new excavation was carried out in 2013 by archaeologists from Leiden University. This project reopened the older excavations and also conducted limited new excavations. Three charcoal samples were collected from the Halaf layer (2.2–3.2 meters below the surface, Lower Town) and produced radiocarbon dates (calibration - INTCAL20) of 5481–5329 BC, 5387–5215 BC, and 5479–5307 BC. Odaka, T., et al., "From the 7th to the 6th Millennium BC in Iraqi Kurdistan: A Local Ceramic Horizon in the Shahrizor Plain", Paléorient 45(2), pp. 67–83, 2019Odaka, Takahiro, and Olivier Nieuwenhuyse, "Halaf pottery in the east end: Insights from Tell Begum, Iraqi Kurdistan", Orient 57, pp. 113-124, 2022 In 2017 a geomagnetic survey was performed on 4 of the sites in the Tell Begum Cluster, north, northeast and south of Tell Begum. THe northern site was shown to be an Early Bronze Age settlement.Scheiblecker, Marion, et al., "Magnetic Investigations in the Shahrizor Plain, Iraqi Kurdistan – The Tell Begum Cluster", Proceedings of the 11th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East: Vol. 2: Field Reports. Islamic Archaeology, edited by Adelheid Otto et al., 1st ed., Harrassowitz Verlag, pp. 373–84, 2020 In 2022 excavations were conducted by the Freie Universität Berlin. Finds included beveled rim bowls, diagnostic pottery of the Uruk period. Pollock, Susan, et al., "Gird-i Begum - Report on the 2022 Excavations", Iraq 86, pp. 319-355, 2024
History The oldest excavated layers date to Late Halaf period. At that time there was a number of small settlements in the area around Tell Begum. Together with the Main Mound and Lower Mound this is call the Tell Begum cluster.Scheiblecker, Marion, Simone Mühl, and Jörg WE Faßbinder, "MAGNETIC INVESTIGATIONS IN THE SHAHRIZOR PLAIN, IRAQI KURDISTAN." ББК (Т) 63.4 В52, pp. 216-223, 2018) (After an apparent hiatus in occupation during the Ubaid period, the site was resettled in the Late Chalcolithic 1 (LC1) period and continued to be in use into the Late Chalcolithic 3 (LC3) period (4300-3600 BC). Late Bronze Age, Iron Age/Achaemenid and Medieval occupation has also been attested. Nieuwenhuyse, Olivier, et al., "Revisiting Tell Begum: A Prehistoric Site in the Shahrizor Plain, Iraqi Kurdistan", Iraq 78, pp. 103-135, 2016 Though no Ubaid period occupational remains were found, pottery sherd finds indicated that Ubaid occupation may lay deeper in the Upper Mound layers as yet unexcavated.[]Kopanias, Konstantinos, John MacGinnis, and Jason Ur, "Archaeological projects in the Kurdistan region in Iraq", pp. 12, 2015
See also Chogha Gavaneh Cities of the ancient Near East Chronology of the ancient Near East Jebel Aruda Tell al-Hawa Grai Resh
References
Further reading Carter, Robert, et al., "The Later Prehistory of the Shahrizor Plain, Kurdistan Region of Iraq: Further Investigations at Gurga Chiya and Tepe Marani", Iraq 82, pp. 41–71, 2020 D’Anna, Maria Bianca, Olivier Nieuwenhuyse, and Simone Mühl, "Un air de famille. Preliminary Observations on the Ubaid and Late Chalcolithic Horizon of the Shahrizor Plain (Iraqi Kurdistan)", Late Chalcolithic Northern Mesopotamia in Context, Brepols Online, pp. 51–62, 2022 Lewis, Michael, "Social Transformations and Ceramic Production during the 4th millennium BCE in the Shahrizor Plain and Bazyan Valley, Iraqi Kurdistan. A Geochemical and Petrographic Study", Dissertation, 2023 Odaka, Takahiro, "Tell Begum, Shaikh Marif and Shakar Tepe: The Late Neolithic Pottery in the Shahrizor Plain, Iraqi Kurdistan", The Epipalaeolithic and Neolithic in the Eastern Fertile Crescent, Routledge, pp. 261–278, 2023