Lecture

Join us for LCANE's Spring Seminar Series highlighting new research. This week's speaker is Dr Glynnis Maynard.

Title: Transplants in the heartland after 612 BCE? ‘Post-Assyrian’ perspectives from the site of Qach Rresh in Iraqi Kurdistan

During the last century of the Neo-Assyrian empire (c.715-612 BCE), the Assyrian heartland in Northern Iraq underwent a dramatic reengineering of its environment, with an intensification of the agricultural hinterland and the redistribution of settlers and deportees into rural spaces between key urban centers. Yet what happened to this human project in the wake of imperial collapse? Since 2022, the Rural Landscapes of Iron Age Imperial Mesopotamia Project (RLIIM) has sought to add new evidence to the still murky picture of ‘Post-Assyrian’/late Iron Age III archaeology in the wider vicinity of ancient Arbela (modern Erbil) at the site of Qach Rresh. Excavation across the site has revealed its extended use from the 7th to 4th centuries BCE, beginning from an initial construction phase of buildings theorized to have been used to administer agropastoral production. In recent seasons, it is evident that occupants of the site quickly abandoned these buildings’ original intended function, instead using them as refuse dumps immediately or near-immediately following Assyrian collapse, with one building (Building A) being repaired and reinhabited after it had degraded for an unknown amount of time. Moreover, finds attributed to the Achaemenid cultural horizon reveal new material evidence for Achaemenid presence in Northern Iraq. This talk will situate Qach Rresh within its wider historical milieu to deliver new insights into Assyria’s ‘post-Assyrian’ heartland.

Online participation should be possible. Please sign up to receive a link via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lcane-seminar-series-new-research-tickets-1980393071989?aff=oddtdtcreator