SHAKHI KORA, IRAQ—Researchers have unearthed public buildings dating to the fourth millennium b.c. at a site in northern Iraq’s Kurdistan region, according to a statement released by the University of Glasgow. The team, led by archaeologist Claudia Glatz of the University of Glasgow, said the structures show how the inhabitants of Shakhi Kora, an urban settlement of some 20 acres, temporarily adopted governing institutions associated with the earliest cities of southern Mesopotamia. Among the finds were copious amounts of beveled rim bowls—roughly made uniform vessels found in early Mesopotamian cities that may have been used by people in power to provide food rations to workers during communal meals. Analysis of residues on the bowls indicates they were used to serve meat stews, a resource likely controlled by Shakhi Kora’s rulers. The site was abandoned in the late fourth millennium b.c. and the region’s inhabitants reverted to living in small-scale settlements, suggesting they may have actively rejected centralized rule. “This reaffirms that top-down, hierarchical forms of government were not inevitable in the development of early complex societies,” said Glatz. “Local communities found ways to resist and reject tendencies towards centralized power.” Read the original scholarly article about this research in Antiquity. To learn more about excavations in Iraqi Kurdistan, go to “Erbil Revealed.”
