A Preliminary Assessment of the Halaf and Ubaid Horizons in the Eastern Tigris Area: The Case of Helawa in the Erbil Plain, Kurdistan Region of Iraq

This paper offers a preliminary overview of the Halaf (5900-5300 BCE) and Ubaid (5300- 4700/4500 BCE) occupations at Helawa, a multi-period site located in the south-western Erbil Plain in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq which has been investigated since 2013 by the MAIPE project of the University of Milan. The stratigraphic evidence from Step Trench B and Operation C together with the Halaf and Ubaid ceramic assemblages is reviewed and contextualised within the wider framework of the Eastern Tigris region in Northern Mesopotamia. The Halaf and Ubaid occupations revealed at Helawa provide renewed evidence for the Erbil area, previously poorly known in this regard, and offer a case study for the examination of the dynamics of social change which occurred in the region around the mid-6th millennium BCE.