In the vast Navkur plain near the city of Rovia in Iraqi Kurdistan, a team of archaeologists from the University of Udine has made exceptional discoveries at the Asingeran and Kanispan sites.
These excavations, carried out as part of the Asingeran Excavation Project in collaboration with the Directorate of Antiquities of Dohuk, have revealed valuable evidence about the first agricultural societies and their transformation processes into more complex communities.
At Kanispan, a Neolithic settlement from the 7th millennium BCE, evidence of early forms of pottery production combined with the manipulation of cultivated cereals was found. This discovery, dating back more than 8,000 years, provides unprecedented insights into the subsistence techniques of prehistoric societies.

Meanwhile, at the nearby Asingeran site, two monumental structures were identified: the Rectangular Brick Building and the White Building. These buildings, constructed between 6,000 and 7,000 years ago on a hill, were likely associated with local elites, reflecting the beginning of social hierarchization.
The project’s main goal is to uncover how early agricultural societies, characterized by an egalitarian structure, evolved into more complex settlements marked by labor specialization and social stratification. This model of transformation is considered a precursor to modern societies.
The findings will be analyzed in specialized laboratories through ceramic, paleobotanical, and DNA studies. These investigations are being conducted in collaboration with the universities of Bologna and Padua, as well as the National Museum of Denmark. The results will help reconstruct the social fabric of the region’s earliest communities and their agricultural strategies, shedding light on the subsistence and social organization systems in the Navkur plain.

The Asingeran site, identified in 2013 during the PARTeN project, offers a unique case study for analyzing territorial occupation dynamics and the genesis of socio-economic complexity in the Upper Eastern Tigris region.
This settlement shows a continuous occupation from the Ceramic Neolithic to the early 3rd millennium BCE, with a significant period of reoccupation in the 2nd millennium BCE. In addition to the two large buildings mentioned, the area has revealed traces of Ottoman-era dwellings (1500–1800 CE), including small stone houses, hearths, and domestic ovens.
According to Professor Marco Iamoni, director of the project and an expert in Eastern Mediterranean and Western Asian archaeology, the findings at these sites are extraordinary. At Kanispan, the early evidence of ceramic production and cereal cultivation marks a milestone in prehistoric archaeology, while at Asingeran, the large buildings point to the existence of complex social structures from very early periods.
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