This article presents a newly discovered cuneiform text from the site of Üçtepe in Diyarbakır province in southeastern Turkey. The text bears a previously unknown inscription of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser I. While incomplete, it never-theless gives the most extensive lists of the conquests of Shalmaneser I yet known, including a number of previously unattested toponyms. This is in itself an important contribution to the historical documentation of the Middle Assyrian period. Furthermore, the fact that the text was written to record Shalmaneser’s rebuilding of the city wall of Sinamu allows us to propose that Üçtepe is to be identified with the site of ancient Šinamu, known to have been an important centre from the late third millennium BC and subsequently a regional capital in the provincial system of the Middle Assyrian empire. This is a significant advance on our previous understanding of the historical geography of the region. These issues are discussed in the context of the Middle Assyrian occupation of the Upper Tigris and the results of the archaeological exploration of recent decades.

This paper presents the results of the work of the new field initiative launched by the British Museum at the Darband-i Rania pass in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The pass is located at the northeastern corner of Lake Dokan, where, though now subsumed into the lake, the Lower Zab flows from the Peshdar into the Rania Plain. It is a strategic location on a major route from Mesopotamia into Iran, and control of both the road and the river must always have been important. The aim of the work, which commenced in autumn of 2016, is to explore a cluster of sites that commanded the pass, with a particular focus on the first millennium b.c. Excavation is being carried out principally at two sites: Qalatga Darband, a large fortified site at the western end of the pass, and Usu Aska, a fort inside the pass itself. The occupations of these two sites are predominantly Parthian and Assyrian respectively. Smaller operations have also been carried out at Murad Rasu, a multi-period site situated on a headland across the waters on the southern shore of Lake Dokan. The results have included the discovery at Qalatga Darband of a monumental complex built of stone and roofed with terracotta roof tiles containing the smashed remains of Hellenistic statuary. Other features indicative of Hellenistic material culture are Mediterranean-type oil-presses and Corinthian column bases and capitals. At Usu Aska remains are being uncovered of an Assyrian fortification of massive proportions.

The study of clay tokens in the Ancient Near East has focused, for the most part, on their role as antecedents to the cuneiform script. Starting with Pierre Amiet and Maurice Lambert in the 1960s the theory was put forward that tokens, or calculi, represent an early cognitive attempt at recording. This theory was taken up by Denise Schmandt-Besserat who studied a large diachronic corpus of Near Eastern tokens. Since then little has been written except in response to Schmandt-Besserat's writings. Most discussions of tokens have generally focused on the time period between the eighth and fourth millennium bc with the assumption that token use drops off as writing gains ground in administrative contexts. Now excavations in southeastern Turkey at the site of Ziyaret Tepe — the Neo-Assyrian provincial capital Tušhan — have uncovered a corpus of tokens dating to the first millennium bc. This is a significant new contribution to the documented material. These tokens are found in association with a range of other artefacts of administrative culture — tablets, dockets, sealings and weights — in a manner which indicates that they had cognitive value concurrent with the cuneiform writing system and suggests that tokens were an important tool in Neo-Assyrian imperial administration.

In 2012, the Erbil Plain Archaeological Survey (EPAS) conducted its first season of fieldwork. The project's goal is the complete mapping of the archaeological landscape of Erbil, with an emphasis on the Neo-Assyrian and Hellenistic periods. It will test the hypothesis that the Neo-Assyrian landscape was closely planned. This first report emphasizes the project's field methodology, especially the use of a variety of satellite remote sensing imagery. Our preliminary results suggest that the plain was part of the urbanized world of Mesopotamia, with new cities of the Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Sasanian era identified.