3,000-yr-old vase fragment found in Iraqi Kurdistan

The 3,000 year old vase fragment was discovered by a farmer in Koya,

in what is today Iraq's Kurdistan Region [Credit: NRT]

TANN

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A farmer in the town of Koya, east of Iraqi Kurdistan Region’s capital city Erbil, recently stumbled upon a 3,000-year-old artefact, in what has become a commonplace occurrence in the archaeologically-rich region.Director of Koya’s archaeology administration, Sarkawt Sofi, confirmed to NRT the vase fragment dates back three millennia.“This artefact is the outer part of a vase dating back three thousand years,” Sofi said, adding that it belongs to the middle Assyrian period.The fragment was found in the village of Shilla, located 4 kilometres east of Koya. Shilla is the site of a major archaeological area inside the Kurdistan Region and houses one of the oldest citadels.The Kurdistan Region has over 1,300 known archaeological sites, and one of the most famous sites is the Erbil citadel – considered the oldest, continuously inhabited settlement in the world.Another site is the Shanidar cave, located north of Erbil. There, a group of archaeologists discovered and excavated the remains of a group of Neanderthal skeletons.Museums in Sulaimani and Erbil have extensive collections of antiquities, statues and carvings found across the region.