Archaeology breakthrough as 3,800-year-old discoveries cast new light on ancient site

Life in the ancient Bronze Age city of Kurd Qaburstan, an ancient Mesopotamian site in present-day , has long been a mystery to due to limited research and a lack of historical records. 

However, new discoveries – including clay tablets with ancient cuneiform writing, a game board, and large structural remains – may be the key to uncovering the site’s secrets. 

Tiffany Earley-Spadoni, an associate professor of history at UCF, and a team of researchers have been carefully uncovering culturally significant discoveries from around 1,800 BC.

Early research indicates that some of the findings provide a greater insight into the people who lived there and the important events they faced. 

A significant portion of human development and may be traced back to the ancient civilisation of Mesopotamia and the Kurd Qaburstan site, which is located in the Erbil region of northeast Iraq.

The clay tablets – which are engraved with the earliest-known using wedge-shaped marks to represent syllables and words – are to be studied, including identifying people’s names, word choice and writing styles. 

It is hoped that scholars will soon be able to better understand literacy in the region and the city’s cultural identity, explained Earley-Spadoni in her . They could also reveal important details about the city’s connections with its neighbours during the Middle Bronze Age. 

“We hope to find even more historical records that will help us tell the story of [the city] from the perspective of its own people rather than relying only on accounts written by their enemies,” Earley-Spadoni said. 

“While we know a great deal about the development of writing in southern Iraq, far less is known about literacy in northern Mesopotamian cities, especially near Erbil where Kurd Qaburstan is located.”

Mesopotamia is a historical region of West Asia, situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent in the . Today, the region includes parts of present-day Iran, Turkey, Syria and Kuwait.

It is recognised as the cradle of some of the world’s earliest civilisations and as having inspired some of the most important developments in human history, such as the invention of the wheel, the planting of the first cereal crops, mathematics, and . 

Her work is based in two areas – the northwest residential neighbourhoods and a newly discovered lower town palace – which was proposed to exist based on findings made in 2022.

Research technologies such as magnetometry allowed them to look through the ground to see architectural plans and help excavate the site. 

Excavations in the palace have also revealed monumental architecture, human remains and evidence of destruction, suggesting a significant dramatic event such as ancient warfare Earley-Spadoni revealed. 

The northwest neighbourhoods, meanwhile, have unveiled including everyday items like cups and plates as well as animal bones – suggesting that residents enjoyed a varied diet of domesticated meat and wild game. 

This level of dietary diversity is unexpected for non-elite populations in Mesopotamian cities and may challenge established ideas about sharp divisions between the elite and nonelite lifestyles in these ancient cities, 

“The focus of the research is the organization of ancient cities, and it’s specifically the organization of Kurd Qaburstan,” Earley-Spadoni said. “You may have heard of King Hammurabi, who erected the famous law code. So, this is about that same time, almost 4,000 years ago. 

“We decided that this would be an interesting place to investigate what it was like to be an everyday person in a city during the Middle , which has been an understudied topic. People like to excavate palaces and temples, and very few residential areas have been excavated.”