Against the backdrop of the destruction of Iraqi heritage over the past quarter of a century, this article critically reviews key aspects of the current state of Iraq's cultural heritage, including damage to heritage buildings caused by Daesh in Iraq's second largest city, Mosul. We bring together Iraqi and non-Iraqi expertise in heritage, archaeology, and human rights law to frame our approach, building on the movement to link cultural diversity, heritage, and cultural rights. We emphasise the need for planning to enhance protection of Iraq's heritage, in particular through the preparation of inventories, the provision of resources for heritage education in schools and the development of Iraq's museum sector. Iraq's presence on the UNESCO World Heritage Lists needs to be enhanced, and the issues of illicit site looting and traffic in looted antiquities must be addressed within international contexts. Iraq's future accession as State Party to the 1999 Second Protocol to the 1954 Hague Convention is a priority in achieving these goals. The paper stresses the need for co-creation of heritage knowledge and a gender-sensitive human rights approach for the future of Iraq's globally significant cultural heritage.

The Erbil Plain Archaeological Survey (EPAS) investigates settlement and land use from the Neolithic to the present in the Erbil Governorate of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, which includes a large portion of the core of the Assyrian Empire. In seven field seasons, it has documented a broad settlement landscape in a region of great social and political importance, especially in the Bronze and Iron Ages, including 728 archaeological sites. Its field methodology combines traditional surface collection with the use of historical aerial and satellite photographs, mobile GIS, and UAV (drone) photogrammetry. Preliminary results show some unexpected patterns: a high density of culturally Uruk settlements in the fourth millennium B.C., variable urban morphologies in the Early Bronze Age; and large but low-density settlements at the end of the Sasanian period or the early Islamic period. The project is explicitly testing several hypotheses about centralized Neo-Assyrian landscape planning in the imperial core. These hypotheses appear to be confirmed, although the situation was more complex than in surrounding provinces, probably due to the longer history of continuous settlement.

No abstract

This study presents a first attempt at an archaeological topography of the city of Arbll (Arbela, Urbilum, Arbail). Arbll's large tell and citadel are among the most famous sites in northern Iraq, although research on the site has begun only recently. The study of the immediate hinterlands of the tell, complementary use of written sources, remote sensing and surveys offer a perspective on the extremely long-term evolution of the lower town, whose architectural remains have entirely disappeared under modern building development. Despite many lacunae in the data and a predominance of indirect hypotheses, the urban structure of Assyrian Arbail becomes comprehensible in the context of other Assyrian royal capitals. During the Islamic period, the city underwent a transformation, which merged the once prosperous Sasanian provincial capital with the expanding Muslim community.

No abstract