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Recent palaeoenvironmental, historical, and archaeological investigations, primarily consisting of site reconnaissance, in the Shahrizor region within the province of Sulaymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan are bringing to light new information on the region's social and socio-ecological development. This paper summarises two seasons of work by researchers from German, British, Dutch, and Iraqi-Kurdish institutions working in the survey region. Palaeoenvironmental data have determined that during the Pleistocene many terraces developed which came to be occupied by a number of the larger tell sites in the Holocene. In the sedimentary record, climatic and anthropogenic patterns are noticeable, and alluviation has affected the recovery of archaeological remains through site burial in places. Historical data show the Shahrizor shifting between periods of independence, either occupied by one regional state or several smaller entities, and periods that saw the plain's incorporation within large empires, often in a border position. New archaeological investigations have provided insight into the importance of the region as a transit centre between Western Iran and northern and southern Mesopotamia, with clear material culture links recovered. Variations between periods' settlement patterns and occupations are also beginning to emerge.

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This article traces the interactions between Assyria and Urartu, military and otherwise, and their impact on the neighboring Anatolian kingdoms, especially the chain of buffer states situated between Assyria's northern and Urartu's southern border. To the Assyrian mind, Urartu was on one hand an anti-Assyria, the archenemy and eternal temptation for its vassals, and on the other a mirror image, a kind of Assyria in the mountains; inscriptions and archival materials alike attribute Assyrian concepts to Biainili, for example, by superimposing the Assyrian administrative structure onto the other country, referring to provinces and governors and using various specifically Assyrian titles for Urartian officials. This tends to promote the idea that the two kingdoms were very much alike, but the fact that climatic conditions and the economic basis of Assyria and Urartu were very different should make it clear that this assumption is implausible. The various states situated in the border region between Assyria and Urartu, too, had their own distinct identities and traditions.