The Sapienza project in Jebel Zawa was established in 2022 to explore an area particularly rich in significant archaeological evidence from prehistoric and protohistoric phases.
The Jebel Zawa is a mountain with contrasting features: the northern side, which faces the city of Dohuk, has very steep flanks, and it is home to the famous Maltai reliefs. Amusement parks stand on its summit, reachable by cable car. The southern slope has short valleys cut by wadis with lush vegetation and wildlife, especially near its springs. The mountain’s geology is characterised by the Pila Spi formation, which comprises thick limestone layers rich in excellent-quality chert nodules. Chert is a very hard and compact sedimentary rock. Thanks to its characteristics and good workability, it was one of the most widely used lithic raw materials for crafting artefacts until historical times.
The millennial occupation of the Jebel is a result of the abundance of its natural resources: water, chert, and, in the past, even wood.
The chert tools found on the mountain summit and in a large shelter in the Gali Kahni valley (site 1022) indicate that Neanderthal groups were already frequenting the area around 60,000 years ago.
The most significant discovery is undoubtedly that of the flint mines and related processing areas, which date back to the 4th-3rd millennium BCE. The steep slopes of the central valleys of Jebel are dotted with tunnels initially carved by water and later expanded by ancient miners to extract the chert blocks used to produce large blades. These artefacts are attested at several sites in the eastern Mediterranean and southwestern Asia, and their manufacturing required specific equipment, specialised technical skills and adequate raw materials that were not universally available. The blades were used in agricultural and craft work.
Thanks to the systematic survey of Jebel’s valleys, we have been able to reconstruct the organisation of mining activity. The presence of niches created to extract chert nodules identifies the open-air quarries. In the natural tunnels dug by water, the miners created large rooms, leaving rock pillars to support the ceiling where necessary. Inside the mining galleries, abandoned chert nodules can still be found on the ground, and numerous traces of digging tools are visible along the walls, often corresponding to the nodules that were to be extracted. Miners selected and roughed out the extracted blocks near the extraction areas and then processed them in proper craft workshops where they manufactured the large blades. We have identified some of these specialised sites on the Jebel itself (site 980) or in the villages of the nearby plain (sites 48 and 50), discoveries that confirm the close relationship between settlements and mining activities. Future excavations will clarify the work organisation within this significant and unique mining complex and allow us to frame the phenomenon within a precise chronological framework.
