Kheit Qasim

Présentation du site

Intensively explored by the French Archaeological Delegation in Iraq (Jean-Daniel and Chantal Forest) between 1978 and 1980 as part of salvage works before the construction of the Hamrim dam on the Diyala river, the sites of Kheit Qasim I, II and III yielded an Early Bronze cemetery (3rd millennium) for the first, an associated monumental construction for the second (unexcavated) and an Obeid village (late 6th-5th millennium) for the third. The cemetery has been the subject of a preliminary publication (in J.-D. Forest, Les pratiques funéraires en Mésopotamie du 5e millénaire au début du 3e, Paris, ERC, 1983), while the Obeid site has yet to be published. The excavation of both domestic and collective sites in these locations have renewed our knowledge of the Northern Obeid and shown, along with the British excavations at Tell Madhhur, that the tripartite plan was by no means peculiar to religious buildings, or those claimed to be so.