Ginnig is a tell (archaeological settlement mound) in

Upper Mesopotamia Upper Mesopotamia is the name used for the uplands and great outwash plain of northwestern Iraq, northeastern Syria and southeastern Turkey, in the northern Middle East. Since the early Muslim conquests of the mid-7th century, the region has be ...

(modern Nineveh Governorate,

Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...

) that was occupied at the transition from the

PPNB Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) is part of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, a Neolithic culture centered in upper Mesopotamia and the Levant, dating to years ago, that is, 8800–6500 BC. It was typed by British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon dur ...

to the

Pottery Neolithic In the archaeology of Southwest Asia, the Late Neolithic, also known as the Ceramic Neolithic or Pottery Neolithic, is the final part of the Neolithic period, following on from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic and preceding the Chalcolithic. It is some ...

History of research

The site was discovered in 1986 during an

archaeological field survey In archaeology, survey or field survey is a type of field research by which archaeologists (often landscape archaeologists) search for archaeological sites and collect information about the location, distribution and organization of past human ...

directed by

Tony Wilkinson Tony James Wilkinson, FBA (14 August 1948 – 25 December 2014) was a British archaeologist and academic, specialising in landscape archaeology and the Ancient Near East. He was Professor of Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh from 20 ...

. It was excavated during a single season in 1987-1988 under the direction of Stuart Campbell, during which just over 80 m² was excavated.

The site and its environment

Ginnig is located in Nineveh Governorate (

). The site measures some 80 by 100 m and extends ca. 50 cm above the surrounding plain. Excavation has shown that its depth is at least 2.2 m.

History of occupation

A small excavation trench was dug down to virgin soil. ''Tauf'' walls were found in the deepest levels, but no pottery. The excavation revealed an almost complete building in the top-most, most recent level at Ginnig, with scant evidence for several other buildings. The complete building was constructed of ''tauf'' walls and consisted of multiple small, irregular rooms . It is possible that the building was built agglutinatively by adding rooms one at a time. Some of the walls may not have extended up to the roof. Small doorways gave access to the rooms and these are parallelled at other contemporary sites such as Sotto and

Yarim Tepe Yarim Tepe is an archaeological site of an early farming settlement that goes back to about 6000 BC. It is located in the Sinjar valley some 7km southwest from the town of Tal Afar in northern Iraq. The site consists of several hills reflecting ...

. Based on the artefacts that were recovered from the rooms, it has been suggested that each room may have been used for separate domestic activities. Animal bone and skull remains found at the bottom of the walls and in pits dug into the floors of the rooms have been interpreted as ritual deposits related to the "opening" and "closing" of the building. Small quantities of pottery were found in this level. The lithic material from the site seems to indicate that Ginnig was occupied from the

to the

. The lithics are similar to those recovered from nearby sites such as Qermez Dere and

M'lefaat M'lefaat is a Tell (archaeology), tell, or archaeological settlement mound, in Upper Mesopotamia that was occupied during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A. History of research The site was first excavated by Robert John Braidwood, Robert Braidwood i ...

. The pottery from the latest level has been described as a "monotone prototype version of the now well-known proto-Hassuna assemblage". The site is important as it one of only a few in Upper Mesopotamia where early ceramic material was excavated in combination with earlier, aceramic material.

References

{{Neolithic Southwest Asia 1986 archaeological discoveries Archaeological sites in Iraq Neolithic sites of Asia Nineveh Governorate Pre-Pottery Neolithic B