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Bestansur Neolithic settlement

摘要: Comparison with other similar properties  Bestansur has unique significance in that there are no comparable sites on the World Heritage List nor on the Tentative List. In particular, Iraq’s current po

Comparison with other similar properties

  Bestansur has unique significance in that there are no comparable sites on the World Heritage List nor on the Tentative List. In particular, Iraq’s current portfolios of World Heritage Sites (x 4) and Tentative List sites (x 11) comprise exclusively historic period sites such as Babylon, Nineveh and Samarra. There is no representation of the globally significant prehistoric phases of Iraq’s past.

  Amongst Iraq’s neighbours, Iran has only two Bronze Age and no Early Neolithic sites in its World Heritage List (x 17) and Tentative List (x 51). The closest comparison to Bestansur is the Tentative List site of Tepe Sialk, but this site is more than 1000 years later than Bestansur and therefore does not represent the initial phase of the transition to village life. In central Turkey, the World Heritage List site of Çatalhöyük is a special example of a large Neolithic settlement which represents the second major phase of the Neolithic period, following the initial phase of settlement and domestication of plants and animals. Neither Tepe Sialk in Iran nor Çatalhöyük in Turkey are thus comparable to Bestansur in terms of representing the earliest stages of the Neolithic transition. In the Taurus mountain region of southeast Turkey, the Tentative List site of Göbeklitepe is a special example of an Early Neolithic cultic centre, but the site was abandoned by 8000 BC. If added to the Tentative List, Bestansur would be the sole representative from any Middle East country for the critical period 8000-7100 BC.

  For comparable sites not on the UNESCO lists, there are also extremely few candidates. Within Iraqi Kurdistan, the major Neolithic site of Jarmo, located 65 km northwest of Bestansur, was excavated in the mid-twentieth century by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Jarmo dates to the second major phase of the Neolithic period, from 7100 BC and later, and therefore does not represent the initial transition to settled life that Bestansur so richly illustrates. In the high Zagros mountains of western Iran, 150-200 km to the southeast of Bestansur, there are archaeological sites comparable in date and significance to Bestansur, including the Early Neolithic sites of Sheikh-e Abad, Asiab, Abdul Hosein, Ganj Dareh, East Chia Sabz and Chogha Golan, where human communities took the first steps in animal and plant domestication as well as in architectural experimentation. None of these sites has been proposed for the World Heritage Tentative List.

  The inclusion of Bestansur on the Tentative List and, in due course, on the World Heritage List, would represent a major step in recognising the deep-time significance of Iraq’s past in the earliest stages of one of the great transformations in human history, the transition from mobile hunting and foraging to settled farming and animal-herding.


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