Tepe Gawra

   An ancient town in northern Mesopotamia, situated about 15 miles (24 km) northeast of modern Mosul, and one of the most important archaeological sites in the Near East. (The term tepe is the Persian and Kurdish equivalent of the Arabic word tell and describes a mound of debris built up over time by successive layers of human habitation.) Polish-born American archaeologist Ephraim Speiser discovered the site in 1927 and subsequently published an enlightening two-volume description of his digs there, entitled Excavations at Tepe Gawra. He found that the first town on the site rose around 6000 B.c.or so. Between that time and about 1800 b.c., during the old Babylonian period, Tepe Gawra supported twenty-four layers of habitation, each representing a new town or village erected atop the ruins of the older ones. Thus, the site provides scholars with a steady progression of evidence about the development of agriculture and other aspects of local culture from the prehistoric Halaf and Ubaidian periods through the historic Sumerian centuries.

   Among the more important discoveries Speiser made at Tepe Gawra was a series of graves containing human remains. A number of the bodies wore fine jewelry, including necklaces, bracelets, and other items made of jade, ivory, shell, turquoise, gold, silver, and electrum, an alloy of gold and silver. One tomb alone yielded some twenty-five thousand assorted jewelry beads. These finds suggest that the local nobility were very well-to-do. The excavators also unearthed three temples and a large round house that may have been used as a community center and weapons storage.

   See also: Halaf culture; Ubaidian culture