THE PIEDMONT REGION ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROJECT. NEW ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROSPECTS ON THE ZAGROS’ FOOTHILLS IN THE KURDISTAN REGION OF IRAQ

This dissertation investigates long-term human occupation and landscape use in the northern Zagros piedmont through the Piedmont Region Archaeological Project (PiRAP) conducted in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Situated between the Mesopotamian lowlands and the northern Iraqi Zagros Mountains, this landscape has long remained underrepresented in archaeological research, which has traditionally focused on the wider plains. As a result, mountainous environments have played only a limited role in broader discussions of settlement development and human–environment interaction in Southwest Asia. The principal aim of this research is to reconstruct patterns of occupation and landscape exploitation across a long chronological sequence extending from the Lower Palaeolithic to the Ottoman period. More broadly, the study seeks to clarify the role of mountains within regional settlement systems and to assess the extent to which environmental factors influenced the location of human activities through time. To address these questions, the dissertation adopts a survey methodology specifically designed for mountainous environments, integrating hydrological, geological, and geomorphological features into field strategies and analytical procedures. This approach is combined with artefact analysis, historical sources, spatial statistics, and landscape modelling. The results of the PiRAP survey consisted in the documentation of more than 300 archaeological sites across approximately 175 km². The evidence includes over thirty site types spanning an exceptionally broad chronological horizon. These data constitute the first comprehensive diachronic archaeological dataset for this sector of the northern Zagros piedmont. The dissertation is structured around two complementary lines of investigation. The first examines settlement patterns through time, analysing changes in site distribution, density, typology, and continuity of occupation while contextualising the archaeological evidence within wider regional historical trajectories. The second explores relationships between human communities and the physical landscape through a series of spatial analyses designed to evaluate movement and connectivity across the study area. Together, these methods integrate archaeological and environmental datasets within a unified interpretative framework. The results demonstrate that the Atrush Valley and the mountains object of this study were a thriving and dynamic environment that witnessed repeated and diverse forms of human activity over millennia. Although settlement strategies varied considerably through time, the analyses reveal the persistent importance of the interaction between hydrological resources, geological formations, and geomorphological conditions in shaping patterns of occupation. At the same time, the evidence highlights the capacity of human communities to adapt to changing environmental, economic, and political circumstances through different forms of landscape exploitation. The principal contributions of this dissertation are both methodological and historical. It develops a new framework for the archaeological investigation of mountainous landscapes while providing the first long-term reconstruction of settlement dynamics in this sector of the northern Zagros piedmont. By adopting a strategy tailored to complex topographies, the PiRAP survey addresses the longstanding underrepresentation of upland environments in Southwest Asian archaeology and demonstrates that this imbalance reflects issues of visibility and methodological bias rather than an absence of past human activity. More broadly, the research contributes not only to the archaeology of northern Mesopotamia but also to wider debates concerning the role of mountainous landscapes in long-term processes of cultural development