Archaeological digs unearths new details of 4,000-year-old city in Iraq

An Iraqi-Russian team of archaeologists completed on April 29 the first archaeological soundings of a previously unexcavated ancient settlement about 4,000 years old in Dhi Qar governorate in southern Iraq.

The Dhi Qar governorate is home to more than 1,200 archaeological sites, including Ur with its great Ziggurat dating from the Sumerian period.

Soundings are the first phase of an archaeological investigation that involve digging test  pits to determine the composition of cultural deposits under the surface.

Alexei Jankowski-Diakonoff, head of the Russian excavation mission, told Al-Monitor, “This site, a mound of about 47 hectares [116 acres] slightly elevated upon the surrounding floodplain, conceals one of the most important ancient cities of what is now called Sulaibiyah. During at least four millennia, from the Ubaid period until Neo-Babylonian times, a branch of the Euphrates was flowing there, that the ancients called ‘the river of the Eridu plain.’”