Scavi e ricerche a Tell Zurghul, l’antica Nigin, in Iraq: formazione e sviluppo di un centro urbano della Mesopotamia meridionale dal V al III millennio a.C.

Since 2014, the Italian Archaeological Mission in Nigin has been conducting excavation campaigns at Tell Zurghul/Nigin, 7 km south‐east of Tell al‐Hiba/Lagash, in the province of Dhi Qar, southern Iraq. The excavations clarified the period of occupation of the settlement between the mid‐5th and the end of the 3rd millennium BCE, when the city was finally destroyed and never reoccupied extensively. The prehistoric phases of the site are significant for the presence of a sequence of public buildings (probably of a temple nature), which point to the existence of organised and complex forms of settlement already in the 5th millen‐ nium BCE and the significant phenomenon of the first urbanisation in the 4th millennium BCE. The analysis of the presence and extent of occupational levels dating back to the beginning of the 3rd millennium BCE and, above all, the identification of ancient levels from the 3rd millennium BCE (Jemdet Nasr Period) show how the city developed over time and played an important role well before the rulers of the First Dynasty of Lagash in the mid‐3rd millennium BCE.