The first volume in the CZAP Report series explores the origins of sedentism and increasing resource management in Southwest Asia, and associated developments in social, cultural and ritual practices through the Early Neolithic sites of Sheikh-e Abad and Jani.

Returning to Bestansur for a third season in spring 2013, CZAP continued to explore the nature and scale of the Neolithic settlement. With a large team, five trenches were excavated and extensively sampled for scientific analysis of this early …

CZAP Doctoral Theses de Groene, D. 2022. Animal management during the transition from mobile hunting and gathering to sedentary agriculture in the Eastern Fertile Crescent and the Caspian Sea Littoral.

CZAP aims to make all our research open access, including publications and the underlying data. This archive contains the core data records from the investigations at Bestansur, Shimshara and Zarzi between 2012 and 2017.

The aim of the Central Zagros Archaeological Project (CZAP) is to investigate the nature of neolithisation in this key zone during the Early Holocene, by fieldwork and research at sites in the higher and lower Zagros, including Sheikh-e Abad and Jani in Iran, and Zarzi, Bestansur and Shimshara in Iraq.

You can find out more about our investigations and our preliminary results by downloading our Archive Reports below. Members of the CZAP team compiled their reports following each field season and presented their findings to the Sulaimaniya Directorate of Antiquities and Heritage.

CZAP research is developing an integrated ecological and contextual approach to the study of domestication, and the roles of hunting and gathering within early sedentary settlements. A major focus is on the study of animal and plant remains, as well as molluscs.

Discover more about the new 5-year phase of the project, supported by the European Research Council: MENTICA.

The CZAP team undertook section cleaning and interdisciplinary sampling in summer 2012, in order to investigate Neolithic ecology, society and activity at the site. This initial phase of rescue work on the eastern edge of the mound revealed an Early Neolithic terrace cut into a natural spur, which represents the earliest evidence for occupation ...

The aim of this project is to generate community-scale, inter-disciplinary insights into the Early Neolithic transition, through analysis of contextualised data from excavations at three archaeological sites in the eastern Fertile Crescent (EFC) of western Iran and eastern Iraq, a core area of early transition to farming-herding.