Ricerc@Sapienza

The Paikuli Project began in 2006, after the 2nd Gulf war. In 2018 it won its first grant in the framework of the program "Grandi scavi d'Ateneo". Since the beginning, activities implemented in the Kurdish region of Iraq included both a scientific core - the study of the archaeology and epigraphy of the region - and a capacity building component, fostering best practices in the institutions dealing with cultural heritage. Activities included in this proposal focus on the site of Paikuli, a monument built by the Sasanian king Narseh (293-302 CE) carrying a long and historically important bilingual inscription. The first season of excavation, in 2006, was accompanied and followed by several documentation campaigns, both on-site and at the Slemani Museum. In 2012, in order to create an archaeological map of the area, the project started an intensive survey of the entire valley where the Paikuli complex lays. In the 2018 spring campaign the topographic documentation of the site and its environs was began and carried out to a significant extent in order to prepare the ground for a more in depth understanding of the site, through detailed on the ground archaeological surveys and stratigraphic excavations. In the 2018 campaigns the focus was on the documentation of the blocks laying about on the Paikuli hill and on topographic survey. The 2019 spring campaign has seen the start of stratigraphic excavation, while in June 2019 and in collaboration with MAECI and the Department of Antiquity of Sulaimaniyah, the Sapienza team opened at the Slemani Museum a new exhibition gallery to preserve and display to the inscribed blocks from Paikuli. Because of the pandemic emergency, 2020-2021 activities focused on the implementation of digital archives and GIS, which was done in Italy. Furthermore an exhibition titled 'The diadem of Narseh' and focused on the activities at Paikuli has been organized and exhibited. In June-July 2021 the activities in Kurdistan are resumed.