YUKARI DİCLE HAVZASI – AMBAR ÇAYI VADİSİ YERLEŞİM TARİHİ

The Ambar Dam, which is established in the Kocaköy District of Diyarbakır, will affect three mounds. Salvage excavations carried out in 2018 provide important data on the settlement history of the upper basin of Ambar Çayı. The soundings on the eastern skirt of Ambar Höyük brought out four levels of Medieval architecture. The material recovered from the soil agglomerated from the mound is dated to the Pottery Neolithic Period, the Middle Bronze Age, the New Assyrian period and Middle Ages. The settlement in Gre Fılla (Ambar I) had begun in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, and continued during the Neolithic period, and Kendale Hecala had been inhabited during the Pottery Neolithic period. Both mounds have been resettled in the Medieval Period.A "crested blade" and a "Byblos point" recovered among the surface soil in Gre Fılla date the earliest inhabitancy of the region in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B. "Early Mineral Tempered Ware" and "Dark Faced Burnished Ware", being produced in the 7th millennium BC, are numerous in all mounds. The "Light Coloured Straw Tempered" and "Dark Faced Burnished" pots produced in the Early Pottery Neolithic witnessed a continuous settlement in Gre Fılla. The sherds belonging to light coloured bowls decorated with incisions and red paint belong to the "Hassuna Pottery". "Husking Tray" fragments were also found together with these groups. In all three mounds, several sherds of the Halafian Painted Pottery, produced in the Late Neolithic Period have been found in all three mounds. In Kendale Hecala, Dark Faced Burnished Ware and painted vessels reflecting the characteristics of the early phase have been detected. Middle Halafian sherds have been identified in all mounds, and a Late Halafian sherd in Gre Fılla. All three mounds seem to have been abandoned after the Neolithic Age. The sherds dating to the Early Bronze Age IV, Middle Bronze Age, New Assyrian period and the Roman period have only been recovered in Ambar Höyük. All mounds provide sherds belonging to coarse common ware, unglazed moulded vessels with relief decoration, and green glazed pots dating to the 11th-14th centuries. An area of 2 km in radius around Ambar Höyük is a high agricultural area with deep water in the southern half, where Gre Fılla and Kendale Hecala are located, and is suitable for rain-fed agriculture and animal grazing in the northern half. All three mounds have been inhabited during the Neolithic period, suggesting these being very close to each other, a