Banahilk mound

Gird Banahilk is a low mound about 5 m high with a roughly ovoid plan of about 100 x 159 m. It is less than a mile southeast of Diyana in the plain north of Rawanduz.

The plain itself is about 8 x 15 km in breadth and length, and is rolling and well watered. The high peaks of Kurdish mountains surround it. Adjacent is an airplane landing strip built by the British and their Assyrian Levies in the 1920's and later used by the Iraqi army. "There are traces of a gun emplacement on the summit of the site, three or four silt-trenches, and a large cut on the northeast slope from which earth had been taken. The catalogue of materials from Banahilk includes painted pottery of the Halafian style. Restricted as our testing necessarily was, it nevertheless gave a more rounded picture of all categories of a Halafian assemblage than is otherwise available in the literature."