The remains of ancient Samarra were first excavated between 1911 and 1914 by the German Archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld. Since 1946, the notebooks, letters, unpublished excavation reports and photographs have been in the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
Though the present archaeological site covered by mudbrick ruins is vast, the site of Samarra was only lightly occupied in ancient times, apart from theChalcolithic Samarran Culture (ca 5500�4800 BC) identified at the rich site ofTell Sawwan, where evidence of irrigation�including flax� establishes the presence of a prosperous settled culture with a highly organized social structure. The culture is primarily known by its finely-made pottery decorated against dark-fired backgrounds with stylized figures of animals and birds and geometric designs. This widely-exported type of pottery, one of the first widespread, relatively uniform pottery styles in the Ancient Near East, was first recognized at Samarra. The Samarran Culture was the precursor to theMesopotamian culture of the Ubaid period.
A city of Sur-marrati, refounded by Sennacherib in 690 BC according to a stelein the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, is insecurely identified with a fortifiedAssyrian site of Assyrian at al-Huwaysh, on the Tigris opposite to modern Samarra.
Ancient toponyms for Samarra noted by the Samarra Archaeological Survey are Greek Souma (Ptolemy V.19, Zosimus III, 30), Latin Sumere, a fort mentioned during the retreat of the army of Julian the Apostate in 364 AD (Ammianus Marcellinus XXV, 6, 4), and Syriac Sumra (Hoffmann, Ausz�ge, 188; Michael the Syrian, III, 88), described as a village.
The possibility of a larger population was offered by the opening of the Qatul al-Kisrawi, the northern extension of theNahrawan Canal which drew water from the Tigris in the region of Samarra, attributed by Yaqut (Mu`jam see under "Qatul") to the Sassanid king Khosrau I Anushirvan (531�578). To celebrate the completion of
