The reports given below cover excavation work in Iraq during 1976. As in previous years the collection is not entirely complete, the chief omissions being the Iraqi work at Nimrud and Nineveh, which will be included in our next compilation to enable reports to appear first in Sumer. Unless otherwise specified, the information on each site has been kindly provided by the director of the excavations, and the final version generally checked by him.

Since this is the fifth collection of reports it seemed a convenient moment at which to take stock, and we therefore include among the reports all the sites covered by us in the period 1971–76 together with a bibliography for those seasons. We do not claim that this is complete, but with the help of the excavators we do hope to have given the main bulk of publication, and to be fairly up to date; sometimes we have given an imprecise reference which we could not confirm, rather than omit it altogether. Although the bibliography is only intended to cover work executed in our five-year period, we have occasionally, and unsystematically, listed publications of earlier seasons.