Until quite recently the most reliable evidence for the use of metal in northern Mesopotamia was dated from the 6th-5th millennia BC and was associated with the sites of Halaf, Hassuna, and the pre-Hassuna cultures of the Tell Sotto type. The 1979 excavation by Soviet archaeologists of the pre-ceramic Neolithic site of Tell Magzallia in the foothills of Jebel Sinjar found Mesopotamian metallurgy older by a millennium. The copper artifact was an awl of the 7th millennium BC. Metallographic, spectroscopic, and x-ray spectroscopic analyses were used to determine that this tool was cold-forged from native copper; silver, zinc, tin, lead, iron, bismuth, and nickel were present. The ore most probably came from the copper outcrops of the Anarak ore field in Iran (such as Talmessi). The Tell Magzallia find is similar to the earliest copper artifacts from the Middle East found in Ali Kosh, Tell Ramad, Çuyönü-Tepesi, and Çatal Hüyük both chronologically and technologically. The analyses show that metalworking in the Middle East originated and developed during the late 8th and 7th millennia BC as forging of native copper, the main sources of which were deposits in central Iran and eastern Turkey.