Recent data from the sites of Girdi Qala and Logardan (Sulaymaniyah Province, Iraqi Kurdistan) are starting to change the picture of Uruk culture expansion. In the central Zagros piedmont, this phenomenon began as early as the south-Mesopotamian Early Uruk (local Late Chalcolithic 2). At Girdi Qala, the Uruk presence is documented by several firing structures which show that Uruk pottery was made on-site by resident craftsmen. At Logardan, different architectural phases of a large monumental complex have been identified on a wide mud-brick terrace in a dominant position, on the edge of the natural hill. Both the craft area and the monumental constructions date back to the beginning of the 4th millennium BCE, as demonstrated by the pottery assemblage, closely similar to the Early Uruk repertoire from Eridu or Susa. Nevertheless, during the first half of the 4th millennium BCE, the area did not yield materials belonging exclusively to south-Mesopotamian Uruk settlers. On the contrary, at Girdi Qala and Logardan, as also in the whole region east of the Tigris River, material culture documents above all a widespread presence of indigenous populations, who had very close relations with Uruk people since the beginning of the 4th millennium. These discoveries lead us to revise traditional conceptions of the Uruk expansion, based on the simplistic dichotomy between local populations and southern settlers. In the same way, several questions raise about nature and reasons of the so-called ‘colonial’ phenomenon, that was rooted in south-Mesopotamian social and economic dynamics.