Elizabeth C. Stone and Paul Zimansky, "The Second and Third Seasons at Tell Abu Duwari, Iraq, " The Journal of Field Archaeology 21, 1994, 437-455. (original) (raw)

Cities in the Sand: The Archaeology of Urbanism in Mesopotamia (syllabus, 2017)

In recent years, the deliberate destruction of archaeological remains and the industrial-scale looting of archaeological sites in Iraq and Syria have drawn the Mesopotamian past vividly into the spotlight. Images of legendary ancient cities, now wired with explosives or pockmarked with looters' pits, flit daily across our television and computer screens. For more than a century, archaeologists have been working to uncover and resurrect these early urban centers where the very idea of the city was first envisioned and put into practice. This graduate seminar offers both a general introduction to the archaeological study of urbanism and a detailed examination of the archaeological evidence for cities in Mesopotamia – from Uruk and Ur to Babylon and Baghdad. Chronologically, we will begin with the famous Urban Revolution of the fourth millennium BC and end with the founding of the first Islamic cities during the later part of the first millennium AD.

New Perspectives on 'Early Mesopotamia'

JNP is one of the very few scholars who excels both as an excavator and a linguist. He amalgamates the two types of evidence in a powerful combination through which to attempt to understand the past. Others are more qualified than me to detail his contributions to the study of the texts so this article will begin by describing some of the significant results from his archaeological work in Iraq, especially from his excavations at Abu Salabikh. I owe him a huge personal debt as he gave me my first opportunity to dig in Iraq and allowed me to become his first woman site supervisor at Abu Salabikh, something for which I shall always be grateful. A survey of some of the changes in the field which have taken place in the last twenty years will then follow. The work at Abu Salabikh, sadly interrupted by political events, used a wide range of techniques to extract the maximum information for minimum outlay. For example Postgate used the technique of surface scraping, employed previously by the Germans, to work towards a better understanding of the anatomy of a Sumerian town. The scraping can also pinpoint areas where excavation is necessary to solve specific problems and thus allows scarce resources to be used for maximum productivity. The scraping at Salabikh has given us some of the best information we have on the anatomy of a mid third millennium town, demonstrating the shrewdness with which it was used and the value of this technique. It is especially effective in areas where the architectural remains lie close to the surface and where differences in soil colour, caused by the greater retention of moisture in the mudbrick, can be identified. JNP was quick to realise the potential of this method as it fitted well with his research aims and with the wider shift in academic interest towards domestic housing rather than a concentration on public buildings. The information retrieved from the scraping on the Main mound at Salabikh allowed him to identify a town wall, three possible town gates, and to produce detailed plans of a number of houses. He was also able to identify non domestic buildings, such as a potter's workshop, and to add to the plan originally uncovered by the Oriental Institute Chicago of what is possibly a large public building in area A (Postgate 1990). In some cases microstratigraphy, at the time a new technique in Iraq, was used in an attempt to suggest the function of individual rooms. Using the data on the use of space within the town walls he published an important paper on population density in built-up areas (Postgate 1994) based on calculations of the area of non domestic structures and open spaces including streets, which is then subtracted from the total area of the site. Open spaces within the houses, such as courtyards, are also calculated and subtracted from the total. The resulting figure represents the area of the town which was