Excavations at the Early Dynastic site of Abu Salabikh in southern Iraq have aimed at recovering a rounded view of early urban life. One of the questions regularly and rightly asked about our results is ‘how large was the population?’, but we are still far from being able to provide an answer. This article is intended as a report from the field on where we stand at this one site, rather than a general exploration of the issues. Geomorphological and taphonomic issues relating to site size and use of space are exemplified from our own data. Progress beyond a blanket guess (based on comparative ethnography) for population density requires us to break the urban area down into individual houses and the houses into individual rooms. In this context the need for, and possible methods of, more accurate characterization of space use are described. Calculations based on high and low assumptions illustrate the wide range of estimates we still have to work with, but help to crystallize those areas where progress might be made.
In the search for cognition in the mute record of archaeology the record of ancient thought transmitted to us by early written texts is an obvious but underexploited resource. An examination of the classification of stones in Mesopotamia gives a rare opportunity to match textual information with the archaeological record, and offers some insights into the organization of thought and classification of knowledge by one of the first literate societies.A group of unshaped stones in the corner of a grave under the floor of a Sumerian dwelling attests to an awareness of natural properties as distinct from functions, whether or not these concepts were already formulated in words. The group of various stones also hints at the concept of a class, the first stirring of a mindset which percolates through Plato and Aristotle to Linnaeus. Already in c. 2000 BC the essential properties of some of these stones were conceptualized and described in a ‘literary’ composition, and the concept of a stable set of properties is linked to traditions relating to the proper source of a stone. Later still, maybe around 1000 BC, the Mesopotamian scribes created a lapidary or ‘Handbook of Stones’ which provides an ordered key to stones in respect of their appearance. Then, or later, the description of their appearance was supplemented by details in which their natural or physical properties were distinguished, along with magical properties some of which were probably transmitted to the Hellenistic world.
Enlighten -Research publications by members of the University of Glasgow http://eprints.gla.ac.uk 95O ur first programme of excavations at Kilise Tepe in the 1990s recovered evidence for settlement at the site over a succession of periods from the Early Bronze Age to the Byzantine. This gave us snapshots of the architecture and artefactual repertoire of the site at different times, and while these were similar to the material record of other settlements, indicating that Kilise Tepe participated culturally with neighbouring regions ( fig. 1), the similarities were not always with the same part of the region, and this of course raised the question of why the AbstractThe excavations at Kilise Tepe in the 1990s inevitably left a range of research questions unanswered, and our second spell of work at the site from 2007 to 2011 sought to address some of these, relating to the later second and early first millennia. This article gathers the architectural and stratigraphic results of the renewed excavations, presenting the fresh information about the layout and character of the Late Bronze Age North-West Building and the initial phases of the Stele Building which succeeded it, including probable symbolic practices, and describing the complex stratigraphic sequence in the Central Strip sounding which covers the lapse of time from the 12th down to the seventh century. There follow short reports on the analyses of the botanical and faunal materials recovered, a summary of the results from the relevant radiocarbon dating samples and separate studies addressing issues resulting from the continuing study of the ceramics from the different contexts. Taken together, a complex picture emerges of changes in settlement layout, architectural traditions, use of external space, artefact production and subsistence strategies during the centuries which separate the Level III Late Bronze Age settlement from the latest Iron Age occupation around 700 BC.
Middle Assyrian texts have a phrase ṭuppa ṣab¯atu, which is usually understood to mean “to take (possession of) a tablet”. There is a corresponding type of tablet called a ṭuppu ṣabittu (plural (ṭuppatu ṣabbutātu). This article contends that ṭuppa ṣabātu is a technical term for drawing up a formal document, and that ṭuppu ṣabittu is a “formally drawn-up tablet”, normally if not invariably involving at least one seal impression, used both in private commercial contexts and in public administration. It is further maintained that this usage survives into Neo-Assyrian times, when its most frequent (but not exclusive) usage is at the end of a legal document where a witness (often identified as a scribe) is described as ṣābit ṭuppi: this has been understood to mean that this scribe retained possession of the document, or that a third party “kept” the document. In the light of the fresh Middle Assyrian evidence, it is preferable to see it as referring to the scribe “who drew up the document”.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.