oi.uchicago.edu i FROM SHERDS TO LANDSCAPES oi.uchicago.edu ii oi.uchicago.edu iii FROM SHERDS TO LANDSCAPES: STUDIES ON THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST IN HONOR OF McGUIRE GIBSON edited by MARK ALTAWEEL and CARRIE HRITZ with contributions by ABBAS ALIZADEH, BURHAN ABD ALRATHA ALRATHI, MARK ALTAWEEL, JAMES A. ARMSTRONG, ROBERT D. BIGGS, MIGUEL CIVIL†, JEAN M. EVANS, HUSSEIN ALI HAMZA, CARRIE HRITZ, ERICA C. D. HUNTER, MURTHADI HASHIM JAFAR, JAAFAR JOTHERI, SUHAM JUWAD KATHEM, LAMYA KHALIDI, KRISTA LEWIS, CARLOTTA MAHER†, AUGUSTA MCMAHON, JOHN C. SANDERS, JASON UR, T. J. WILKINSON†, KAREN L. WILSON, RICHARD L. ZETTLER, and PAUL C. ZIMMERMAN STUDIES IN ANCIENT ORIENTAL CIVILIZATION • VOLUME 71 THE ORIENTAL INSTITUTE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO CHICAGO • ILLINOIS oi.uchicago.edu iv ISBN (paperback): 978-1-61491-063-3 ISBN (eBook): 978-1-61491-064-0 Library of Congress Control Number: 2021936579 ISSN: 0081-7554 The Oriental Institute, Chicago © 2021 by the University of Chicago. All rights reserved. Published 2021. Printed in the United States of America Series Editors Charissa Johnson, Steven Townshend, Leslie Schramer, and Thomas G. Urban with the assistance of Rebecca Cain and Emily Smith and the production assistance of Jalissa A. Barnslater-Hauck and Le’Priya White Cover Illustration Drawing: McGuire Gibson, Üçtepe, 1978, by Peggy Sanders Design by Steven Townshend Leaflet Drawings by Peggy Sanders Printed by ENPOINTE, Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, USA This paper meets the requirements of ANSI Z39.48-1984 (Permanence of Paper) ∞ oi.uchicago.edu v TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Abbreviations ................................................................................. vii Editor’s Note ........................................................................................ ix Introduction. Richard L. Zettler, Robert D. Biggs, Mark Altaweel, Carrie Hritz, Augusta McMahon, and James A. Armstrong ....................................................................... xiii Selected Publications by McGuire Gibson ............................................................ xix As I Seem to Remember… Carlotta Maher†, The Oriental Institute.......................................... xxiii 1. The Impact of the Rise of the State in Southwestern Iran on the Region’s Periphery and Buffer Zones Abbas Alizadeh, The Oriental Institute .............................................................. 1 2. Spatial Interaction Modeling and Nippur’s Urban Significance in the Early Dynastic Period Mark Altaweel, University College London .......................................................... 23 3. Assyrians in Nippur James A. Armstrong, Independent Scholar .......................................................... 41 4. The John Mix Cuneiform Tablet and a Related sa₂-du₁₁ ku₅-ra₂ Dossier from Puzriš-Dagan Robert D. Biggs, The Oriental Institute ............................................................. 63 5. On Some Ur III Scribal Exercises Miguel Civil†, The Oriental Institute............................................................... 77 6. A Reconsideration of the So-Called Single-Shrine Temple at Tell Asmar Jean M. Evans, The Oriental Institute .............................................................. 91 7. The Umma-Lagash Border Conflict: A View from Above Carrie Hritz, University of Maryland.............................................................. 109 8. Celebrating the Centenary of Incantation Bowls at Nippur Erica C. D. Hunter, SOAS University of London, England ............................................... 133 9. Tracing Prehistory in Highland Yemen: Contributions of the Dhamar Survey Project in Light of New Discoveries in Arabia Lamya Khalidi, CNRS, Cultures et Environnements, Préhistoire, Antiquité, Moyen Age (CEPAM), and Krista Lewis, University of Arkansas at Little Rock ............................................... 147 10. Pieces of String: Cordage in Late Chalcolithic Northern Mesopotamia Augusta McMahon, University of Cambridge ....................................................... 167 11. A Reappraisal of Building Circulation within the E-Ḫursag At Ur John C. Sanders, The Oriental Institute ............................................................ 185 12. Kish and the Spatial Organization of Cities in Third-Millennium BC Southern Iraq Jason Ur, Harvard University ................................................................... 227 13. The Origins of Levee and Levee-Based Irrigation in the Nippur Area—Southern Mesopotamia T. J. Wilkinson†, University of Durham, England, and Jaafar Jotheri, University of Al-Qadisiyah, Iraq ............ 243 14. A Question of Heirlooms Karen L. Wilson, The Oriental Institute ............................................................ 259 15. Two Tombs or Three? PG 789 and PG 800 Again! Paul C. Zimmerman, University of Pennsylvania, and Richard L. Zettler, University of Pennsylvania ............. 283 16. The Final Report on the Excavations at Tell Al-Agar: The First Season, 2011 Murtadha Hashim Jafar, Hussein Ali Hamza, Burhan Abd Alredha Radhi, and Suham Juwad Kadhum Al-Qaisi, Department of Antiquities of Iraq . 332 17. Conclusion Mark Altaweel and Carrie Hritz ................................................................. 335 v oi.uchicago.edu vi oi.uchicago.edu vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS GENERAL c. century ca. circa cf. confer, compare ch. chapter cm centimeter(s) col(s). column(s) et al. et alii, and others e.g. exempli gratia, for example esp. especially etc. et cetera, and so forth fig(s). figure(s) i.e. id est, that is m meter(s) n(n). note(s) n.p. no publisher no(s). number(s) obv. obverse op. cit. opere citato, in the work cited p(p). page(s) par. paragraph pers. comm. personal communication pl(s). plate(s) rev. reverse vol(s). volume(s) vii oi.uchicago.edu viii oi.uchicago.edu ix EDITORS’ NOTE This volume had its genesis in 2013 when several of McGuire Gibson’s former students met briefly on the side lines of a conference at the MacDonald Institute in Cambridge to launch the effort. We are grateful that many former students and colleagues submitted chapters after being invited to contribute. Most chapters were submitted in 2014, and we would like to acknowledge that the delay in publication may be reflected in some contributions that may not reference relevant publications that appeared in the last few years. More significantly, we note with sadness that three of the authors have passed away since submitting their chapters. Tony J. Wilkinson, who co-authored a chapter with Jaafar Jotheri (University of al-Qadisiyah), passed away in December 2014. Tony was Mac’s colleague at the Oriental Institute for many years and worked with him in Yemen and Syria. Miguel Civil, long-time Professor of Sumerian at the Orien- tal Institute and field epigrapher in Mac’s initial excavations at Nippur, died in January 2019. Jill (Carlotta) Maher, a docent at the Oriental Institute, who worked with Mac at Nippur, Umm al-Hafriyat and Üç Tepe and became a close personal friend, passed away in December 2020. We mourn these losses, but we are grateful for the contributions from our departed friends and colleagues. ix oi.uchicago.edu x oi.uchicago.edu oi.uchicago.edu xii McGuire Gibson, Üçtepe, 1978. (Drawing by Peggy Sanders) oi.uchicago.edu xiii INTRODUCTION Richard L. Zettler, Robert D. Biggs, Mark Altaweel, Carrie Hritz, Augusta McMahon, and James A. Armstrong This volume celebrates McGuire Gibson’s more than fifty years in archaeology by bringing together articles written by those whom he has taught and inspired over the decades—articles that focus largely on the countries in which he has worked, or topics and approaches to the ancient past of the Middle East in which he has evidenced a particular inter- est. It is an admittedly small return for all of the time he has spent with us as an affable, if demanding, mentor, but one that the editors and contributors present to him with great thanks (and a real measure of affection). McGuire Gibson’s biography is, at its core, a story of overcoming odds, but an account of his early years, prior to his appointment as Assistant Professor in the University of Chicago’s Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civi- lizations (NELC) in 1972–73, is not easy to write. What we know is based largely on anecdotes he has told in the field and as such is at least partly fictional, though we have tried to sort fact from the tales he so often told. The details of the last four or so decades of his career, of course, are more fully documented in Oriental Institute Annual Reports and supplemented by our collective observations and some of our admittedly fading memories. Mac Gibson was born in early November 1938 in Bushwood in St. Mary’s County, Maryland, on the western side of the Chesapeake Bay. European settlement in the area dates back to the early seventeenth century, and the Gibsons, an English Roman Catholic family, had been in St. Mary’s County for at least five generations. Thomas Laurie Gibson and his wife Essie Mae Owens had a large family. Mac was apparently the eighth of nine children; his oldest siblings were fifteen–sixteen years his senior. St. Mary’s County was rural in the 1940s, and the Gibsons were tenant farmers. Mac routinely reminded his students how hard and dirty farming really was, in particular growing tobacco, one of St. Mary’s County’s staple crops. Mac contracted infantile paralysis (polio) as a young child. He said he wasn’t a good patient with his leg in a brace. But he endured, though the polio took its toll in the limp that