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Ancient Mesopotamia the Eden That Never Was

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Ancient Mesopotamia the Eden That Never Was Ancient Mesopotamia The Eden that Never Was Susan Pollock The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1RP, United Kingdom The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK http://www.cup.cam.ac.uk 40 West 20th Street, New York,NY 10011–4211, USA http://www.cup.org 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia © Susan Pollock 1999 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1999 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge Typeset in Plantin 10/12 pt in QuarkXPress™ [] A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data ISBN 0 521 57334 3 hardback ISBN 0 521 57568 0 paperback Contents List of figures page vii List of tables x Acknowledgments xii 1 Introduction 1 An overview 3 Archaeological work in Mesopotamia 10 Theoretical framework 22 Discussion 25 2 Geographic setting and environment 28 Landforms and climate 29 The changing environment 34 Neighboring regions and resource disparities 39 Summary 44 3 Settlement patterns 45 Cities 46 Villages 51 Mounds and settlement patterns 52 Summary 75 4 Making a living: tributary economies of the fifth and fourth millennia 78 The tributary economy 79 Ubaid economy 81 Fourth-millennium economy 93 Summary 115 5 A changing way of life: the oikos-based economy of the third millennium 117 The oikos 117 A case study: the Diyala region 123 Comparisons with other regions 138 Further insights from the study of animal and plant remains 140 Summary 147 v vi Contents 6 The growth of bureaucracy 149 The decipherment of cuneiform script 150 Record-keeping technologies 154 Origins of writing 165 Further development of writing 167 The power of writing 169 Discussion 171 7 Ideology and images of power 173 Ideology 173 Monuments 174 Religion 186 Summary 194 8 Death and the ideology of community 196 Death: the great leveler 199 Radical change in the fourth millennium 204 Conspicuous consumption in death 205 Summary 216 9 Conclusions 218 Political economy, feminism, and ancient Mesopotamia 218 Future directions 223 Bibliographical essay 224 Bibliography 228 Index 250 Figures 01.1 Mesopotamia page 2 01.2 Pottery from the Ubaid and Uruk periods 4 01.3 “Man in net skirt” with his characteristic beard and distinctive headdress 7 01.4 Pottery from the Jemdet Nasr, Early Dynastic, and Akkadian periods 8 01.5 The inscribed cliff face at Bisutun 12 01.6 Sites investigated by the nineteenth-century pioneers of Mesopotamian archaeology 14 01.7 The remains of a tunnel at Susa 18 02.1 The alluvial plains of Mesopotamia 30 02.2 Levees, backslopes, and basins created by an aggrading river 33 02.3 Irrigated fields and gardens in the subdesert 34 02.4 The deforested Zagros Mountains 38 02.5 Desertification in the alluvial lowlands 39 02.6 The piedmont near Birecik in southeastern Turkey 40 02.7 The Mahidasht Plain in the Zagros Mountains in western Iran 41 02.8 Open woodland in the Zagros Mountains 42 03.1 Ubaid house from Tell Madhhur 49 03.2 Early Dynastic house from Khafajah 50 03.3 Temple from Eridu 51 03.4 One of the mounds at Kish 52 03.5 The Uruk Mound at Abu Salabikh 53 03.6 Mud-brick manufacture 54 03.7 What remains of the walls of the Temple Oval at Khafajah 54 03.8 Areas of intensive settlement surveys in southern Mesopotamia and neighboring regions 55 03.9 Settlement pattern maps for the Ubaid, Early/Middle Uruk, and Late Uruk periods 56 3.10 Settlement pattern maps for the Jemdet Nasr and Early Dynastic I periods 59 vii viii List of figures 3.11 Settlement pattern maps for the Early Dynastic II–III and Akkadian periods 61 3.12 Numbers of settlements and total settled area over time 64 3.13 Numbers of settlements and total settled area in the three subregions of southern Mesopotamia 65 3.14 Proportional contributions of sites of different sizes to total settled area in the Nippur-Adab and Uruk subregions 68 04.1 Abandoned houses made of bundled reed frames, with walls and roofs of mats, in southern Mesopotamia 79 04.2 An axe made of clay fired at a high temperature from Jemdet Nasr 80 04.3 A piece of bitumen that was used to secure a string that tied a reed mat or mat container 81 04.4 Gaming board and “ram in the thicket” sculpture from Ur 82 04.5 Ubaid-period sites mentioned in the text 84 04.6 Sizes of Ubaid-period houses and temples 86 04.7 The level II Ubaid-period village at Tell Abada 88 04.8 Pottery densities in the buildings from Tell Abada level II 89 04.9 The high platform at Susa 90 4.10 Beveled-rim bowls 95 4.11 Motifs on Late Uruk- and Jemdet Nasr-period seals and sealings 97 4.12 Uruk- and Jemdet Nasr-period sites mentioned in the text 99 4.13 Relative proportions of sheep and goats at fourth-millennium sites in Mesopotamia and southwestern Iran 108 4.14 Survivorship curves for sheep and goats at Uruk-period Sharafabad, Umm Qseír, and Rubeidheh 109 4.15 Proportions of animal bones in different contexts at the Uruk Mound, Abu Salabikh 113 05.1 Oikoi and kin-based households 118 05.2 Age and gender effects on the structure of social position and economic benefits in the kin-based household and the oikos 119 05.3 Khafajah in Early Dynastic I 126 05.4 A stone statue from Tell Asmar in a pose suggestive of worship 127 05.5 A neighborhood bakery in Urfa 130 05.6 Khafajah in the later part of the Early Dynastic II period 132 05.7 The Khafajah neighborhood in the Early Dynastic III period 133 05.8 Early Akkadian levels at Tell Asmar 135 05.9 Relative proportions of sheep and goats at third-millennium sites 141 5.10 Relative proportions of skeletal parts of sheep and goats at three third-millennium sites 144 List of figures ix 06.1 The cuneiform sign an as word and as syllable 150 06.2 Schmandt-Besserat’s proposal for the evolution of writing 155 06.3 Tokens 156 06.4 A bulla or clay envelope 157 06.5 Numerical tablets 158 06.6 Uses of clay sealings 160 06.7 Motifs on Late Ubaid-period seals and sealings 161 06.8 Continuity between protocuneiform and cuneiform signs 163 06.9 A protocuneiform tablet documenting the disbursement of quantities of barley to several persons 165 07.1 The ziggurat at Ur 175 07.2 The palace at Kish 176 07.3 The city wall at Habuba Kabira 177 07.4 The Stele of the Vultures 182 07.5 The Stele of Naram-Sin 183 07.6 The Lion Hunt Stele 185 07.7 The Uruk Vase 190 08.1 A Late Ubaid-period inhumation burial from Eridu 199 08.2 Early Dynastic-period grave goods 212 Tables 1.1 Chronological chart page 2 3.1 Settled area in the Nippur-Adab and Uruk regions during the Uruk period 71 3.2 Annual rates of settlement abandonment and founding in the Uruk, Nippur-Adab, and Ur-Eridu regions 73 3.3 Abandonment and founding rates in the Uruk and Nippur- Adab regions by site size 74 4.1 Counts and percentages of animal bones from Ubaid-period sites 83 4.2 Tools,facilities, and by-products of production at selected Ubaid-period sites 85 4.3 Tools,facilities, and by-products of production in the Ubaid- period house at Tell Madhhur 87 4.4 Characteristics of anthropomorphic figures portrayed in late- fourth-millennium imagery 102 4.5 Activities of anthropomorphic figures portrayed in late-fourth- millennium imagery 103 4.6 Counts and percentages of animal bones from fourth- millennium sites in southern Mesopotamia and southwestern Iran 106 4.7 Counts and percentages of animal bones from fourth- millennium sites in the Hamrin region and the northern Mesopotamian lowlands 107 5.1 Archaeological indicators of activities at Khafajah and Asmar 125 5.2 Activities in Khafajah buildings 128 5.3 Activities in Asmar buildings 136 5.4 Counts and percentages of animal bones from Early Dynastic- and Akkadian-period sites 142 7.1 Estimated labor expenditures for monument construction 180 7.2 Selected deities and their attributes 187 7.3 Changes in ideological messages over time 195 8.1 Common attributes of Late Ubaid-period burials 198 x List of tables xi 8.2 Distinctive features of Late Ubaid-period burial practices in different communities 202 8.3 Attributes of third-millennium burials in cemeteries 207 8.4 Attributes of third-millennium burials outside cemeteries 209 1 Introduction Mesopotamia is known to scholars and laypeople alike as the cradle of civilization. Home to some of the earliest cities in the world, famous for the law codes of its kings and for the invention of writing, the first home of the biblical Abraham, it has achieved a reputation as the birthplace of many of the hallmarks of Western civilization. Its name comes from a Greek word meaning the “land between the rivers” – the alluvial plains of the Tigris and the Euphrates, including large portions of the modern countries of Iraq and Syria (fig. 1.1). The ancient inhabitants of this region maintained contacts with people living beyond it, including those of the lowlands of southwestern Iran, the valleys of the Zagros Mountains, and the foothills of the Taurus Range.
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