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Excavations at Abu Salabikh, 1976

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

J. N. Postgate
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Extract

The British Archaeological Expedition to Iraq returned to Abu Salabikh for a second season from September to December, 1976, and we must first record our gratitude to all those who made the excavations possible. As last year our thanks go first to Dr. Isa Salman, Director General of Antiquities, Dr. Abdul-Hadi al-Fouadi and all members of the Directorate without whose co-operation our work would have been impossible. To our representatives, Sd. Sabah Abboud, M.A., and Sd. Abdul-Mejid Muhammad, goes the appreciation of the team, both as a whole and individually, for their unfailing courtesy and assistance. Financial support for the excavations was given by a number of institutions to all of which we wish to acknowledge our indebtedness: the British Academy (Albert Reckitt Archaeological Fund), the Trustees of the British Museum, Birmingham City Museums and Art Gallery, the C. H. W. Johns Fund, University of Cambridge, the Manchester Museum, the National Geographic Society, Washington D.C., and the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. As last year we owe a special debt to Professor G. Gullini and members of the Italian Archaeological Institute in Baghdad for the hospitality of their superb dark-room facilities which they generously placed at our disposal. I should also like to record our gratitude to Monberg Thorsen A/S for a gift of cement which enabled us to add a kind of bathroom to our facilities at the site.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , Autumn 1977 , pp. 269 - 299
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1977

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References

1 For the numbering of our squares and the quadrants within them see Iraq 38, 1379Google Scholar.

2 Sample 5I10:184 has now been processed by the British Museum Research Laboratory, and yields a radio-carbon date of 3869±56 bp, when calibrated (after Clark, 1975) = 34l5±60 B.C. (BM 1366). This agrees well with 6G64:655, a sample from the IC floor of Room 39 in Area E, which gave 3938±54 bp, when calibrated = 2505±60 B.C. (BM 1365). I am much indebted to Mr. Richard Burleigh for these details.

3 Cf. Iraq 38, 163–4 and Plate XXVcGoogle Scholar.

4 We have adopted this term in place of the “cupbased” of the Kish reports (AM I, 30–31 with Pl. XIV)Google Scholar; for the type at Abu Salabikh cf. Iraq 38, 148 No. 10Google Scholar.

5 On the revised plan of Area E we have dropped the room number 23, since the space in question is shared between Rooms 16 and 69.

6 It is identical in shape to one published in de Genouillac, H., Fouilles de Tettoh, I, Pl. 7:1 (TG. 4176 according to II, 156)Google Scholar; unfortunately, I can find no reference to this object in the text, unless it be disguised as TG. 4617, in Tome I, 55, which seems improbable.

7 A special study of these two characteristic Early Dynastic pottery types has been begun by Jane Moon, taking account of the new evidence from Abu Salabikh.

8 The capacity of five spouted jars was measured with water and a photographic measuring cylinder. The jars, selected because they were more or less unbroken, were filled until the water flowed from the spout. Except for a slight leakage in the case of AbS 1209 and 1271, for which we tried to compensate, there was not much source of error unless one counts the absorption of water by the dry fabric of the vessels. It may be convenient to summarize the results here: AbS 476—1772 cc; AbS 1209—3771 cc; AbS 1267—6239 cc; AbS 1271—1879 cc; AbS 1383—3065 cc.

9 I do not have access to the Fara reports at the time of writing, but according to information very kindly sent me by Dr. Harriet Martin, it appears that Fara does not have an exact parallel to our Stage 3 jars; instead we encounter a more curving form (e.g. F 275 from Sarkophaggrab 1 (Heinrich, E., Fara, 20, 39 with Tf. 17a)Google Scholar and two examples from Schmidt's excavations also associated with a typical ED III stemmed dish). On the other hand more or less exact parallels exist at Fara for our Stage 1, and “Schmidt found two such jars in ED I and II contexts” (H. P. Martin); one of these also came in FG 43, burial 8, together with a small pottery bottle (F 1106; on these bottles, see below).

10 From the Y sounding and graves cf. Iraq 28 (1966), Pl. VII, IXGoogle Scholar; Iraq 1 (1934), Fig. 1 (p. 33) Nos. 9a and 10Google Scholar; on Kish 2895 A, which was found below Palace A, and belongs to our Stage 2, see Moorey, P. R. S., Iraq 32 (1970), 90–91Google Scholar (and AM I, Pl. XLIV. 9 with Pl. LI.23).

11 For some examples from Girsu see Edzard, D. O., Sumerische Rechtsurkunden des III. Jahrtausends, Index, p. 233 s.vGoogle Scholar. kas; contemporary usage at Isin and Nippur seems to dispense with the dug (e.g. ibid., No. 85:13; Westenholz, A., OSP I, Nos. 53–60)Google Scholar. For dug kaš in Jamdat Nasr texts cf. Langdon, S., OECT 7, Nos. 78 and 87Google Scholar; also, inscribed on a jar, Moorey, P. R. S., Iraq 38 (1976), Plate XVbCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 In the Diyala I have noted only B 665.540 from Grave 94 at Khafajah, but below the feet (Private Houses and Graves 100: Fig. 71, 5; Diyala Pottery, Pl. 74 1). For ‘Ubaid see Hall, H. R. & Woolley, C. L., Al-‘Ubaid (UE I), Types XLIII–XLIX and p. 187Google Scholar, and, for the position of the bottle within the grave, Wright, H. T., The Administration of Rural Production in an Early Mesopotamian Town (Ann Arbor, 1969), 84–85Google Scholar. For a comparable bottle in a Fara burial cf. note 9 above; another bottle from Abu Salabikh came from Grave 38 and so is also dated to ED II by association (AbS 76a; ht. 9·0 cm).

13 Not from a burial, but comparable in shape and fabric, is AbS 1004, a flat-shouldered jar which contained a hoard of beads, found in 6G38 in 1975 (Iraq 38, 158)Google Scholar.

14 Kühne, H., Die Keramik vom Tell Chuēra (Berlin, 1976) 67–70Google Scholar (Die metallische Ware mit Streifenbemalung); not all the parallels named are equally applicable to our examples.

15 For a two-handled jar or bottle of this general shape, otherwise unknown at Abu Salabikh, cf. H. Kühne, op. cit., Taf. 21. 2.

16 I am much indebted to Professors L. de Meyer, H. Gasche, McGuire Gibson and Sa'ad Ayoub for answering my queries and showing me sherds from Tell ed-Der, Nippur and Isin respectively.

17 See Martin, H. P., Le Temple et le Culte (XXe R.A.I., Leiden), 180Google Scholar.

18 I am most grateful to Dr. R. M. Boehmer, who gave me generously of his time to look at some of the above seals and impressions and discuss them with me; needless to say, he is not responsible for any of the views I have expressed about them. In a letter of 22.3.77 Dr. Boehmer writes that he would incline to place AbS 470 in ED I, AbS 1231 in ED II, AbS 1229 in ED II (late) and AbS 1233 m ED IIIb.