In the spring of 1969 the Soviet archaeological expedition began extensive studies of early agricultural sites in north-western Iraq. Up to that time the investigation of archaeological cultures representing the early stages of development of food-producing economies in Mesopotamia had been confined to north-eastern Iraq and western Iran, the mountains of Kurdistan and the Zagros with their foothills and valleys. But in north-western Iraq, from Mosul to the Syrian frontier, there are areas whose natural resources offer an equally fruitful prospect for investigation of this process. One such area particularly favourable to agriculture from its earliest stages is the broad and fertile Sinjar plain. Eastward the plain borders on the Mosul region, beyond which lie the Kurdish foothills around Erbil and Kirkuk, and on the north it is bounded by Jebel Sinjar, rising to a height of c. 1250 m. This range reproduces on a small scale the natural conditions of the Zagros, and abounds in caves, but is as yet inadequately investigated. Winter rainfall is relatively high, and a number of small perennial streams flow from the hills into the soft alluvial soils of the plain, which are extremely fertile and favour the construction of simple irrigation systems; in places these now extend up to 15 km. south of the range.

Assyriologists have long been aware of the evidence for a cult of the dead in Assyria and Babylonia, but there is at present, to the writer's knowledge, no systematic study of the subject. She has therefore examined the evidence relating to the cult of the dead, and attempted to compare the attitude towards dead kin shown in the cult with what we know of relations between living kin and of concepts of descent. In this study, comparisons are occasionally made with other societies not culturally connected with Mesopotamia. The writer's interest here lies in the application of social anthropology to the study of Mesopotamian society. Traditionally anthropologists have studied the type of society formerly called “primitive”, now more often called “small-scale” or “pre-industrial”. Ancient Mesopotamia was not a society of this type, but a peasant society, with a comparatively elaborate technology and a wide field of social relations, at least among the power-holding groups. Social anthropologists have only recently begun to study peasant societies. It will be appreciated that the writer has no formal training in social anthropology, and that this attempt is, therefore, highly tentative.

The factors determining the existence and importance of a cult of dead kin in a society have not been clearly revealed by comparative study. Scheinfeld has indeed shown that all societies that have such a cult have also the institution of inheritance of property, but the evidence examined by him does not permit the conclusion that inheritance is a precondition for the existence of a cult of deceased kin.

The jewellery published here forms part of the Muncherjee Collection, a large assemblage of South Arabian antiquities formed by an Indian businessman and acquired some years ago by the Aden Museum. Until recently a group of this jewellery was on loan to the British Museum, and I was there able to study it by the kind permission of Dr. R. D. Barnett and with the generous assistance of his staff. I am also grateful to the Aden Museum authorities for granting me permission to publish the jewellery. The drawings accompanying this article are the work of Miss Ann Seawright. By reason of their accuracy and accomplishment, they are far more descriptive than any verbal catalogue I am able to compose.

This article is intended only as a preliminary study of South Arabian jewellery. The group here described forms approximately a quarter of that in the Aden Museum collection, and it is hoped that at a later date a more detailed study of the whole collection will prove possible. In the meanwhile, any comments and observations on comparative and related material will be most welcome. With the exception of epigraphic sources, a survey of any facet of the South Arabian civilization is seriously hampered by the lack of stratigraphically excavated material, and although much has been brought to light by other means, especially sculpture, few serious attempts have been made to analyse the complex art forms of this culture. Likewise in this article I do not attempt a comprehensive analysis of the stylistic origins and development of the jewellery, but restrict myself to a simple description of the various pieces, quoting where possible any relevant parallels or comparisons.

The publication of BM 131124—a fragment of a stele from Sheikh Hammad on the Khabur—and a fresh treatment of another neglected fragment published by V. Scheil in 1917, identified and re-edited by A. R. Millard (above, p. 57 ff.) has increased considerably the small corpus of Adad-nirari's historical inscriptions. Each of the extant texts is a commemorative inscription, usually brief and self-contained, incised on a stele or a stone slab. Another feature which they all share is that they are mainly concerned with Adad-nirari's expeditions to the west, though the precise regnal year of these is not indicated there. This present inquiry will be concerned with the specific character of the best preserved inscriptions and their value as historical documents.

None of the extant historical records of Adad-nirari III published so far can be classified as annals. They all belong to a category which we would like to designate as “summary inscriptions”. A distinctive feature of this type—called Prunkinschriften by Schrader and “Display Inscriptions” by Olmstead—is the condensation of early with later events into one geographically but not chronologically coherent narrative. Usually an inscription of this category is much shorter than any edition of the royal annals, especially as it was inscribed upon a surface with limited space, such as a commemorative stele or a slab. It normally contains the following elements: (a) a prologue, consisting of invocation to the gods and the king's titulature; (b) a geographically arranged summary of events; (c) the main section explaining the circumstances leading to the composition of the inscription, introduced by the formula ina ûmēšūma = “at that time”; (d) an epilogue with maledictions.

In 1951 the Directorate General of Antiquities in Baghdad acquired a limestone statue of apparently Sumerian date. The dealer from whom the purchase was made claimed that he had found the statue at Tell Aswad, an ancient mound situated on the left bank of the Euphrates some 24 km. to the north-west of Ramadi. Shortly afterwards a team was dispatched by the Directorate to examine the mound and in the course of executing small trial trenches near the surface of the mound encountered structures of plano-convex mud-brickwork. In view of certain peculiarities in the style and proportions of the Tell Aswad statue doubts were voiced among members of the Directorate as to its genuineness, and in consequence approaches were made to various eminent archaeologists and art historians with a view to eliciting their professional opinions concerning it. On the basis of photographs supplied by the Directorate the consensus of opinion among the experts was that the statue showed certain stylistic differences from hitherto known Sumerian statuary which by themselves at least were not sufficient to mark the piece as definitely genuine or definitely false.

The third season of excavations at Tell Taya lasted from late September, 1972, into January, 1973. Work was sponsored by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, which provided a grant towards the costs. Further vital support came from generous anonymous donations; from the British Academy; from the Royal Ontario Museum; from the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and from the Ashmolean Museum. My own work has been made possible by tenure of a Gerald Averay Wainwright Fellowship. Staff on the site, besides myself, comprised my wife, S. Nan Shaw, conservator and registrar; Mr. George Farrant, architect; Mr. Stuart Brown and Miss Margaret Stout, site supervisors; Miss Susan Dobinson, who was responsible for the pottery; Mr. Nicholas Stainforth, general assistant; and Mr. Hilary Stuart Williams, architectural assistant. I am very greatly indebted to all of them for their hard work and patience. Sd. Khalid Sawit al-Durra represented the Iraq authorities, and I am further grateful, for assistance of many kinds, to numerous members of the Directorate-General of Antiquities, both in Baghdad and Mosul, and to the local government officials in Tell Afar.

The reports given below cover excavation work in Iraq from June 1972 to May 1973. The information on each site has been kindly provided by the director of the excavations, unless otherwise specified, and the final version has been checked by him wherever possible. The sites are arranged in alphabetical order, according to their best known name.

The material for this report was assembled by Mr. J. N. Postgate, Assistant Director of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq. The Editors are glad to acknowledge his efforts, and wish to express their gratitude to all those colleagues who have so willingly contributed information on their work, and especially to Dr. Isa Salman, the Director-General of Antiquities in Iraq, for his generous co-operation which alone has made the compilation possible.

The third season of excavations of the joint expedition of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University to al-Hiba took place from October 1972 to January 1973.

Work was concentrated in Area B located in the high west-central portion of the mound where occupation continued into the Old Babylonian period. Beneath the surface are the remains of an enormous platform of mud-brick, undoubtedly an Old Babylonian temple platform. Only the core of the platform was preserved.

The 1973 season at Umm Dabaghiyah took place under weather conditions different from those of the two preceding ones. The exceptionally good Spring of 1972, and subsequent heavy dew, enabled the scrub vegetation to come up and thus to hold the surface soil in place despite high winds and a practically total drought. In 1973, we had neither rain, apart from a few sparse drops, nor a single thunderstorm, while the real dust-storms started only late in May despite the high winds that were a constant factor. The only interruptions to the work were caused when gales blew the soft soil from both dig and dumps across the excavations, but very little time was lost through this.

The British School of Archaeology in Iraq and the British Academy, together with the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, and the University of Sydney gave generous grants towards the work. The following team, under the direction of the writer took part: Mrs. Harriet Martin, Mr. Peter Fames, Mr. Hilary Stuart-Williams, site supervisors; Mr. Douglas Rawlinson Hobbs, surveyor, draughtsman and photographer; Mrs. Gwyneth Rawlinson Hobbs, conservator; Hr. Søren Berthelsen of Aarhus University, pottery classification; Mr. Peter Dorrell, geomorphologist and photographer; Mr. Richard Hubbard, environmental studies. Sayid Ismail al-Hajara represented the Directorate General of Antiquities for the second time, and again proved invaluable both as a site supervisor and general supervisor; we are indeed grateful to him. During the season we again had the pleasure of welcoming the Director General of Antiquities, Dr. Isa Salman, and the Inspector General of Excavations, Dr. Fuad Safar when they visited the excavations. We are most indebted to them for their encouraging cooperation and genuine interest in the site. We should also acknowledge the friendly help of the Government officials of Hatra.