McGuire Gibson

Irrigation's Impact On Society

The Anthropological Papers of the University of Arizona is a peer-reviewed monograph series sponsored by the School of Anthropology. Established in 1959, the series publishes archaeological and ethnographic papers that use contemporary method and theory to investigate problems of anthropological importance in the southwestern United States, Mexico, and related areas.

Investigation of the Early Dynastic-Akkadian transition : report of the 18th and 19th seasons of excavation in Area WF, Nippur

The Akkadian Period has not received the archaeological attention it deserves, despite its great historical and artistic importance. Excavated remains from the period have been more extensively reported from Syria, at such sites as Tell Brak, than from the core area of southern Iraq. The artifactual assemblage is still ill-defined, in part due to delays in the final publication of crucial excavations, including our own work at Umm al-Hafriyat and Tepe al-Atiqeh. A full assessment of the Akkadian Period also has been hindered to a significant degree, however, by errors in the dating of strata and artifacts at the key sites of Tell Asmar and Khafajah in the Diyala (see Gibson 1982), which have resulted, at these and other sites, in the disguising of early Akkadian material under the terms Protoimperial and Early Dynastic IIIB. The excavators of the critical sequence of the Northern Palace at Tell Asmar originally assumed that the main level of the palace was pre-Akkadian because of its plano-convex bricks (Frankfort 1933: pp. 34 ff.); but subsequently they assigned this level, correctly, to the Akkadian Period (Frankfort 1934: pp. 29–39). Seton Lloyd, in his manuscript for the final monograph, maintained an Akkadian dating for the main level of the building but was persuaded to allow the date to be changed to Protoimperial for the publication (Delougaz, Hill, and Lloyd 1967: pp. 181–196). Lloyd has continued to discuss the main level of the Northern Palace as an Akkadian Period building in his own books (e.g. Lloyd 1978: p. 141). Having read the Lloyd manuscript and having witnessed the process of editorial change from the vantage point of an editorial assistant, M. Gibson was aware as early as 1963 that there were some difficulties in the interpretation of the Diyala stratigraphy, especially in the zone of transition from Early Dynastic to Akkadian.

The Archaeological Uses of Cuneiform Documents: Patterns of Occupation at the City of Kish

It may be said for most Mesopotamian excavations that information contained in cuneiform documents has not been fully used to give cultural elaboration to the bare outline derived from architecture, artefacts, etc. In the era of large expeditions, ending in the 1930s, texts would often be collected, turned over to an epigrapher, and published separately from the main archaeological report. Most often, the epigraphic volume would contain little or no information as to the find-spots of the texts. Likewise, tablets with dates would be, and still are being, published with the notation “seal impression” but without a drawing or photograph of the sealing, thus depriving archaeologists of precise means of determining style change, regional variations, etc. Economic texts and other mundane, relatively simple documents are routinely published in hand copy, sometimes transliterated, but almost never translated. In this way, many details of everyday life, reflecting economic and social systems, remain unavailable to the archaeologist or non-philologist who would find the information extremely interesting and useful. In short, once inscribed material is given over to the epigrapher, the archaeologist seldom refers to it again other than to date a particular level, or identify his site. Rarely are tablets studied by the archaeologist as the most valuable artefact in relation to other artefacts. Likewise, the epigrapher loses the valuable information on context in the interpretation of his texts. In this article, I hope to demonstrate that much information can be derived by the archaeologist from texts even without detailed content analysis. He need know only the date, the subject or class, and the locus of tablets in order to have at hand an extremely useful tool to refine judgments made on the basis of pottery and other objects. Such information also allows checks to be made on archaeologically derived hypotheses dealing with the function of various parts of a site.

A Re-Evaluation of the Akkad Period in the Diyala Region on the Basis of Recent Excavations at Nippur and in the Hamrin

Five reports were given during the academic year: New Excavations at Tell Brak, by David Oates; The Glyptic of Uruk in the Jamdat Nasr Period, by Mark A. Brandes; New Discoveries of Early Bronze Age III from Northern Cappadocia and the Southern Pontic Region, by Tahsin Ozgti?; New Excavations at Tell Mardikh, by Paolo Matthiae; A Re-evaluation of the Akkad period in the Diyala Region on the Basis of Recent Excavations at Nippur and in the Hamrin, by McGuire Gibson. Only Gibsons report was ready at the scheduled time. It is hoped that other reports will be published in this Journal when they become available. EDITH PORADA

Culture as Afterthought: US Planning and Non-planning in the Invasion of Iraq

Abstract The devastation of cultural heritage in the 2003 war, epitomised by the looting of the Iraq National Museum, was almost universal. Institutes of art, music, dance, theatre, folklore, crafts, etc., were looted as thoroughly as the museums in Baghdad, Mosul and Babylon. The minor effort at planning for heritage protection, carried out as part of the Future of Iraq Project in the US State Department, had little or no effect since all the efforts of the Project were ignored by the Pentagon. It is gradually being recognised that there was almost no planning of any kind beyond the invasion itself. One approach to the Pentagon resulted in the adding of thousands of archaeological sites and museums to the no-strike list, on which were already numerous mosques and standing monuments in cities, but the emphasis on protecting these places from indigenous looters was not part of the plans. Inadequate force levels dictated priorities for securing certain installations, such as oil-related industry, but even banks and ministries were allowed to be looted. Had scholars been able to get across the long-term central role of antiquities for Iraqs economic future, perhaps some protection might have been given. Culture was held in such disregard by American planners that it was subcontracted to the Italians, who did in fact make real efforts to halt looting in the Dhi Qar province. Meanwhile, the rest of the provinces in southern Iraq were being, and are being, looted on an industrial scale. Only the information that some parts of the resistance are being funded through sales of antiquities is making the occupying forces think about halting the looting or at least the chain of smuggling out of the country.