This essay argues that a broad survey of the evidence for hunger in ancient Mesopotamia shows that, while it was relatively rare in fact (if familiar enough in theory), the political management of hunger by early states points to its use in simulating their positions, in rhetoric and ideology, as providers of security and political membership as a rational economic choice. In fact, the social marginalization and moral pejorativization of the hungry points to these protections as “security theater” ...
Tópico(s): Indigenous Studies and Ecology
2016 - Brill | Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient
Abstract As a result of a review of the available literature and some unpublished sources, data on ante mortem cranial trauma have been gathered for 25 archaeological sites from Mesopotamia, dated from the Pre‐Pottery Neolithic to the modern period. In total, 31 healed cranial lesions have been noted in 28 out of 1278 individuals, and the general frequency of this condition was 2.2%. Both men and women were affected, with no clear preference noted, and sharp‐force trauma was rare; therefore, intra‐ ...
Tópico(s): Traumatic Ocular and Foreign Body Injuries
2015 - Wiley | International Journal of Osteoarchaeology
With the dust settling on Operation Iraqi Freedom in the spring of 2003, the U.S. Army 4th Psychological Operations Group developed for the occupation forces a special deck of playing cards that featured head shots of the most wanted Iraqi regime officials. Saddam Hussein figures prominently as the Ace of Spades. The experiment was repeated in the autumn of 2007, but this time the cards represented some of Iraq's and Afghanistan's archaeological sites (Figure 1).
Tópico(s): History of Science and Natural History
2008 - Cambridge University Press | International Journal Middle East Studies
Previous articleNext article No AccessCritical ReviewsA. Leo Oppenheim, Robert H. Brill, Dan Barag, and Axel Von Saldern. Glass and Glassmaking in Ancient Mesopotamia.J. D. MuhlyJ. D. Muhly Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Cuneiform Studies Volume 24, Number 41972 A journal of ASOR Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/ ...
Tópico(s): Ancient Near East History
1972 - University of Chicago | Journal of Cuneiform Studies
Vanessa Heyvaert, Cécile Baeteman,
Geoarchaeological research was performed to reconstruct the floodplain history in the surroundings of two ancient Mesopotamian cities: Tell ed-Dēr and Sippar. The mapping of the floodplain is based on facies analyses of the sedimentary succession of 225 hand-operated boreholes. The archaeological sites Tell ed-Dēr and Sippar are closely linked to a palaeochannelbelt of the Euphrates, located in the western part of the study area. Channel activity started at least in ca 3100 BC/5050 cal BP, until ...
Tópico(s): Maritime and Coastal Archaeology
2008 - Elsevier BV | Quaternary Science Reviews
The role of avulsion in the evolution of civilization in lower Mesopotamia is widely recognized. Ancient settlements are closely associated with abandoned courses of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers. This paper discusses avulsion history, controls of avulsions, their effects on civilization evolution from 7000 to 1000 yr B.P., and interactions between human activity and channel-network evolution based on previous archaeological and geomorphological surveys, analysis of cuneiform texts, maps, satellite ...
Tópico(s): Geology and Paleoclimatology Research
2005 - Wiley | Geoarchaeology
Abstract At the end of the last glacial period, a major marine transgression inundated the head of the Persian Gulf to a position as much as 400 km inland from the present shoreline. After 6000 B.P., the Shatt al‐Arab delta prograded southward to its current position. These events had a profound impact on our knowledge of early human occupation and the development of civilization in the Tigris‐Euphrates valley. The former settlements of people living on the pre‐6000 B.P. coastal plains are today ...
Tópico(s): Archaeology and ancient environmental studies
1987 - Wiley | Geoarchaeology
Tópico(s): Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies
2009 - Brill | Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions
O.G.S. Crawford, founder of A NTIQUITY , flew in the 1920s over an English landscape where the grooves and lines cut into unploughed downlands showed the courses of roads and tracks since earliest times. Similar patterns of crop- and soil-marks in the rain-fed agricultural zone of the Middle East, when studied in the same spirit, also reveal the local and the long-distance routes of a proven great age.
Tópico(s): Eurasian Exchange Networks
1993 - Cambridge University Press | Antiquity
Abstract An explanation is given of the fundamental processes of soil salinization and degradation induced by irrigation of poorly‐drained river valleys in arid regions, and of why these processes were practically uncontrollable under the circumstances of ancient Southern Mesopotamia.
Tópico(s): Marine and environmental studies
1988 - Wiley | Geoarchaeology
The Old Babylonian mathematical tablet YBC 4652 contains a series of related problems stated together with their answers. In this paper, we propose a procedure for determining the solutions to these problems and consider the pedagogy underlying the mathematics. © 2002 Elsevier Science (USA). L'ancienne tablette mathématique babylonienne YBC 4652 contient une série de problèmes avec leurs réponses. Dans cet article, nous proposons une procédure pour déterminer les solutions de ces problèmes et considérons ...
Tópico(s): Ancient Near East History
2002 - Elsevier BV | Historia Mathematica
The integration of spatial datasets from historical satellite imagery, digital elevation models (DEMs), and past archaeological surveys provides new insights into the nature and remains of past landscape transformations. Using southern Mesopotamia as a case study, this article addresses, both quantitatively and qualitatively, long-held assumptions concerning the nature and relationship of settlement patterns and river channel systems in antiquity. GIS and image analysis are used to fill in gaps in ...
Tópico(s): Archaeology and ancient environmental studies
2010 - Taylor & Francis | Journal of Field Archaeology
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Tópico(s): Archaeology and Historical Studies
1920 - Wiley | Geographical Journal
Gareth D. Hatton, Andrew Shortland, M. S. TITE,
Tópico(s): Building materials and conservation
2008 - Elsevier BV | Journal of Archaeological Science
Mesopotamia is an elongated basin running from Syria south-eastwards to the Persian Gulf. It is bordered on the south-west by the Arabian massif, on the north by the mountains of Anatolia, and on the east by the Zagros range. Agriculture in this basin is controlled by climate to an extent unknown in Europe, particularly by water supply, which may come from rainfall or from rivers that flow out of the mountains. The modern boundary of rainfall sufficient for agriculture, which for practical purposes ...
Tópico(s): Ancient Near East History
1973 - Cambridge University Press | Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society
Tópico(s): Historical Astronomy and Related Studies
2000 - Springer Science+Business Media | Archive for History of Exact Sciences
Carrie Hritz, T. J. Wilkinson,
The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) is currently producing a digital elevation model of most of the world's surface. Here the authors assess its value in mapping and sequencing the network of water channels that provided the arterial system for Mesopotamia before the petrol engine.
Tópico(s): Archaeological Research and Protection
2006 - Cambridge University Press | Antiquity
This paper explores the expression of power in the built environment of ancient cities, using two case studies from the middle Iron Age (early first millennium BCE) ancient Near East: the capital cities of the Syro-Anatolian city-states in southern Turkey and northern Syria, and those of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in northern Iraq. A functional approach to urbanism, which defines cities based on their influence in the surrounding region, leads to the conclusion that although the expression of power ...
Tópico(s): Archaeology and ancient environmental studies
2015 - Taylor & Francis | International Journal of Urban Sciences
Tópico(s): Historical Astronomy and Related Studies
2000 - Springer Science+Business Media | Archive for History of Exact Sciences
Max Price, Kathryn Grossman, Tate Paulette,
Discussion of the animal economy in Mesopotamia has been subject to a persistent, pastoral bias. Most general treatments assume that the Early Bronze Age (ca. 3000–2000 BCE) animal economy was dominated by the herding of sheep and goats. An examination of the abundant written evidence would support such a contention. Zooarchaeological evidence from northern Mesopotamia, however, clearly demonstrates that pigs played a major role in the diet, despite their virtual absence in the written record. In ...
Tópico(s): Indigenous Studies and Ecology
2017 - Elsevier BV | Journal of Anthropological Archaeology
Andrew Shortland, Katherine Eremin,
A recent analytical study by SEM–WDS was carried out on 226 glasses from the Late Bronze Age, analysing each of the glasses for a total of at least 22 elements, the largest such analytical study conducted on these glasses. The aim of the analysis was first to identify which elements were brought in with each of the raw materials and, second, to accurately characterize those raw materials. Since different glassmaking sites in Egypt and the Near East would probably use at least some local raw materials ...
Tópico(s): Mineralogy and Gemology Studies
2006 - Wiley | Archaeometry
Jaafar Jotheri, Michelle de Gruchy, Rola Almaliki, Malath Feadha,
This study presents the results of the first remote sensing survey of hollow ways in Southern Mesopotamia between Baghdad and the Persian Gulf, primarily using the imagery in Google Earth. For archaeologists, hollow ways are important trace fossils of past human movement that inform about how people travelled in the past and what considerations were important to them as they moved through the landscape. In this study, remotely sensed hollow ways were ground-truthed and dated by association with ...
Tópico(s): Archaeology and Historical Studies
2019 - Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute | Remote Sensing
One of the benefits of exploring the texts of ancient dreams is that this kind of study can show quite clearly the way dream narratives are embedded within the realities of the culture in question, much in the same way that we as modern dreamers dream in a style influenced by our culture. This point is not always clearly acknowledged by psychological and neurological dream researchers, who at times describe dreams as if they belonged solely to the dreamer’s consciousness, independent of influences ...
Tópico(s): Ancient Egypt and Archaeology
2004 - American Psychological Association | Dreaming
Ever since Wheeler's triumphant discovery of Roman pottery at Arikamedu in the 1940s, it has been appreciated that the east coast of India was in reach of the Roman Empire. Tracking down the finds of Roman pottery on the Indian sub-continent reported since then, the author discovered that many of the supposed Roman amphorae were actually ‘torpedo jars’ from Mesopotamia. Here the areas of influence of these two great imports, probably of wine, are mapped for the first time.
Tópico(s): Eurasian Exchange Networks
2007 - Cambridge University Press | Antiquity
How were the fine stone jars and vessels of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia made? An experimental test of materials and techniques explores the methods of early drilling.
Tópico(s): Image Processing and 3D Reconstruction
1993 - Cambridge University Press | Antiquity
Daniel C. Snell, Karen Rhea Nemet‐Nejat,
Tópico(s): Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies
1995 - American Oriental Society | Journal of the American Oriental Society
JoAnn Scurlock, Dafydd Stephens,
Within this paper, the diagnosis and treatment of tinnitus in ancient Mesopotamia is considered in relation to the medical practice at that time. The sources (clay tablets, dating back to 2000 BCE) are considered and the views on the causes of tinnitus discussed. The treatment is considered in terms of exorcism, possible masking and pharmacological therapy. Many of the approaches have strong parallels in modern treatment of the symptom.
Tópico(s): Therapeutic Uses of Natural Elements
2008 - T&F | Audiological Medicine
Margaret Sax, Nigel Meeks, Dominique Collon,
Scanning electron microscopy provides an insight into the lapidary techniques of the ancient Near East. Engraved features on quartz cylinder seals have been compared to those produced experimentally, leading to a radical reassessment of the date for the introduction of the engraving wheel.
Tópico(s): Mineralogy and Gemology Studies
2000 - Cambridge University Press | Antiquity
Jaafar Jotheri, Mark B. Allen, T. J. Wilkinson,
We present a study that reconstructs the ancient courses of the Euphrates in part of the Mesopotamian floodplain west and southwest of the ancient site of Babylon. The focus is on tracing paleochannel courses, determining when these paleochannels were active, and understanding the patterns of avulsion. The research was carried out using a combination of geological, geomorphological, remote sensing, historical, and archaeological approaches. Fieldwork included “ground truthing” of the remote sensing ...
Tópico(s): Archaeology and ancient environmental studies
2016 - Wiley | Geoarchaeology
Robert D. Biggs, Hector Avalos,
Tópico(s): Archaeology and Historical Studies
1997 - American Oriental Society | Journal of the American Oriental Society