Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T09:38:29.676Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

How Many Sumerians per Hectare? — Probing the Anatomy of an Early City

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 December 2008

Nicholas Postgate
Nicholas Postgate
Affiliation:
Faculty of Oriental StudiesUniversity of CambridgeSidgwick AvenueCambridge CB3 9DA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Excavations at the Early Dynastic site of Abu Salabikh in southern Iraq have aimed at recovering a rounded view of early urban life. One of the questions regularly and rightly asked about our results is ‘how large was the population?’, but we are still far from being able to provide an answer. This article is intended as a report from the field on where we stand at this one site, rather than a general exploration of the issues. Geomorphological and taphonomic issues relating to site size and use of space are exemplified from our own data. Progress beyond a blanket guess (based on comparative ethnography) for population density requires us to break the urban area down into individual houses and the houses into individual rooms. In this context the need for, and possible methods of, more accurate characterization of space use are described. Calculations based on high and low assumptions illustrate the wide range of estimates we still have to work with, but help to crystallize those areas where progress might be made.

Type
Articles
Information
Cambridge Archaeological Journal , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , April 1994 , pp. 47 - 65
Copyright
Copyright © The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, R. McC, 1981. Heartland of Cities: Surveys of Ancient Settlement and Land Use on the Central Floodplain of the Euphrates. Chicago (IL): Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Brooks, I.A., 1989. The Physical Geography, Geomorphology and Late Quaternary History of the Mahi Dasht Project Area, Qara Su Basin, Central Western Iran. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum.Google Scholar
Brooks, I.A., Levine, L.D. & Dennell, R.W., 1982. Alluvial sequences in Central West Iran and implications for archaeological survey. Journal of Field Archaeology 9, 285–99.Google Scholar
De Roche, C.D., 1983. Population estimates from settlement area and number of residences. Journal of Field Archaeology 10, 187–92.Google Scholar
Garr, W.R., 1987. A population estimate of ancient Ugarit. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 266, 31–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henrickson, E.F., 1981. Non-religious residential settlement patterning in the Late Early Dynastic of the Diyala region. Mesopotamia 16, 43–140.Google Scholar
Kolb, C.C., 1985. Demographic estimates in archaeology: contributions from ethnoarchaeology on Meso-american peasants. Current Anthropology 26 581–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kramer, C, 1979. An archaeological view of a contemporary Kurdish village: domestic architecture, household size and wealth, in Ethnoarchaeology: Implications of Ethnography for Archaeology, ed. Kramer, C.. New York (NY): Columbia University Press, 139–63.Google Scholar
Kramer, C, 1980. Estimating prehistoric populations: an ethnoarchaeological approach, in L’Archéologie de I’Iraq: Perspectives et Limites de l’Interprétation Anthropologique des Documents, ed. M.-T., Barrelet. (Colloques internationaux du C.N.R.S. 580.) Paris: C.N.R.S., 315–34.Google Scholar
Laslett, T.P.R. (ed.), 1972. Household and Family in Past Time. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matthews, R.J. & Postgate, J.N., 1987. Excavations at Abu Salabikh, 1985–86. Iraq 49, 91–119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matthews, W., Postgate, J.N., with Charles, M.P., Payne, S. & Dobney, K., 1994. The imprint of living in an early Mesopotamian city: questions and answers, in Whither Environmental Archaeology?, eds. Luff, R. & RowleyConwy, P.. Oxford: Oxbow Books.Google Scholar
Naroll, R., 1962. Floor area and settlement population. American Antiquity 27, 587–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Postgate, J.N., 1982. Abu Salabikh, in Fifty Years of Mesopotamian Discovery, ed. Curtis, J.E.. London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq, 48–61.Google Scholar
Postgate, J.N., 1983. The West Mound Surface Clearance. (Abu Salabikh Excavations 1.) London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq.Google Scholar
Postgate, J.N., 1992. Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy at the Dawn of History. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Stone, E.C., 1981. Texts, architecture and ethnographic analogy: patterns of residence in Old Babylonian Nippur. Iraq 43, 19–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stone, E.C., 1987. Nippur Neighborhoods. (Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 44). Chicago (IL): The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Stronach, D., 1961. The excavations at Ras al’Amiya. Iraq 23, 95–137.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watson, P.J., 1978. Architectural differentiation in some Near Eastern communities, prehistoric and contemporary, in Social Archaeology: Beyond Subsistence and Dating, eds. Redman, C.L., Berman, M.J., Curtin, E.V., Langhorne, W.T. Jr, Versaggi, N.M. & Wanser, J.C.. New York (NY): Academic Press, 131–58.Google Scholar
Weiss, H., 1977. Periodization, population and early state formation in Khuzistan, in Mountains and Lowlands: Essays in the Archaeology of Greater Mesopotamia, eds. Levine, L.D. & Young, T.C.. (Bibliotheca Mesopotamia 7.) Malibu (CA): Undena, 347–69.Google Scholar
Wiessner, P., 1974. A functional estimator of population from floor area. American Antiquity 39, 343–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woolley, C.L. & Mallowan, M.E.L., 1976. The Old Babylonian Period. (Ur Excavations 7.) London & Philadelphia (PA): British Museum Publications.Google Scholar
Zettler, R.L., 1987. Enlil's city, Nippur, and the end of the third millennium BC. The Society for Mesopotamian Studies Bulletin 14, 7–19.Google Scholar