During October and November 1977 a third season of work at Abu Salabikh was undertaken by the British Archaeological Expedition to Iraq. On this occasion we remained at the site for less than two months, partly because we had planned to do less excavation so as to concentrate on the study of materials from the previous seasons, and partly to enable the expedition to move up to the area of the Hamrin dam, where we had a pressing invitation from the State Antiquities Organization to join in rescue excavations. Despite the short season at Abu Salabikh we were able to achieve most of our objectives, and in fact it proved necessary to undertake some minor rescue excavations of our own because of urgent irrigation drainage works close to the site. This year we were happy to welcome once more Sd. Abdul-Mejid Muhammad with Sd. Muhammad Yahya as our representatives, and are as ever grateful to them for their unfailing kindness and ready assistance. Our thanks go also to Dr. Muayad Sa‘id, Director General of Antiquities and all of the Organization's officials who helped to smooth our paths. In particular, though, we must pay tribute to the late Prof. Fuad Safar: as Director of Excavations he took the most active interest in our work, and he was especially enthusiastic about the new light it might throw on the Early Dynastic I period. So often in the past it has been his penetrating comments that led us to new approaches and objectives, and we all feel that archaeological research in Iraq can never be the same again without him.

Animal remains from two seasons of excavation at the Tell of Abu Salabikh (1975–1976) were examined during a month's visit to the site in October 1977. A proportion of this material was then selected for further study and was kindly sent on loan to the British Museum (Natural History) by the Department of Antiquities, Baghdad. Work is continuing on these specimens and on the equid skeleton described by Postgate and Moorey which had been loaned to the Museum a year earlier. The photographs, Plates XIV–XVI, were taken on site by Mr. David Nicolson and our thanks are due to him for his patience in the face of dust and sandflies.

The collection of animal remains was large, numbering perhaps more than 10,000 elements which were mixed with an equal or greater number of human bones. The animal bones were in a very fragmentary condition as is usual with the remains of food. They had suffered further breakage by the action of the compacted soil of the floors under which they were buried as well as by disturbance and re-burial following human interments. Furthermore the very high concentration of salts in the soil contributed to the fragmentation process. Shortage of time prevented analysis of this comminuted bone but the dimensions of every measurable element were recorded.

In this article are published the cuneiform texts found at Abu Salabikh during the excavations of 1975 by the British Archaeological Expedition to Iraq. Although few in number, they are interesting both for their content and for their archaeological contexts. A few scattered tablets came from a variety of provenances : from a pit from the surface in Area A (IAS 516), from near the surface in a room of the eastern houses of Area E (IAS 517), and from the fill of graves dug into the Southern Unit during its occupation (IAS 518 from Grave 48 in the courtyard; IAS 521 from Grave 2 and IAS 519 and 520 from Grave 27, both in Room 39). None of these tablets is quite satisfactorily stratified, since IAS 517 was very close to the surface, and all the graves in question had suffered later disturbance, so that we cannot say with confidence whether the tablets came from the original fill of the grave shafts, or from robber holes. However, this lack is offset a little by the better provenance of the remainder of the tablets, now to be discussed.

Between 11th and 25th October 1977, an archaeological survey sponsored by the Institute of Archaeology, London University, was made in the area around Tell Rifa‘at. Thirty-four sites were studied. They were chosen because they were all marked on the 1:50,000 map with the title “Tell”. Twenty-four of them were found to have tells of ancient human occupation, while the rest could have gained the title because of their situation on some rocky prominence. The main purpose of the survey was to determine the settlement patterns in the area for every period of its past. A special interest of the expedition was the topography of Bit-Agusi, the Aramaean kingdom which flourished in the area in the 9th and 8th centuries B.C.