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More Fire Installations from Abu Salabikh

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

H. E. W. Crawford
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Extract

This paper looks at a group of fire installations in a preliminary attempt to analyse an economic sub-system which played some part in the life of a third millennium town in Southern Mesopotamia. It is hoped that this analysis may identify some problems which will be relevant when considering the direction of future research strategy at that site.

The fire installations in question all come from the area of Abu Salabikh known as 5I; this area lies in the dip of the saddle between two higher areas, Area A to the North, and Area E to the South. Area A is occupied by houses of ED III date and Area E by a public building of similar date. 5I is entirely different in character, the walls of the buildings are thinner, the plans less regular and we appear to be in an area of private housing with a number of narrow lanes. The pottery from the area is of ED I date and there is some evidence from the plans for rebuilding which suggests that here at least the period was of some duration. This is reinforced by the presence of a grave (Grave 193) which contains some typically ED I pottery but which was dug from a level completely eroded away.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , Spring 1983 , pp. 32 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1983

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References

1 This article could not have been written without the generous help of Nicholas Postgate, Director of the Abu Salabikh excavations.

2 J. N. Postgate and J. Moon, Abu Salabikh 1981. Preliminary Report, Iraq 44 (1982)Google Scholar; Postgate, Abu Salabikh, in 50 years of Mesopotamian discovery, ed. Curtis, John (London, 1982), 59–60 and Fig. 47Google Scholar.

3 Cf. Postgate and Moon, op. cit., for further details of construction.

4 All fire installations (FI) were given field numbers. The first two digits give the year of discovery; installations are then numbered in sequence.

5 Gibson, McG. (ed.), Uch Tepe (Copenhagen and Chicago, 1981), 57Google Scholar.

6 Majidzadeh, Y., The development of the pottery kiln in Iran from prehistoric to historical periods, Paléorient 3 (1975/1979), 207–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Crawford, H. E. W., Some fire installations from Abu Salabikh, Iraq, Paléorient 7 (1981), 105–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Parrot, A., Mari: le palais II.3 (Paris, 1959), Chap. 3Google Scholar.

9 Gibson, McG., Current research at Nippur, in L'Archaéologie de I'Iraq, ed. Barrelet, M.-T. (Paris, 1980), 201Google Scholar.

10 Mellaart, J., Çatal Hüyük (London, 1967), 63Google Scholar.

11 Crawford, op. cit., 109.

12 Salonen, A., Die Öfen der alten Mesopotamier, Baghdader Mitteilungen 3 (1964), 100–4Google Scholar; Merpert, N. Y. and Munchaev, R. M., Early agricultural settlements in the Sinjar plain, Northern Iraq, Iraq 35 (1973), 102 and Pl. XLbCrossRefGoogle Scholar.