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Rediscovered Skulls from Arpachiyah

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

M. E. L. Mallowan
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Extract

It seems appropriate to select as a subject for discussion in honour of my friend C. J. Gadd, some long lost bones, now resuscitated, from Arpachiyah, for these relate to material published in the second volume of this Journal, thirty-six years ago, by which time each of us had written a first article for a periodical which was destined to be long lived.

For the sake of younger students it may be necessary to recall that Arpachiyah, a small prehistoric site, about four miles east of Nineveh was the first archaeological expedition directly sponsored by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, in 1933. The excavations were directed by me and published jointly with a colleague, J. Cruikshank Rose, with whom I had previously worked at Ur. We were accompanied by my wife who shared the work with us, and never has so small a supervisory staff worked harder or with more enjoyment and better reward.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , Spring 1969 , pp. 49 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1969

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References

1 Conveniently summarised in Mallowan, M. E. L., Twenty-Five Years of Mesopotamian Discovery (1956), 1–11Google Scholar.

2 Arp., 42, Plate IIIc.

3 Otten, C. M., “Note on the Cemetery of Eridu” in Sumer 4 (1948), 125 ffGoogle Scholar.

4 Coon, C. S., “The Eridu Crania—a Preliminary Report” in Sumer 5 (1948–1949), 103 ffGoogle Scholar.

5 See also Mallowan, M. E. L., “The Development of Cities”, C.A.H. I, viii (1967), 24Google Scholar.

6 Arp., 15.

7 Quoted from a review article on Schaeffer, C. F., Ugaritica IV (Mission de Ras Shamra, Tome XV, 1962)Google Scholar, in Antiquity 40 (1966)Google Scholar.

8 On the absence of prehistoric osteological evidence from 'Ubaid, see Mallowan, M. E. L. in C.A.H. I, viii, pt. I, (1967), 34Google Scholar.

9 For the first publication of the evidence from Kish see Buxton, L. H. Dudley and Rice, D. Talbot in JRAI 01 to June 1931Google Scholar. The skulls and bones that were examined came from the Old Sumerian Palace at Ingharra and from the A. Cemetery—none of it was earlier than E.D.III(b) and the Agade period. There were some neo-Babylonian skeletal remains, 8th–5th centuries B.C. from mound W. in E. Kish—excavated 1925–26. See also Penniman, T. K., “A Note on the Inhabitants of Kish before the Great Flood” in Watelin, L. Ch. and Langdon, S., Excavations at Kish, 1925–1930, IV (1934)Google Scholar. None of the material from the Y Cemetery described by Penniman antedates the Early Dynastic period. The skulls from Kish were of various types, mainly long headed, with a very small proportion of broad heads.

10 An interesting case of infant mortality has recently come to light at Hassuna. See Dr.Aziz, Mohammed Hasan Abdul and Slipka, Jaroslav, “Twins from Hassuna” in Sumer 22 (1966), 45 ffGoogle Scholar. They came from level II and appear to have been still-born premature babies, possibly conjoined. The level of the grave perhaps indicates that it was of the 'Ubaid period.