Search results for "Mesopotamia"

Re-giardinieri e Natura selvaggia. Implicazioni politico-simboliche dello sradicamento, taglio e trasporto in città degli alberi nella Mesopotamia de…

2022

In Sumerian mythological literature, as in coeval Akkadian one, between the end of the 3rd and the beginning of the 2nd millennium, the ruler, foremost among them Gilgameš, on several occasions uproots and/or cuts down trees. These trees should be understood as elements of a wider ‘Wilderness’, with which they share a powerful and ambiguous ontological otherness compared to the city and, more generally, to the land of Sumer. The action of the king on the tree, like that of a farmer or gardener, with the consequent realization of ‘artefacts’, allows, through a cultural organization of the power of the tree, the renewal of the relationship, always subject to crisis, between the human communit…

Early Bronze Age painted wares from Tell el-'Abd, Syria: A compositional and technological study

2018

Abstract The ‘Euphrates Monochrome Painted Ware’ (henceforth EMPW) is a ceramic style attested in the Middle Euphrates region in northern Syria at the beginning of the Early Bronze Age, ca. 2900–2700 BCE. This style is not an isolated phenomenon; rather, it must be understood in the context of a general, albeit short-lived, re-introduction of painted ceramics into local assemblages of Greater Mesopotamia. In the present study, we investigate the technology and provenance of the painted pottery from Tell el-'Abd (North Syria) and its relation to contemporary ceramics retrieved at this site. We apply a combination of macroscopic observations, ceramic petrography, and micro X-ray diffraction (…

The ‘grave of the Court Pit’, A rediscovered Bronze Age tomb from Carchemish

2014

This paper examines the British Museum unpublished records related to an Early Bronze (EB) Age pithos burial uncovered a century ago in the Inner Town at Carchemish. The grave, cursorily cited and variously dated (Chalcolithic, EB or even LBA) in the final reports, was described in some detail by Hogarth and Thompson; a precise dating is, however, possible today thanks to the information of paramount importance given by T. E. Lawrence who identified and took a picture of the associated finds, which was recently rediscovered in the Carchemish Archives. The pithos can be now ascribed to the third quarter of the third millennium BC and helps to confirm the recent theory according to which the …

Rev. of. M. J. Geller, Melothesia in Babylonia: Medicine, Magic, and Astrology in the Ancient Near East

2015

Drowned Landscapes: The Rediscovered Archaeological Heritage of the Mosul Dam Reservoir

2023

Like natural catastrophes or armed conflicts, resource extraction projects herald the alteration or destruction of natural and cultural landscapes alike. Dam construction is a major threat to cultural heritage in Western Asian archaeology. One event may result in obliterating hundreds of sites, most of which never reappear or do so only sporadically following cyclical water fluctuation. Destruction of sites remains ongoing, necessitating constant assessment of damage and the establishment of strategies of documentation and maintenance. This paper proposes a new paradigm for future safeguarding and, more widely, a new tool for managing contiguous terrestrial and lacustrine cultural zones. It…

Antropologia religiosa e studi sul Vicino Oriente antico

2021

Dialogo tra antropologia religiosa e studi sul Vicino Oriente antico

Quando l'eroe disturba il mostro. Uno studio comparativo sulla figura del mostro-custode: Ḫubaba, Ladone e il serpente della Colchide

2013

Going, Returning, Rising. The Movement of the Organs in the Mesopotamian Anatomy

2019

Although many assyriological studies have been done on internal organs in the Mesopotamian worldview, the pathologies associated with them, and their metaphorical and ideological value, little attention have been paid to the fact that, sometimes, internal organs are associated with verbs of movement. Perhaps, this limited regard can be attributed to the assyriological look at the Mesopotamian body being shaped by the modern biomedicine. According to biomedicine, in fact, the human internal anatomy is composed of a series of organs which stay fixed in their positions. On the contrary, I want to show how the internal organs in Mesopotamian anatomy are thought as capable to move. I will demons…

Settlement Dynamics on the Banks of the Upper Tigris, Iraq: The Mosul Dam Reservoir Survey (1980)

2020

The paper describes a dataset of archaeological sites and villages now partially covered by the water of the Mosul Dam Reservoir. For the first time the dataset offers digitized information on c.150 archaeological sites detected during a survey carried out by the Iraqi State Organization for Antiquities and Heritage in the 1980s. Knowledge of the map of these sites will have a substantial impact on interpretation of Tigridian settlement dynamics.   Funding statement: This research has received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Pots and places in the Late Chalcolithic period. A view from the Eastern Ḫabur Region

2019

This paper attempts to contextualise the preliminary results of a survey (EHAS) and excavation (KUGAMID) projects recently undertaken by a team of the University of Tübingen in the uppermost region of Iraqi Kurdistan as far as the Late Chalcolithic period is concerned. Settlement patterns and land use, stratigraphic sequences and pottery assemblages are considered here in order to shed light on the dynamics of the emergence of social complexity and the establishment of proto-urban trajectories along the river banks, riverine plains, foothills and mountain valleys of the foothills of Zagros. Preliminary results suggest that the process of urbanisation in this area seems to be connected with …