Current Excavations
Season 5: 2023
Introduction
The fifth season of excavations at al-Hiba ran from October 15 through November 23, 2023. Although unforeseen circumstances resulted in a shorter season and a smaller team than originally planned, much progress was made on excavations in Area H, focusing on the public eatery in Trench 3 and the domestic building in Trench 5.
Excavation
Trench 3
In Trench 3, Sara Pizzimenti, assisted by Sara Quaggio and Benedetta Marcucci, further investigated the remains of the public eatery—the celebrated “tavern” first identified in fall 2022.
The large oven, which had been little more than a round patch of reddish soil for most of the previous season, had one of the more dramatic transformations. Its mudbrick wall and floor are clearly discernable in the field photos, together with remnants of internal platforms on which food was placed for cooking. The rear part of the oven, which shows signs of more intense burning, seems to have been the place where the fuel was placed and ignited.
In the storage area of the eatery, removal of the superstructure of the zeer-style “fridge” installation revealed that the nested construction exposed last season was built around the core of a large, inverted storage jar that had served as an independent refrigeration device in the previous level.
Trench 5
Trench 5, excavated by Clélia Paladre with the assistance of Gaia Zuccoli and Carolina Delaini, contains a sizeable house constructed of plano-convex bricks, inhabited during the Early Dynastic IIIa period (ca. 25th century BCE). A southward extension of the fourth season’s 10 x 10 meter square allowed a broader exposure of this structure.
The southern limit of the house is marked by an alley that may intersect at a right angle the street uncovered in Trench 4/6. The interior rooms surround a courtyard with a bench running along its west wall. The north wall has an inset cistern or storage pit that was filled with discarded clay jar stoppers and other household refuse above a layer of clean clay.
The functions of most of the other rooms so far exposed are unclear. The rooms to the west of the courtyard have ashy floors that indicate burning. In the room immediately to the south of the courtyard contains a gutter for disposal of waste, including animal bones and large potsherds. Installations of ceramic vats set into the floors are found in several rooms, as well as other features whose purposes are not obvious.
Material Culture
The small finds from Trench 3 included a jar sealing with a Fara-style seal impression in a context datable to the late ED I period. Other non-seal-impressed clay and bitumen sealings were found in both Trenches 3 and 5.
Trench 5 also produced flint blades, beads, and fragments of stone vessels. A nearly complete stone jar with two openings was one of the more impressive finds this season. It has been suggested that such vessels were used for cosmetic storage and application.
Paleobotanical Research
In an effort to reconstruct past economies, agriculture, and environmental change, the Lagash Archaeological Project has undertaken an analysis of botanical remains through systematic soil sampling in the field and flotation of the samples at the dig house. Mr. Bakir Athab, Mr. Ghazwan Majid, and representatives from the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage were closely involved with the flotation process, in addition to participating in excavation in the field.
Remote Sensing
Because of the smaller number of team members responsible for on-site survey this season, the project’s focus was directed toward observing relict features through satellite imagery in the landscape adjacent to Lagash.
Observations of an area to the northeast of the main mound suggest that there was a higher intensity of occupation in this location than was previously expected. The city of Lagash may have extended further to the east and included many more features than we currently know. One distinctive feature, visible for a length of about 100 meters, appears to be a large wall with a curve in the middle.