Current Excavations
Season 7: Spring 2025
Introduction
The seventh season of the Lagash Archaeological Project took place from April 8th–April 30th 2025. Excavations took place in Area G, complemented by remote sensing and geoarchaeological sampling.
Excavations
Drone photography after a rain event following the scraping of the northern unit area. The rain made the remains observed during scraping visible again.
Scraping
The primary goal of the 7th campaign was to reveal the plan of large area of architectural remains associated with the Area G complex and curving wall excavated during the Legacy excavations under Donald Hansen in seasons 3H, 4H and 6H (See Legacy excavations). Drone photography and magnetometry revealed extensive architectural remains of both institutional and residential character. The scraping effort was supervised by Dr. Hugo Naccaro. Seventeen 10 x 10 meter squares and four 5 x 10 meter squares were exposed over the course of 15 days of work. Between 12 and 15 workers were involved with the scraping in addition to excavation staff and SBAH representatives. Almost 2000 square meters were scraped, revealing part of an institutional building of considerable scale. Two architectural units were defined which were integrated and interconnected within a larger complex that incorporated previously excavated architecture. The surface plan merges structures from several different phases and levels. These will be differentiated through future excavation.
Western face of wall in Trench 30, with drainage pipe to the right.
Excavation
In Area G, Trench 30 was opened on April 12 and was explored for seven days of excavation. The excavation was supervised by Dr. Clélia Paladre assisted by Ms. Erin Braner. The Trench measured 2 meters by 7 meters and was located in order to document a circulation axis visible in the drone imagery and magnetometry. The main objective was to characterize the architectural and street features, and to capture their organization and chronological development. Three main phases were exposed revealing continuous occupation and reorganization within the area. Based on the ceramics, these levels can be assigned to the late Early Dynastic I period, as expected from the Legacy excavations in adjacent area.
Phase 3: A substantial wall divides the trench into two distinct zones: a street to the east and an open space to the west. The wall has semicircular buttresses on both faces. The western face of the wall has a circular pipe draining into an installation in Space C that served as a drainage basin for channeling and removing water from the base of the wall. Two floor levels are associated with this phase.
Phase 2: This phase marks a significant reorganization of the area. A leveling layer was placed over the drainage basin in the west of the trench. On top of the leveling, a wall was built, poorly preserved, and disappearing in the middle of the trench, probably indicating the presence of a door. A second wall, 1.25 meters wide, is better preserved. Along its eastern face is a gutter system with two distinct phases. In this phase the space was divided into three zones: a street to the east, and two open spaces to the west. Two successive floors were identified in the middle space.
Phase 1: This upper phase is very poorly preserved; the two walls of this phase indicate yet another reconfiguration of the area, potentially associated with the narrowing of the street and construction of new structures.
Objects
As expected, the objects retrieved through the scraping and excavation were of a mundane nature. Lithics make up 25 percent of the total of 113 objects. Administrative materials were also retrieved in the form of clay and bitumen closing devices, but none of them showed either seal impressions or other marks of any kind. One rare fragment of a copper blade was found in the excavation near the gutter. From the scraping operation a remarkable number of small beads were recovered, both shell rings and beads as well as colorful stones. Five clay sickles were recovered from the scraping trenches suggesting that this artifact type, typical of the earlier Ubaid period, continued in use throughout the ED period at Lagash.
Ceramic gutter.
Pottery
Most of the pottery retrieved in the scraping and excavations of Area G is late Early Dynastic I in date. In addition to the Solid Footed Goblets, the main recorded diagnostic vessel types are Ledge-Rim Jars (HL-12), jars with fingernail impressions at the base of the neck (HL-12c), jars with reserved slip decoration, Trays (HE-1), Everted-Rim Jars (HK-1), and jars with a lid-support rim (HL-18). This fits well with a late ED I assemblage, as documented in Renette 2021. Future excavations in this complex promise to refine the chronology developed on the basis of the Legacy excavations.
Magnetometry
Dr. Paul Zimmerman, Assistant Director of the LAP project, supervised the remote sensing investigations on the site. He worked together with David Redhouse and Abdalhkaleq Jassim who assisted in all aspects of the research. The same SENSYS MXPDA cart-based magnetometry system that was used in previous seasons of the Lagash Archaeological Project was deployed again in the 7LAP season. 14.8 hectares were scanned with the magnetometer in the 7LAP season, bringing the total coverage of Area G to 15.6 ha, centered on the area within the old excavation’s spoil heaps where this season’s scrapings and sounding occurred. In addition eight grid units in the northeast corner of the region were scanned, extending eastward to cross the low depression in the middle of the site between Area G and Area C, where Dr. Goodman drilled a transect of test augers.
This work allows us to begin to understand the structure of this part of the city. The southwestern half of the Area G magnetogram reveals large buildings and open spaces. The northeastern portion of the area is dominated by densely packed structures, residential with small streets subdivided into neighborhoods.
Area G is bounded on its east and west sides by large N–S canals, beyond which no architecture is detected. Using only remote sensing data, these features were elsewhere identified as massive city walls, but the present study, and the 7LAPTT1 test trench (see the Geoarchaeological report), shows conclusively that they are canals. A similar canal also bounds the western edge of Area C. Between these two canals is a depression that is largely devoid of structures or other obvious signs of habitation and is tentatively identified by the geoarchaeological augers as agricultural land.
Urban structure of Area G, showing the canals that bound it on the west and east. Large-scale architecture dominates the southwestern zone, with smaller (possibly residential) structures in the northeastern zone. East of the eastern canal is apparently agricultural.
Canal and Harbor
In addition to the large canals that bound Area G on its east and west, a somewhat smaller canal also runs from the south directly toward the curving wall of Area G. This canal is notable in that it has on its eastern side a square harbor roughly 30 m × 30 m with a square dock of about 7 m × 7 m. North of the dock is a large square building with small rooms around its perimeter and a central courtyard of about 50 m on each side. At the northern end of the courtyard a bank of five 4 m diameter ovens is installed, suggesting cooking on an industrial scale.
Detail of canal with harbor and dock adjacent to a large building with ovens.
Geoarchaeological Investigation and Results
Locations of augers from the 7LAP season.
Dr. Reed Goodman, Clemson University, directs the geoarchaeological investigations of the Lagash Archaeological project. The 7LAP Geoarchaeological investigation at Lagash examined a prominent north-south oriented depression that traverses the site, separating two elevated ridges that contain significant residential and temple complexes. Four auger locations—7LAPAuger1, 7LAPAuger2, 7LAPAuger3, and 7LAPAuger4—were documented at roughly 90 m intervals. Earlier scholarship proposed that this feature was the city’s primary river channel. However, building upon prior geoarchaeological research, our working hypothesis suggests that this depression originated as a natural tidal channel. Over time, this channel progressively plugged northward, transitioning into prime agricultural land characterized by fine-grained, organic-rich soils by the period of Lagash’s intensive occupation. The 7LAPauger5, positioned on an elevated sandy surface (31.419340° N, 46.410814° E), investigated sediment accumulation previously linked to the intracity “Going-to-Nigin” canal. The character of the sediments establishes that it is indeed a major canal that traversed the northern part of the city.
East face of Test Trench 7LAPTT1 showing clear evidence of an intracity canal.
Geoarchaeological Test Trenches
Four geoarchaeological trenches were excavated to investigate suspected canal and architectural features. Two trenches were placed within the site boundaries, and two off-site trenches were excavated in collaboration with Dr. Jaffar Jotheri from Al-Qadisiyah University. The preliminary interpretation of the integrated data from the auger transect, geophysical surveys, and geoarchaeological test trenches robustly support the hypothesis that the central depression at Lagash transformed from an original tidal channel through marsh-like conditions into actively managed agricultural land during peak urban occupation. Sedimentological evidence and architectural traces clearly illustrate dynamic interactions between natural processes and intensive human land-use strategies.
Archaeobotanical Analysis
Dr. Carolyne Douché undertook the analysis of the plant remains from Lagash. In the 7th season she undertook a pilot study that aims to evaluate for the first time the archaeobotanical potential of the site and to obtain preliminary results for the understanding of the daily life at the urban settlement.
The main aim of the archaeobotanical analysis at Lagash is to reconstruct the agricultural production and consumption during the 3rd millennium BCE. The identification of crops will provide information on the farming systems (and their potential adaptations from the EDI to the EDIII), human and animal diet and more generally plant uses. As recent excavations focus on the exploration and understanding of residential areas, the dataset collected at Lagash represents a unique assemblage, that will finally allow us to compare the accessibility of agricultural products and byproducts within different classes of the society. In particular, this study will offer us the great opportunity of comparing the daily, household plant economy characterizing Lagash to the more ‘ritual’ plant economy associated to the nearby monumental center at Girsu.
In addition, the identification of wild taxa provides information on the surrounding vegetation (natural and anthropogenic) as well as – in the case of arable weeds—on agricultural practices such as irrigation. Again, the archaeological contexts offer an opportunity to explore the farming system(s) at household level and to compare it with the monumental areas of other sites. It is expected that household farming was more ‘free’ and consequently more diversified than the large-scale, centralized agricultural system closely affiliated to the religious or political center.
