Читать книгу Iraq's Marsh Arabs in the Garden of Eden - Edward L. Ochsenschlager - Страница 8
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IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN
In 1968 a discovery that would change my research focus from ancient pottery to ethnoarchaeology occurred during my second week as part of a team excavating at al-Hiba, an eroded mound on the edge of the marshes of southern Iraq. The mound contained the remains of the ancient Sumerian city of Lagash which reached its greatest size in the Early Dynastic III (ED III) period, ca. 2600–2300 BC. At the end of Early Dynastic IIIB (2400–2300 BC), or sometime during that period, the city’s occupation declined rapidly and the Sumerian capital was apparently transferred to ancient Girsu, now the nearby mound of Tello.* The surrounding marshes consisted of a series of interconnected permanent marshes and lakes covering some 8,800 km2 in the dry season and expanding to 20,000 km2 when their banks overflowed in the spring inundation.
The Garden of Eden is the name given to the “earthly paradise” where Adam and Eve are thought to have lived before their Fall (Genesis 2 and 3). From the exact details recorded, it would seem that the writer of the Biblical story conceives of the Garden of Eden as an actual locality on earth. Many attempts have been made to determine its exact geographic position, and writers and scholars have located it in many parts of the world. Since the discovery of ancient civilizations in modern Iraq scholars have leaned toward the sites of southern Sumer, which includes the al-Hiba area. Indeed, it is conceivable that the word “Eden” is derived from the Sumerian word “edinu” which meant field, plain, or depression. One of the most prominent theorists on this topic, Juris Zarins, believes the Garden of Eden lies some 200 miles south of Sumer under the waters of the Persian Gulf, and he thinks that the story of Adam and Eve, both in and out of the Garden, is a highly condensed and evocative account of the shift from hunting / gathering to agriculture.*
Al Hiba
Al-Hiba is situated on the alluvial plain of southern Mesopotamia. Located on the southeastern edge of the marshes, it is surrounded by water and is one of the largest, if not the largest, archaeological sites in southern Iraq. It is over two miles long and a mile wide. Findings of Ubaid and Jamdat Nasr artifacts indicate the site’s early occupation, but it is in Sumerian times that the site grew in size and importance. Vaughn E. Crawford for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Donald P. Hansen for the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University began excavating the mound in the fall and winter of 1968–69, and I was a member of their team. Major efforts of the first season included the excavation of the temple platform in a temple oval and several soundings in other areas to help explore more fully the nature of the mound.
The Find
Many important discoveries took place on this site over the next two decades. I especially remember two of them from the first season. The first was the excavation of a foundation deposit, in the temple oval, which consisted of human torso made of copper whose lower body, from the waist down, terminated in a large cone-shaped nail that pierced the lowest course of the foundation. Behind the torso was a stone brick, which, like the figurine, bore an inscription telling us that the statue was a representation of the god Shulutula placed here by the king Enannatum I to stand forever in prayer before the goddess Inana in her temple the Ib-Gal. It was widely known from ancient texts that the Ib-Gal stood in the city of Lagash, of the State of Lagash. Clearly here was the proof the expedition had been seeking that the site of al-Hiba was the ancient city of Lagash. Equally important, the inscriptions told us which king built the temple and therefore its date of construction. Clearly this was a very important find for the expedition and for the elucidation of ancient Sumerian history.
The second find was the shaped-mud object that determined the course of my career. It occurred in one of those soundings carried out to determine stratagraphic sequence, not too far from the Ib-Gal, in what appeared to be the remains of a private house from a slightly later period. This lump of shaped mud in a layer of unshaped mud was barely discernible and extremely fragile and might have been easily overlooked. It was hardly the type of discovery to cause a celebration but it was the beginning of this study.
I had not seen anything like this in the excavation before, and I certainly had no idea of its significance. Luckily we had built an oven that we used for baking mud tablets, and I included this particular lump in one of the oven’s firings. After it was baked, I carefully cleaned it and examined it in detail. Clearly it was part of a vessel; still unclear was why it had never been baked. I wondered if it might be something made by a child to imitate the baked pottery of his or her elders or an awkwardly formed vessel by a beginning potter judged too poorly made to warrant firing. The adult-sized fingerprints left by the individual who shaped the piece made it clear that my first hypothesis could not be correct: the piece could not have been made by a child. At that time, my second hypothesis did not seem to be testable. Over the next few days a few more pieces of unbaked mud vessels came to light, demonstrably from unbaked pots of different shapes and sizes, and their possible purpose took on more significance. Why would a culture with fired pottery have any use for vessels made of sun-dried mud?
Taking Our Problem to the Villagers
Desperate for help in understanding these idiosyncratic finds, I turned to the nearby villages. The villagers soon introduced me to a world apart from the Midwestern U.S. farm where I was raised.
In 1968 a number of small villages existed close to the site of al-Hiba and alongside the marshes on which they were largely dependent. Each contained the homes of one of two different tribes, the Mi’dan or the Beni Hasan. The Mi’dan, sometimes called the Marsh Arabs, had lived in the marshes for over 5,000 years and fished the marshes with spears. They also kept water buffalo, which, technically undomesticated, foraged for reeds and sedge in the marshes during the day and returned to the family shelter in late afternoon to give up their milk and spend the night under protection.
Mi’dan villages were sometimes built directly in the marshes on platforms or islands they constructed of alternate layers of reed mats or reeds and silt dug from the bottom of the marsh. The Beni Hasan, in contrast, kept sheep and cattle of breeds adaptable to the environment, which grazed on the banks of the marsh, and raised crops of vegetables and animal fodder on plots of land that were sometimes irrigated. They also fished, not with spears but with set or throw nets.
There were many similarities between the two peoples, and families of one tribe were often dependent on families of the other. Both tribes kept chickens, caught wild birds in nets or shot them with guns, and grew rice in small beds on the edges of the marshes. Strict ideas of honor governed relationships between people. The principal guardians of these traditions, and the work ethic as well, were not holy men but craftspeople.
Children were born at home with the aid of midwives or an older female relative. They were taught early at their mother’s or father’s side the chores required for survival, and by the time they were eight years old they were productive and respected members of the family. One’s parents chose one’s mate, marriage occurred early, and it was expected that there would be no sexual activity of any kind by either person before the marriage was consummated. Most important, for our purposes, these modern people were largely dependent on the same material resources that had been available to the ancient Sumerians.
Answers to the Problem of the Mud Sherd
Imagine my surprise when I found villagers in every modern household using unbaked mud vessels alongside fired vessels and others made from metal, glass, and plastic. I spent hours watching village people collect mud and manufacture sun-dried mud objects. I also observed them use the objects for a wide variety of purposes: portable hearths, small storage containers, bases to stabilize large pots, corn grinders, incense burners—all were fashioned from mud and dried in the sun. Within a few weeks I was convinced by the evidence that ethnographic analogues had significant value for clarifying excavated finds and perhaps better understanding life in the ancient world.
Clearly I could not consider modern artifacts, similar to those that existed in Early Dynastic times, as an inheritance from the past. Nor could I conclude, on the basis of similar shape, that their functions were necessarily the same. It was clear, however, that the general ecology in 1968 Iraq was similar to that of the 3rd millennium BC. Our initial belief in this comparability rested on the archaeological finds of model boats, fishing spears and fish bones, the remains, impressions, or images of reed products or structures, and the like. The existence of such water-related artifacts in quantity seemed unimaginable without nearby, contemporary wetlands or marshes. Jennifer R. Pournelle brings certainty to this point of view in her dissertation.* She gives us an idea of what the southern floodplain would have been like in the early millennia of settlement and delineates the role of marshes as a recurring feature of the landscape. She believes that Sumerian administrators understood “that productive wetlands were not just those areas delimited by permanent reed swamp, but included all that surrounding area, seasonally dry, ‘created’ by farming and grazing, that revert to dust, mud, or water during a year’s progress,”* and this mirrored the ideas and practices of the modern people who inhabited the area at the beginning of our research.
Robert Ascher† had suggested that given environmentally similar conditions, valid analogies could be sought between the present and the past. Indeed, both modern villagers and ancient Sumerians had adapted to these conditions in a similar fashion: both used similar technology and the same locally available raw materials to make similar artifacts. I was convinced that what I learned from modern villagers would help me better understand the ancient Sumerians and might help the excavators answer archaeological questions at al-Hiba.
More Than Mud
What I learned about the modern use of mud§ was so interesting and so potentially informative about aspects of life in ancient times that I expanded my investigation to other materials that were used by ancient peoples. Initially I focused my investigations on wood, bitumen, reeds‡ and wool,§ and these carried me to tangential areas with which they were closely associated: wood to boats, fishing, and moral power of craftsmen; bitumen and reeds to the many kinds of tools and their use; wool backward to sheep and then to other animals and animal husbandry, forward to spinning, weaving, and the power of craftswomen in the community. The project had a single goal: to help us better understand what we were finding in the excavation. There was no expectation at that time that these studies would be of independent interest to anyone else.
This 22-year project resulted in a portrait of a way of life, however incomplete, which has since entirely vanished. From an archaeological point of view it helped us define ancient manufacturing processes and assign value to our artifacts as a function of the craftsman’s skill and time. It has extracted meaningful criteria to help us understand better an artifact’s significance, to appreciate the skill of those who used it, and to grasp the substantial social and moral authority wielded by village craftspeople. Study of the manufacture, use, and disposal of modern artifacts has indicated problems of interpretation sometimes overlooked in archaeological contexts. Above all, I believe these studies allow for a fuller understanding of the complexities involved in the process of change in an artifact’s function, value, and spatial relationships in defined settings.
Clearly many details of modern village life had parallels in the archaeological record. Arched reed houses and buildings of mud brick and pisé are well attested in antiquity, and we can conclude that they were built in a very similar fashion to the way they are built today, in part because of the nature of the raw materials and in part because of direct evidence of manufacture from ancient strata. Some of the forms of sun-dried mud pottery are attested in Sumerian times by finds in the excavations at al-Hiba, and they have preserved details of construction which show that they were made in the same way as modern examples. Mud storage containers, jars, conical ovens, ammunition for slings, and children’s toys are widely known in antiquity from many sites. Ancient models of outside mud and reed bed platforms, perhaps made as toys, show the same raw materials used in the same fashion as those in modern courtyards. Impressions of ancient reed baskets and mats exhibit the same construction techniques as do modern ones. Models of ancient boats show that they were very similar to modern ones and built of the same materials.
Even without corroborating evidence some ancient parallels with modern functions can be assumed. Although the materials did not exist in antiquity, the functions of some modern aluminum, tin, plastic, and porcelain containers are probably generally the same as the functions of the pottery of antiquity. The physical requirements of animals would lead us to believe that ancient animal husbandry had much in common with the modern. In some cases, for instance in weaving, we can restore parts of the process and artifacts missing in the archaeological record. Through the restoration of the entire process involved in the manufacture of an artifact we can estimate the actual value of that artifact to the people who made and used it by measuring the skill and time required for its production. We can infer other details of life in Sumerian times from the ethnographic information. We can understand and better appreciate, for instance, the degree of coordination and skill required for everyday activities in ancient times because both modern and ancient peoples used similar artifacts for similar purposes. Indeed the physical and mental energy expended by young men in mastering the throw-net, spear, and sling is akin to the effort put forth today by first-class athletes. Like modern young Iraqi villagers who, at the age of eight or younger, have jobs which are important to the survival of their families, Sumerian children were probably productive members of society, in contrast to modern Western society where we appear to think that work deprives children of their childhood and there is little work that children can profitably do in any case.
More speculative, perhaps, are such things as the role of individuals or groups of people. For instance, Iraqi villagers and ancient Sumerian craftspeople dealt in raw materials and artifacts crucial to the survival of the entire community. It is possible therefore that similar groups in antiquity may have enjoyed similar respect and played similar roles in preserving traditional morality and work ethics.
Nippur
The value of this research is significantly enhanced by a decision of the University of Pennsylvania to let me use the previously unpublished 19th century photographs of John Henry Haynes (see Chapter 14). He was an acutely sensitive man who served as business manager, photographer, and eventually director during the first four seasons conducted by the University of Pennsylvania at Nippur in Iraq, situated some 80 miles to the northwest of al-Hiba and in the late 19th century lay on the edge of the same vast marshes which al Hiba bordered during the course of my study.* The older material from Nippur gives me a unique opportunity to illustrate a general continuity in artifact form, function, and details of manufacture over a period of nearly 100 years.
Change, Change, Change
In contrast to the general continuity which would appear to have existed among artifacts and functions from the late 19th century as evidenced by the photographs of John Henry Haynes compared to my initial studies in 1968, a great many changes would take place during the next 22 years. In 1968, at the beginning of this study, the majority of the inhabitants still lived in isolation from mainstream Iraq. Few of the people of tribes other than the Bedouin had visited any place more distant than Shatra, a three-hour trip in good weather, and they clearly resisted outside influences in their daily lives.
Fundamental and far-reaching changes took place during the following years. Inexpensive goods appeared in the markets of nearby towns and encroached on the production of local households or craftspeople. Schools were built in the area and were obligatory for the young. Although at first most of the students would follow in their fathers’ footsteps, teachers awakened in them a curiosity about the outside world and inspired some to try their hands at non-traditional endeavors. The authority of the sheikhs began to disappear in intra-village and inter-group relations, but the cohesiveness of family and village life was still strong due to a firm belief in the Quran and the moral authority of village elders and of craftspeople.
By the middle of the 1970s some of the traditional crafts and practices had completely disappeared, and barter was increasingly replaced by a cash-driven economy. Goods made elsewhere and purchased in market towns became more common, eroding the traditional, almost total, reliance on the material resources of the local area. The strictest possible adherence to village standards was increasingly giving way to a more flexible morality encouraged by more contact with the outside world, a decline in the authority of craftspeople, and a change from an information and entertainment system largely dependent on the Quran, poets, and story tellers to the radio which provided both news and entertainment from within and outside Iraq well saturated with “modern” ideas and political propaganda.
Still, it was the wars and drying up of the marshes, both inflicted by the outside world, that would cause the most serious and far-reaching changes and alter forever these peoples’ ways of life. With the onset of Iraq’s war with Iran in the 1980s, the pace of change increased with electrifying speed. Conscription took hundreds of young men from the marshes and turned them into soldiers. Their experience and associations with men from other areas in Iraq permanently altered the outlook of those who returned. The fact that many did not return had a devastating effect on the families they left behind who had no other resource but the father’s labor to ward off hunger or even starvation. It put a great strain on the principles of hospitality and community welfare one saw at work in the communities and changed, probably forever, many of the divisions of labor that previously existed.
It was the purposeful drying up of the marshes that clearly had the most devastating effect for everyone in the area was dependent on them in one way or another. Even those in the community who eventually benefited by the draining of the marshes mourned their passing as a way of life and a thing of beauty.
The Eden of Old
In 1968 al-Hiba was surrounded by contiguous areas of permanent, seasonal, and temporary marsh. Melting snow in the mountains to the north caused annual floods. The inundation reached its height in May and began to recede in June. By August the temporary marsh was covered with a growth of sedges and grass ready to welcome the nomadic Bedouin who arrived with their herds of goats, sheep, and camels to take advantage of the pasturage. The waters reached their lowest point in September and October. In November the water level rose slightly, and, with the rainy season in late December or early January, sudden short floods could occur.
Weather provides a definite summer and winter with transitions between the two in November-December and March-April. Spring weather brings brief but violent thunderstorms with high winds. Dazzling flashes, traveling down the plain as sheets of ground lightning, and tremendous rolling thunder bursts deliver a vivid reminder of why the weather was often a god in ancient times. When the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers flood, from March to July, the marshes were at their greatest extent both then and now. In the 1960s and 1970s the floods were much more dangerous and the marshes would attain a depth of four to five feet fairly close to the marsh banks and much deeper in places farther away from the shore. Hot, dry summers often include a southeast wind called shamal, which pick up heat in crossing the Arabian land mass and cause high local temperatures, sometimes over 120° F during the day. When especially strong this wind generated dust storms, sometimes lasting for three or four days and nights. Such continuous, unchanging, and monotonous storms could prove psychologically trying and enervating to outsiders. Occasionally one from the south, which usually brought high humidity combined with the heat, and made human activity of any kind difficult, replaced this wind. Long summers are hard and hot. Winters are quite chilly with temperatures reaching the freezing point overnight and frost occurring fairly regularly. Winter is also the rainy season, especially from the end of December through March, with the heaviest rains in January and February.
If we waited too far into the rainy season to leave al-Hiba for Baghdad, the floodwaters often required extended boat trips to an area where we could pick up a road which was still above water. Then we traveled by taxi and on foot, carrying our luggage, making our way to a main road that was fairly clear of water and passable.
The marshes were a thing of beauty. During the fall and winter migrations they were filled with wild birds—ducks, geese, ibises, pelicans, and cranes. Other birds, such as owls, kingfishers, eagles, and quail, seemed to be permanent residents. Carp, the most common fish in the marsh, furnished ample supplies for the fishermen who caught them for food, sale, or barter.
Other inhabitants of the marshland were not quite so benevolent. Several varieties of poisonous snakes lived here, and the bites of some were said to be fatal. Equally dangerous, and even more feared, were wild pigs lurking among the reeds and attacking anything that encroaches on their worlds, even human beings. Wild boar were larger than some varieties known else-where. They could grow as tall as 1 m at the shoulder and sported formidable, razor-sharp tusks. Quite a few local inhabitants bore sizable scars; others died of their wounds. The Mi’dan, who harvest fodder for their water buffalo and reeds for their mats in the marshes, were especially vulnerable. The world shifted when a wild pig crossed the mound; silence was absolute; birds stopped singing and dogs slunk into hiding without a sound.
The marshes also had other drawbacks. They were a breeding ground for insects. Mosquitoes, in combination with fiercely biting flies, made summer difficult for both humans and beasts, and the flies maintained their vitality through October. In spring beetles appeared as large around as a silver dollar. Their purpose, apparently, was to fly noisily into midair, mate, fall down, and dig holes in which to bury their eggs. Hairy hunter spiders as large as a human hand ran back and forth all night looking for beetles to prey on. Between the beetles and the spiders, which penetrated through even the reed and mud of local houses and raced over people trying to sleep, spring was not the time of year to take a good night’s rest for granted. Freshwater snails that carried the parasites causing bilharzias also made their home in the marshes. Few people in the area were free of this disease, with which, although curable, they were often re-infected each time they stepped into the marsh or canal. Flatworms penetrated any scratch in the skin and made their way to the bladder where they multiplied, causing bleeding, weakness, and pain.
Like people everywhere, local inhabitants took their problems for granted and found them of minor consequence. Few attributed blindness, external bleeding, and serious internal problems to the flatworms that caused bilharzias. Certainly trouble caused by insects, snakes, and wild boars were unpleasant, but either home remedies or precautions mitigated them, and they need not be endured every minute. Each season was considered a relief from the vagary of the season past. Like farmers everywhere, no one here ever complained too loudly of either rain or sun.
Each season brought rewards. The shade of the palm provided easement on the hottest day, as did the dried dung fire on the hearth in times of cold. In the scenery there is great beauty. In the fall, one can gaze over the depleted marsh for miles, clear to the horizon. Sunrises and sunsets are spectacular, framed by enormous beds of reeds in the late spring and summer. When traveling in the web of narrow boat paths through the thick, tall, reed stalks all light can be completely cut off, giving one the feeling of traveling through mysterious tunnels in a lost world.
Above all, it was the marshes which made possible the way of life of the surrounding people who still made their living, as they had for generations, from the countryside. They relied heavily on their individual and collective skills and the resources of the area for most of their needs. Tribal, village, and family organizations were still fairly strong, giving a meaning and purpose to life fully shared with other members of the community.
The Beginning of the End
In 1968 the marshes had already begun to shrink largely due to private irrigation projects of important sheikhs and landowners and to natural causes. The site of Nippur, from which we have drawn so much comparative material, stood on the northern end of the marshes in the late 19th century but was several kilometers north of the marshes in 1968. Over the next 10 to 12 years new canals and dams were built by the government and older ones cleared or reinforced in order, ostensibly, to prevent the consequences of dire seasonal flooding, to recover additional agricultural land, and to increase irrigation. As Pournelle points out this under-valuation of marsh resources and the desire to convert them into agricultural enclaves had been a part of Modern Iraqi policy since colonial times, and this same attitude toward wetlands existed in many other parts of the world.* It was not until the late 1970s that we realized a part of this program of marsh draining, whether by default or design, gave the government greater access to people seeking refuge in the marshes. The local villagers had a way of communicating in code on mud drums and mud whistles to warn others of police visits. Although we were not privy to the code, we recognized the nature of the message when half our workmen grabbed their knives, clubs, guns, and cloaks and disappeared into the marshes.
In the 1980s it dawned on us that a part of this activity might be a deliberate attempt to get rid of the Mi’dan. Relations between the Mi’dan and the Beni Hasan which had previously seemed quite congenial appeared now to be somewhat strained. Occasional allusions, in passing, characterized the Mi’dan individually or collectively as dirty, lazy, venal, and not too bright. Feelings were strong enough that it appeared better to separate men of the Mi’dan from those of the Beni Hasan on work teams, and visiting officials would regularly denigrate the Mi’dan and the way they made a living. I had a vague feeling that the Mi’dan were being targeted for unfavorable propaganda. Looking back at the end of the decade, I was certain that it had been the case, but by then it was too late as the Mi’dan had completely disappeared from our area and no one seemed able to explain why.
One reads everywhere that the destruction of the marshes by the building of huge dams and the driving out of the Mi’dan occurred in the years after Desert Storm to punish the Shia who had rebelled against Saddam Hussein. But that was simply not true in our area. By the end of 1989 much of the great marsh had been drained, a modern road ran from Shatra to the excavation, which had formerly been accessible only by water, and electricity had been extended to the villages on the site. Most important, the Mi’dan had been driven from the area by changes in the environment and a barrage of propaganda alluding to their unprincipled corruption. Meanwhile there were no more Bedouin encampments. Bedouin who lived outside Iraq were no longer permitted to cross the borders, and those who lived inside were forced to settle in specific areas. The Beni Hasan alone now inhabited the area of al-Hiba. The old order was gone forever and the results of change and its process became one more focus of this study.
Looking back, I am haunted by my acceptance of the reason given for the disappearance of the Mi’dan, that they had moved on because of the shrinking marshland. On the last day of the excavation in April of 1990, while conversing with the son of one of our workmen, I was told that the great delay we experienced in being allowed to come down from Baghdad to the site could be attributed to the army not knowing which way the gas might blow. Was there a holdout village of Mi’dan close by who refused to leave and had to be dealt with accordingly?
There is a commendable effort under way to restore the marshes. Although such an undertaking would be difficult, expensive, and probably limited to an area much smaller than the marshes of the past, I think it would be tremendously rewarding. I do not believe, however, that there is any way anyone could restore the integrated society of peoples and tribes that flourished here through the late 1960s and early 1970s. Relations between people brought to antipathy by governmental propaganda and pressure are not easily restored. New opportunities and aspirations make subsistence existence completely unattractive to those with better prospects. Technology has moved on, making the old-fashioned way of doing things painfully burdensome and unrewarding.
* For additional information on the site itself see Robert D. Biggs, “Pre-Sargonic Riddles from Lagash,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 32, 1/2 (1973): 26–33; Elizabeth Carter, “A Surface Survey of Lagash, al-Hiba, 1984,” Sumer (1990) 46: 60–63; Vaughn Crawford, “Lagash,” Iraq (1974) 36: 29–35; Donald P. Hansen, “Al-Hiba, 1968–1969, A Preliminary Report,” Artibus Asiae 32 (1970): 243–50; Donald P. Hansen, “Al-Hiba, 1970–1971, A Preliminary Report,” Artibus Asiae 35 1, 2 (1973):62–78; Donald P. Hansen, “Royal Building Activity at Sumerian Lagash in the Early Dynastic Period,” Biblical Archaeologist 55, 4 (1992):206–11.
* See Dora Jane Hamblin, “Has the Garden of Eden Been Located at Last?” Smithsonian Magazine 18, 2 (1987).
* Jennifer R. Pournelle, “Marshland of Cities: Deltaic Landscapes and the Evolution of Early Mesopotamian Civilization,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, San Diego, 2003. For specific details of the al-Hiba regions see 206–10.
* Pournelle, “Marshland of Cities,” 257.
† R. Ascher, “Analogy in Archaeological Interpretation,” Southwestern Journal of Anthro-pology 17(1961):317–25.
‡ E. L. Ochsenschlager, “Ethnographic Evidence for Wood, Boats, Bitumen and Reeds in the Southern Iraq: Ethnoarchaeology at al-Hiba,” Bulletin on Sumerian Agriculture 6 (1992):47–78.
§ E. L. Ochsenschlager, “Sheep: Ethnoarchaeology at al-Hiba,” Bulletin on Sumerian Agriculture 7 (1993):33–42; E. L. Ochsenschlager, “Village Weavers: Ethnoarchaeology at al-Hiba,” Bulletin on Sumerian Agriculture 7 (1993):43–62; E. L. Ochsenschlager, “Carpets of the Beni-Hassan Village: Weavers in Southern Iraq,” Oriental Rug Review 15, 5 (1995):12–20.
* See Margaret Catlin Brandt “Nippur: Building an Environmental Model” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 49 (1990):67–73, for information on the alternating marshy and desert environment around Nippur.
* See Margaret Catlin Brandt, “Nippur: Building an Environmental Model,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 49 (1990):67–73, for information on the alternating marshy and desert environment around Nippur.
