Beyond the Palace Walls: Household Perspectives on Living and Working in Late 3rd millennium BC Tell Asmar, Iraq (ancient Eshnunna)

Summary

Past studies contextualizing residential neighborhoods within the socioeconomic, political, and geographic organization of early historic urban settlements in ancient southern Mesopotamia have concentrated heavily on architecture and ancient textual evidence to document diachronic changes in household fortunes. As part of a PhD dissertation project, this investigation of households from the late 3rd millennium BC levels of the Private Houses residential area at urban Tell Asmar (ancient Eshnunna, Iraq), reconstructs household economies for several houses across time using 1930s University of Chicago Oriental Institute excavation data, but it relies to a greater extent on object and findspot data within houses, showing the value of using object data to conduct archival household archaeology in early historic contexts where excavations yielded only a limited number of ancient texts after episodes of looting. At least one elite house played a major economic role in the neighborhood across generations. Toward the end of the 3rd millennium, neighborhood reorganization through reconstruction and new construction of elite houses on the northern edge of the residential area coincided with architectural reorganization of the adjacent Northern Palace and evidence connecting individuals and economic activities in high status households to urban administration.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage