Multi-centric, Marsh-based Urbanism at the early Mesopotamian city of Lagash (Tell al-Hiba, Iraq)
Introduction
The world’s earliest cities developed in the fourth-third millennia BCE between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in southern Iraq (Sumer, southern Mesopotamia) (Algaze, 2008, Pollock, 1999, Van de Mieroop, 1997). Founded along river channels, already-large settlements grew in the third millennium BCE Early Dynastic period (c. 2900–2350 BCE) to cover dozens to hundreds of hectares and incorporated monumental temples, residential areas, canals, and harbors. For decades scholars have described southern Mesopotamian cities as nuclear, compact, hierarchical settlements with a singular city wall (typically oval-shaped) and set within an irrigated agricultural hinterland, expanding outwards in a continuous fashion from a central religious complex. The identification of these characteristics as fundamental traits of early Mesopotamian city form traces back to Childe, 1936, Childe, 1942 definition of the “Urban Revolution”, and they have remained central to widely-cited comparative discussions (e.g., Trigger, 2003, Van de Mieroop, 1997).
Important aspects of this standard model of third millennium southern Mesopotamian urban form have never been verified, however. Decades of conflict have limited fieldwork in southern Iraq and so archaeological knowledge has remained largely constrained to data collected by excavations in the early-to-mid-twentieth century. Many southern Mesopotamian cities were continuously inhabited for thousands of years, resulting in meters of accumulated cultural strata and therefore excavators could only expose small windows relevant to the period of initial urban growth. Further, excavations focused overwhelmingly on temples and palaces, encouraging a biased, elite-centered view of city life. The few studies of more extensive residential spaces concern neighborhoods of the second millennium BCE (Stone, 1987, Stone and Zimansky, 2004, Woolley and Mallowan, 1976), when Mesopotamian communities had already been urban for more than a millennium. With little empirical basis for a broader understanding of early city form, synthetic discussions of Mesopotamian urbanism amalgamate details from various periods, presenting an idealized picture of “the Mesopotamian city” that may not be accurate for any one period, let alone the fourth-third millennia BCE period during which cities were originally founded and greatly expanded.
A number of archaeologists have put forward alternative hypotheses concerning early southern Mesopotamian cities’ origins, development, and layout, but these models have remained fundamentally speculative because spatially extensive and ground-truthed archaeological data do not yet exit to test their central claims. Satellite imagery analysis, geological cores, and research on sea-level, land-surface, and precipitation changes indicate that a quite different environment prevailed in far southern Iraq at various points in time 5–6000 years ago, suggesting that early cities there could have emerged within or on the edge of marshlands (Kennett and Kennett, 2006, Pennington et al., 2016, Pournelle, 2003, Pournelle and Algaze, 2014). Other types of satellite imagery analysis suggest that third millennium BCE southern Mesopotamian neighborhoods may not have been segregated by social class, but that cites were often divided into different functional sectors by watercourses (Stone, 2013, Stone, 2014, Stone, 2018). The survey and excavation of multiple fifth and fourth millennium BCE proto-urban centers in northern Mesopotamia demonstrate that those settlements had low-density spaces and intra-settlement open space, leading some to contemplate that a similar phase in development might eventually be recognized for southern Mesopotamian cities (Pournelle and Algaze, 2014, Ur, 2021).
New remote sensing data from Tell al-Hiba (ancient Lagash, Dhi Qar Province, Iraq) challenge some of the long-held Childean ideas about the origin and development of southern Mesopotamian cities in the third millennium BCE and provide evidence in support of some of these alternative hypotheses. UAV photos and magnetic gradiometry data show that Early Dynastic Lagash had spatially discrete, irregularly shaped, dense city sectors that incorporated multiple empty spaces and widely spaced temple precincts separated by 700–800 m (Hammer et al., 2022). The city sectors were independently bounded by walls and watercourses and had their own street plans. The discontinuous nature of the city, evidence for parts of the city having been crisscrossed by watercourses, and the presence of scattered harbor-like depressions and constructions adjacent to watercourses are suggestive of a marshy or watery local environment, a conclusion that is supported by cuneiform textual information. The city therefore was multi-centric, and it may have been originally founded on a series of individual marsh islands, some of which would have grown together over time and were walled either for flood protection or military defense. The empty spaces separating the bounded areas would have had social and logistical ramifications for city inhabitants, impeding free movement across the city but also probably allowing residents the freedom to develop separate infrastructure and neighborhood systems in each city sector. The intra-urban empty space and multiple city walls would have also offered residents and immigrants the option to maintain separate social and political identities and to mediate conflict through social distance.
Lagash’s form and local environmental setting more broadly impact our reconstructions of what early cities looked like and how they internally functioned socially, politically, and economically. A number of other third millennium BCE sites in southern Mesopotamia are characterized by multiple archaeological mounds, suggesting that early cities in this region may have frequently been spatially multi-centric.
Section snippets
Models of southern Mesopotamian urban form
The standard model of Mesopotamian urban form described in the introduction extends back with little modification to Childe’s original definition of the “Urban Revolution” (Childe, 1936, Childe, 1942, Childe, 1950, Childe, 1952), an enormously influential and enduring model of early urbanism globally for which Mesopotamian data were key. Childe linked the development of cities to an interconnected series of changes: the emergence of powerful kings, bureaucracy, writing, and social
Methods: Spatial archaeology and remote sensing
Surface survey, UAV photography, and magnetic gradiometry were carried out at Lagash in March-April with the goal of revealing the structure of the ancient city (Fig. 2). The field season coincided with a series of rainstorms. From 24 March-2 April, these rains were especially heavy, resulting in destructive and fatal flooding across the Middle East and the expansion of the marsh surrounding the site. The moist soil conditions improved the visibility of archaeological features in the remote
Results
The spatial datasets allow for the mapping of near-surface architectural remains, streets, and water features across an area of c. 300 ha, revealing important aspects of the ancient city structure.
Interpretation: City form and environment
The surface and subsurface mapping data indicate that Lagash was a multi-centric city of discontinuous settlement sectors separated by multiple “empty spaces”, bounded by walls and/or water features. These discrete city sectors were varied in their form and function and had their own locally-oriented street plans. The city as a whole straddled a river, with settlement areas stretching up to 2 km linearly away from the river, and incorporated a significant number of intra-settlement watercourses.
Lagash as a city of organically expanded marsh islands?
Many of the visible features of Lagash are suggestive of settlement located within a marshy or watery environment. However, the new data suggest revisions to earlier hypotheses that Lagash was a single or series of marsh islands. On the basis of her evaluation of much lower resolution commercial imagery, Stone (forthcoming) believed that the city consisted of around thirty-three islands of varying size, many rather small, with empty watery or marshy spaces between them, perhaps used as harbors.
Conclusion
Archaeologists now recognize a diversity of ancient urban forms, both globally (e.g., Cowgill, 2004, Creekmore and Fisher, 2014, Farhat, 2020, Marcus and Sabloff, 2008) and throughout antiquity in the Middle East, with particular attention devoted in recent years to the dispersed, low-density form of fifth-fourth millennium BCE northern Mesopotamian proto-cities (Al Quntar et al., 2011, McMahon, 2020, Oates et al., 2007). Yet Childe’s “Urban Revolution” model of a dense, compact, bounded city
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Emily Hammer: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization, Funding acquisition.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
The National Geographic Society (Grant # NGS-386R-18) and the Price Lab for the Digital Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania generously funded the survey work at Lagash in 2019. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Penn Museum, and Cambridge University funded excavation work. I thank all of the members of the Lagash Archaeological Project for facilitating the field data collection, especially Augusta McMahon (field director), Holly Pittman (permit holder and project director), Zaid
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