Ancient Lagash: Current Research and Future Trajectories

The State of Lagash was one of the major political powers in the Sumerian world of the 3rd millennium BC, with archaeological attestations at least since the 5th millennium BC. Located in present-day southern Iraq, this State incorporated three main cities: Girsu (Tello), Lagash (Tell al-Hiba), and Nigin (Tell Zurghul). The volume presents the results of studies and excavations carried on in these sites until 2015, providing new data for their historical interpretation. The volume collects contributions to the research at al-Hiba, under the supervision of H. Pittman, a section dedicated to the first archaeological campaign undertaken at the site of Nigin under the direction of D. Nadali and A. Polcaro, and the research on the site of Girsu under the joint direction of S. Rey and F. Husain.

This volume collects the papers presented in a workshop held at the 10th ICAANE in Vienna in 2016. The ancient state of Lagash, with the three main sites of Tello (ancient Girsu), al-Hiba (ancient Lagash) and Tell Zurghul (ancient Nigin), was once a central and powerful political institution of Sumerian history, at least in the 3rd millennium BC. Excavated in the past, between the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, with the pioneering works by Ernest de Sarzec at Girsu and a few soundings by Robert Koldewey at the three sites, the area was then neglected for a long time until the Tell al-Hiba Expedition, a joint project of the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, conducted six seasons of excavations at al-Hiba between 1968 and 1990. After a very long break in excavations and research in the region of the ancient state of Lagash, the resumption of activities in the field since 2015 is opening up new trajectories in the archaeological, historical and epigraphic research, filling the gaps in our knowledge of the morphology of the sites and the surrounding area, the ancient landscape and environment and the material culture. The volume thus presents the state of the art of information on the archaeology of Girsu, Lagash and Nigin and, at the same time, ongoing results from recent excavations and archive research through combining old and new data. Further research has been conducted since the time of the workshop, but the papers collected here set out the main issues and the new questions that the current archaeological projects at the three sites are attempting to answer.

Auteur
is Associate Professor in Near Eastern Archaeology at the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy is Director of the Final Publication Project of the Al Hiba Excavations and Director of the Lagash Archaeological Project is Professor and Researcher in Near Eastern Archaeology at the Perugia University, Italy