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Laying the Foundations, which developed out of the British Museum's
'Iraq Scheme' archaeological training programme, covers the core
components for putting together and running an archaeological field
programme. The focus is on practicality. Individual chapters
address background research, the use of remote sensing, approaches
to surface collection, excavation methodologies, survey with total
(and multi) stations, use of a dumpy level, context classification,
on-site recording, databases and registration, environmental
protocols, conservation, photography, illustration, post-excavation
site curation and report writing. While the manual is oriented to
the archaeology of Iraq, the approaches are no less applicable to
the Middle East more widely, an aim hugely facilitated by the
open-source distribution of translations into Arabic and Kurdish.
For the Gods are the opening words or incipit of the first
inscribed votive artefacts dedicated to the principal deities of
the Sumerian pantheon. They commemorate the construction or
renovation of cities, temples, rural sanctuaries, border steles, in
sum all the symbolically charged features of archaic states
belonging thus metaphorically to supernatural tutelary overlords.
Girsu (present-day Tello) is one of the earliest known cities of
the world together with Uruk, Eridu, and Ur, and was considered to
be in the 3rd Millennium the sanctuary of the Sumerian heroic god
Ningirsu who fought with the demons of the Kur (Mountain) and thus
made possible the introduction of irrigation and agriculture in
Sumer. Girsu was the sacred metropolis and central pole of a
city-state that lay in the Southeasternmost part of the
Mesopotamian floodplain. The pioneering explorations carried out
between 1877 and 1933 at Tello and the early decipherment of the
Girsu cuneiform tablets were ground-breaking because they revealed
the principal catalytic elements of the Sumerian takeoff - that is,
a multiplicity and coalescence of major innovations, such as the
appearance of a city- countryside continuum, the emergence of
literacy, of bronze manufacture, and the development of monumental
art and architecture. Because of the richness of information
related in particular to the city's spatial organization and
geographical setting, and thanks to the availability of recently
declassified Cold War space imagery and especially the possibility
to launch new explorations in Southern Iraq, Girsu stands out as a
primary locale for re-analyzing through an interdisciplinary
approach combining archaeological and textual evidence the origins
of the Sumerian city-state.
For the Gods are the opening words or incipit of the first
inscribed votive artefacts dedicated to the principal deities of
the Sumerian pantheon. They commemorate the construction or
renovation of cities, temples, rural sanctuaries, border steles, in
sum all the symbolically charged features of archaic states
belonging thus metaphorically to supernatural tutelary overlords.
Girsu (present-day Tello) is one of the earliest known cities of
the world together with Uruk, Eridu, and Ur, and was considered to
be in the 3rd Millennium the sanctuary of the Sumerian heroic god
Ningirsu who fought with the demons of the Kur (Mountain) and thus
made possible the introduction of irrigation and agriculture in
Sumer. Girsu was the sacred metropolis and central pole of a
city-state that lay in the Southeasternmost part of the
Mesopotamian floodplain. The pioneering explorations carried out
between 1877 and 1933 at Tello and the early decipherment of the
Girsu cuneiform tablets were ground-breaking because they revealed
the principal catalytic elements of the Sumerian takeoff - that is,
a multiplicity and coalescence of major innovations, such as the
appearance of a city- countryside continuum, the emergence of
literacy, of bronze manufacture, and the development of monumental
art and architecture. Because of the richness of information
related in particular to the city's spatial organization and
geographical setting, and thanks to the availability of recently
declassified Cold War space imagery and especially the possibility
to launch new explorations in Southern Iraq, Girsu stands out as a
primary locale for re-analyzing through an interdisciplinary
approach combining archaeological and textual evidence the origins
of the Sumerian city-state.
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