In last week’s video I covered a broken model boat we found at Ur this past season. I talked about what it might have signified and how it might have been used, though I don’t really know if it was a child’s toy or a votive object asking for a safe journey. In this week’s video I talk more about the context of the find; that is, where it was found and what it was found with.
The find spot tells a different story — the boat was found with many broken pieces of pottery and many other broken figurines in a small pavement that made a worksurface outside a building dating around 2100-2000 BCE. So we don’t have the primary use space but a secondary reuse of these objects. This tells us about the time when the boat and its companions met their final placement, not about how they were used when they were pristine. Nevertheless, it is an intriguing context that allows us to think both about the reuse of these objects and their originally intended use.
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I spent October and November 2022 in Iraq excavating alongside Iraqi and German archaeologists at the ancient city of Ur. During that time I took a lot of footage of our trenches and some of the artifacts we uncovered. After returning to the States and completing the accounts of the field season, I began editing the videos and releasing them.
Thanks to the Penn Museum, the University of Pennsylvania Research Fund, and Ludwig Maximilian University for financing the excavations, and of course many thanks to the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage and the Iraqi Ministry of Culture for working with us to make this season a success.
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I love how the scene became clearer and clearer while you explained the context. Has the report of this particular dig been published already? We would love to show a quick animation of this scene.
The figurines may have come in a job lot of broken ceramics and were thrown to one side because they were too knobbly and uncomfortable to stand/kneel on? Fetched by an apprentice who did not understand the exact needs of the artesan, perhaps?
Cool video. It's amazing to think that thousands of years ago, someone was just doing their normal everyday thing in that spot. They never would have guessed that far into the future your team would be analyzing that same place. It makes me wonder if someday archeologists will be examining the remains of our civilization and be asking themselves the same questions you do when you make a cool find.
That's really fascinating. I never would've guessed that was the context!
I think you've got a really compelling hypothesis for why that patch of pottery shards is laid out in that way- I'm convinced by the evidence shown in the video and your reasoning that you're correct. Sometimes though when I see certain archaeological sites, I wonder if the real explanation for some of the finds is a lot more mundane than what the scientists think. To use your patch of pottery shards as an illustration, I imagine the possibility that someone was just absentmindedly gathering up shards of pottery and laying them flat and lining them up just for something to do on a lazy afternoon- akin to idly doodling in class in lieu of paying attention to what the teacher is saying. Then someone thousands of years later digs up that person's handiwork, and assumes it means something significant, when in reality its true significance is humanizing people from the past- reminding us that we are not different from them. That isn't the case here, but I think you get my point.
Hail King Context. Thanks for video.
Love this! I am a linguist (just a college teacher, but I pertain to be an academic on weekends) and context, for word origins, is very much essential there too.
You will not find references to John – Paul – George and Ringo, in the same sentence in a medieval manuscript or somewhere on Mayan calendar.
Your analysis of these areas as work zones makes sense and hangs together well, but I also can't help thinking of the Jewish practice of keeping incidentally holy writings in a special storage room when they are no longer suitable for regular use, instead of simply throwing them away or using them as kindling. The deliberate flooring and the presence of the pot and bitumen pit obviously don't make sense for a genizah-type location, but I wonder if a place like that has ever been found? It's especially interesting given that Jewish texts claim a Mesopotamian origin for their earliest practices, despite the much closer relationship to Egypt that dominates ancient Canaanite/Hebrew history.