The first ten years of excavations and studies (2011-2020) revealed the site of Abu Tbeirah as basically an Early Dynastic settlement whose life ended during the Ur III period (2900-2000 BC) / beginning of the 2nd mill. BC (Old Babylonian).
After the period of pandemics (2019), where basically studies of the samples brought to Italy for anlyses have been carried out, the activities of the 11th campaign (2020) foresee the pursuance of the excavation of Building E (Area 6, NE of the site) and of the 3rd millennium harbor (Area 5, NW), the first port excavated in contemporary Mesopotamian sites for the period involved. The analysis of the material culture will be carried on in order to define, together with 14C analysis of shortlived stratified archaeo-botanical remains, the chronology of the settlement. aDNA (in cooperation with the School of Genetics of the Harvard University) and isotope analysis will be carried on as well on both human and animal bones, together with archaeometric studies on pottery, lithic industries and other findings such as bitumen. We also foresee, on the basis of the funding, the realization of further soundings inside and outside the tell in order to reconstruct the paleo-environment and paleo-climate, the geomorphology and the geological setting of AbT area. The 11th excavation campaign will be subdivided in 2 different periods (winter 2021 and spring 2022, for a total of ca. 3 months - see Concession of excavation section) and will involve at least 12 archaeologists and specialists from Sapienza and other Institutions. Researches and analyses will be carried out during all the 12 month of the 2021/2022 academic year.
Abu Tbeirah will allow for the first time an accurate reconstruction of the end of the 3rd Mill./early beginning of the 2nd Mill BC Southern Mesopotamia history and development in general (Ob.1). The excavation of the harbor will describe for the first time in the literature a 3rd mill. maritime context.
While previous studies on southern Mesopotamia have been mostly anchored to taxonomy, the research of Sapienza team will focus on ancient craft, production, use and consumption (Ob.2) of every-day materials used by ancient southern Mesopotamian communities. This will allow the identification and definition of technologies and different productions, clarifying technological choices and transformations in course of time (as well as their socioeconomic implications), and eventually distinguishing cultural identities of Sumer communities. The entire life-cycle of artifacts from raw material selection to final deposition will be analyzed for each category. All these steps of the chaîne operatoire, involving different choices and depending on the organization of production, will reflect the socio-economic strategies of the Sumer community and its degree of integration in specific trading circuits. The intended function and actual use of chipped stone tools, macro-lithic tools, bitumen, ceramic etc. from the site of AbT will be inferred following an integrated approach that combines use-wear analysis (through both qualitative and quantitative methods) and residues analysis, allowing a complete reconstruction of the objects themselves and the gestures and (primary and secondary) activities carried out with and through them. New data will be provided on the pervasive lithic materials, usually disregarded by archaeologists after the appearance of metal working: indeed, the replacement of the stone tool-kit with the metal one does not follow a simple unilinear process. Bitumen objects and samples from AbT will be analyzed in order to ascertain its chemical characteristics and variations on the basis of its use, and to compare its role with other near eastern contexts (with Egypt above all).
For the first time an accurate reconstruction of the end of the 3rd millennium BC paleo-climate and paleo-environment (Ob. 3) will be elaborated, together with a survey of the evolution of the area during more recent time (Ob. 5). AbT excavations and researches will provide: 1) an assessment of the vulnerability, both as sustainability and resilience, of a densely inhabited coastal ecosystem, determined by sea level change and fluvial erosion and discharge; 2) a recognition of the atmospheric influence of the Middle East climate systems on the past vegetation dynamics; 3) the reconstruction of the impact of human activity on the natural environment (e.g. irrigation, canal and water management). Even more importantly, the planned analyses have the potential to contribute substantially to the definition of the timing and mechanisms of climate change of the 3rd mill. BC, the so-called 4.2 ka event, a global climatic episode that is being studied all over the world except for southern Mesopotamia.
Archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological analysis (Ob. 3) will contribute to a better understanding of the complex relationships between Sumer communities and plant/faunal resources that existed during the 3rd millennium BC, reconstructing different types of human activities (e.g., agriculture, pasture, trade, foraging, herding strategies, feeding habits, plant/faunal consumption, import and export of herds), behaviours (e.g., funerary and other ritual practices) and their possible variations during time. The new data from ancient fauna and flora, together with physical anthropological studies (Ob. 4) will lay for the first time the foundation for an unprecedented, accurate and reliable reconstruction of Sumer diet and environment, as a direct and indirect evidence of food ways. The analysis of the skeletal remains will, moreover, shed light on the health status of the Sumer population (paleo-pathology). The investigation of the human skeletal sample carried out by the AbT team, the first conducted in Mesopotamia and unique for this period, hopefully will be a reference point for future studies in the area, also for re-interpretation of previous excavated 3rd mill. material.
The overall paleo-environmental reconstruction made through AbT excavation will also provide the possibility to interrogate and reinterpret previous data from other contemporary cities in Southern Mesopotamia having the same environmental and historical characteristics.