June 14, 2025 • 45 mins
Augusta talks about the new excavations at Nippur. What are the goals of the new work, and how does she manage the long history of excavations at the site? What are the long term plans for the site? She reveals the first results, including news about the city walls, a huge Neo-Babylonian villa, and a Parthian cemetery. She reflects on how the archaeological situation has changed since she was a student. And she discusses plans for sharing the results of the work.
3:13 why Nippur?
5:26 project goals
8:11 working around previous excavations
12:09 first results
15:39 a Neo-Babylonian villa
19:40 searching for Ur III
22:18 Kassite Nippur
24:06 the dig team
27:14 Neo-Babylonian graves
29:18 challenges
35:19 long term plans
39:11 publication
Music by Ruba Hillawi
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jon Taylor (00:13):
Hello, and welcome to the Thin End of the Wedge,
the podcast where experts fromaround the world share new and
interesting stories about lifein the ancient Middle East. My
name is Jon. Each episode, Italk to friends and colleagues
and get them to explain theirwork in a way we can all
understand.
Nippur is one of the most famoussites in Mesopotamian history.
(00:36):
Perhaps best known as the sacredheart of the Sumerian world, the
city enjoyed a life maybe 5000years long. More than a century
of excavations there revealedthe remains of great temples, as
well as tablets documentingeducation in the second
millennium and banking in thefirst. A new series of
excavations has started atNippur. Interests have changed,
(01:00):
and new types of researchquestion are being designed. In
the 21st century, new challengesface archaeology in Iraq.
Our guest is an experiencedfield archaeologist, who now
leads the new excavations atNippur. She explains her plans,
the results so far, and how itall works in 2025. So get
(01:22):
yourself a cup of tea, makeyourself comfortable, and let's
meet today's guest.
Hello and welcome to Thin End ofthe Wedge. Thank you for joining
us.
Augusta McMahon (01:39):
Thank you for the invitation. I'm excited to
have a chat.
Jon Taylor (01:43):
Could you tell us please
you do?
Augusta McMahon (01:47):
I'm Augusta McMahon. I'm a Mesopotamian
archaeologist. That means I workin what is now traditionally
Mesopotamia, or in Iraq andnortheast Syria. My research
focuses on ancient cities.
Mesopotamia is the region whichhas the earliest cities in the
world, particularly looking atthe past lived experience of
people who live in cities, urbandwellers. Whether that's their
(02:10):
neighbourhood interactions asthey walk around in streets and
plazas, or their daily routinesas they do housework or work for
the state. And also whatemployment opportunities they
have and how that potentiallychanges over time.
I was at the University ofCambridge for 27 years in the
(02:30):
department of archaeology there.
And about two and a half yearsago, I moved to the University
of Chicago. I used to be thefield director of the Tell Brak
excavation in northeast Syria.
That ceased in 2011 because ofglobal political issues. And now
I am the director of the Nippurexcavation in south Iraq.
Jon Taylor (02:51):
And you're freshly back from the spring season,
aren't you?
Augusta McMahon (02:53):
Yes, we just had a two month long season from
January to middle of March. Itwas an absolutely excellent
field excavation. Got someamazing results. The team was
absolutely incredible; one ofthe best teams I've ever worked
with. And we're just very, veryhappy to relaunch the
excavations at Nippur.
Jon Taylor (03:13):
Okay, I'm excited to hear more detail. We should
start though with, why Nippur?
Augusta McMahon (03:19):
Nippur is probably best known as an
important religious centrewithin Sumer, within south Iraq.
It's the city of which thepatron deity is Enlil, who is
the god of winds and air, and isreally one of the chief deities
within the Mesopotamian pantheonin the third millennium BCE.
(03:39):
There's a number of temples.
There is an actual ziggurat anda temple to Enlil on the site,
which we can come back to later.
We're not actually digging thereyet, but there might be a
conservation project there.
There are a number of otherimportant temples there. There's
Ninurta, Inanna. There's anumber of sort of big religious
institutions there. But it'salso an important city and an
important economic centre aswell as a religious centre. And
(04:03):
it has incredibly longoccupation from at least the
Ubaid period around, probablyaround 6000 BCE, right the way
through most of the first volumeBCE. And there's also Sassanian
and early Islamic occupationthere as well, and Parthian
occupation. So clearly there's... it's a city to which a lot
of people have this very, verylong connection with and sense
(04:25):
of belonging.
It's also an amazing case studyfor the expansion and
contraction of urban size andurban scale over time, depending
on things like political eventsand political churn, and also
climate change as well. We knowof a sequence of political
(04:46):
expansions and collapses, andalso particular climate change
events. And those can actuallybe studied directly at Nippur as
those have an effect on just thesize and diversity of the city.
So it's an amazing place to dig.
It also happens to be a very,very long-term University of
Chicago project. So in manyways, I kind of inherited it
(05:06):
when I moved to the Universityof Chicago. Obviously, this is
dependent on the State Board ofAntiquities and Heritage in
Iraq. And so we had to develop afive year plan of what we would
actually do in order to have thepermit renewed. It's just an
incredible, exciting, dynamicplace to be doing research.
Ellie Bennett (05:26):
Really exciting.
So what are the goals for thecurrent excavations, then?
Augusta McMahon (05:30):
Okay, so our current goal is a little bit
off-beat, given that when youwalk onto Nippur, the most
important building is theziggurat. And you know that's
the thing that Nippur is thebest known for. We're actually
concentrating on the city edgezone in what I'm calling the
southern suburb. So you walkonto the city and there's the
(05:51):
enormous mound, and there's abig channel ... water channel
that runs through the middle.
And all the best-knownexcavations are on this high
mound. But we're actuallyworking on an area which is a
very, very low, mounded part ofthe site, which is down to the
south. In part because there'ssome interesting things that are
happening there. So during theUr III period, so late third
millennium BCE, in the Kassiteperiod, so mid- to later second
(06:14):
millennium BC, and again in theNeo-Babylonian period, so in the
second half of the firstmillennium BCE.
The city has been consciouslyexpanded in each one of those
time periods by the regional ornational government. And in part
what's happening is there's arebuilding on the big temples,
(06:35):
but that comes with also sort ofrevitalisation of the city, and
expansion of its population andincreased diversity of its
population as well. And what wecan see in the southern suburb
is that's a sort of optimal areafor people who are basically
haven't lived there before,right? You get immigration,
migration inward for either jobopportunities with the regional
(07:00):
administration. You know,they're rebuilding the temples.
So there's a whole bunch of newpositions as scribes and
administrators within the templeinstitutions. But also
potentially people who arecoming to lay bricks for the
state. You know, build the citywall, make pottery for all the
new people who are showing up.
So that just the jobopportunities and employment
opportunities just have thishuge uplift. And so where are
(07:21):
these people going to live whenthey arrive to a city which has
this long established traditionof other people who've been
living there?
It tends to be that people moveinto the suburbs of this sort of
city edge zone. So that's whatwe're looking at. It's actually
this city edge zone. And how isthat used? How is it framed? Is
(07:42):
it originally open space. Onceyou would get these expansions,
is this very crowded withdisenfranchised, poor people, or
is it? And it turns out, in somecases, it actually turns out to
be where it's more like a gardensuburb, where you have these
enormous villas, because thewealthy have new space where
they can come in and build idealhouses. So that's what we're
(08:05):
looking at to just investigatethe diversity of the urban edge
zone.
Jon Taylor (08:11):
You have this fantastic site with a very long
history of excavations. How doesyour current work fit with those
previous campaigns? Is it insome way related, or have you
made a conscious break to lookat this very different type of
archaeology?
Augusta McMahon (08:25):
Nippur is, you know, one of these famous
poisoned chalices where it's anamazing, amazing site, but also
has this history of excavationsince the 1890s. And so there
was a massive University ofPennsylvania project in the
1890s, which has left a legacyof enormous holes and also
enormous spoil heaps and dumpsall over the site. So it can be
(08:49):
a real challenge to work aroundthose. The publication of that
University of Pennsylvaniaexcavation campaign is also
sometimes a little bitinadequate according to modern
... modern standards, let's say.
There are also significantexcavations from the 1950s,
1960s, 1970s onwards, which havebeen variously much better
(09:09):
published, but also have left adifferent kind of legacy on the
site. So that means that if youwant to really start over,
right, one is restricted interms of where you actually
excavate and what targetresearch questions one has. And
in part, that's why we aretargeting this southern suburb
or southern extension, becausethere's been less excavation
(09:32):
there. That said there have beenexcavations there in the 1970s
and 1980s by my predecessor,McGuire Gibson, that have been
variously published. And whatwe're doing is building on those
to a great extent.
So from those excavations, we doknow that this southern suburb
was first occupied in the Ur IIIperiod. There's nothing prior to
(09:54):
that. And also that the earliestUr III occupation does seem to
be from one excavation, one verysmall excavation, possibly sort
of smaller houses ofdisenfranchised people. So we
want to simply excavate more ofthe early Ur III occupation to
see if that one very smallexcavation is representative of
what's happening in the largerarea. We also know from the
(10:16):
1970s and 1980s excavationswhere the more or less where the
Ur III city wall is in oneplace, right? The city wall is
actually, it's known to havebeen built by Ibbi-Sin in his
sixth year. So this is the finalking of the Ur III dynasty. And
so we know that this Ur III citywall was built basically over
the top of some earlier Ur IIIhouses. So we have the Ur III
(10:40):
occupation sequence, but only inone tiny area. So we're looking
at that and trying to see whatthe actual extent and the plan
of the Ur III city wall is.
We also know from the 1970s and80s excavations that in the
Kassite period, there was a bigvilla-like building down in this
southern suburb. But again, wewant to see if that was
(11:02):
representative, or if, basicallythat was one building, and then
there's a whole bunch of otherlittle Kassite shacks around, or
there's open space. Theinteresting thing about the
Kassite period is we do havethis Kassite map of Nippur,
which is now in the Hilprechtcollection, that seems to show
... it shows basically, it'slike a plan of the entire site,
(11:23):
including the ziggurat and theShatt an-Nil, which is the water
course, which runs through themiddle. And city walls that go
around in this area of thesouthern suburb, it is labelled
"gardens in the city". And itwould be nice to see that,
right? {L (11:36):
AUGHS} Are there genuinely gardens and small
fields and garden agriculture togo with this one villa that we
know of from the earlyexcavations. And so we're
looking at that as well, just toexpand our picture on that and
building on this earlierdocumentation and earlier
excavation. So we're workingwith the more ... the most
(11:57):
recent excavations, and tryingas much as possible to avoid the
massive holes and dumps from thevery early University of
Pennsylvania excavations ...
working on that.
Ellie Bennett (12:09):
I guess the key question is whether you've
actually been able to do that.
Have you been able to find thesegardens and villas and see if
those finds in the 70s wererepresentative?
Augusta McMahon (12:20):
So far, we've just had really one season of
excavation. So we're justgetting started on this project.
What we have found so far is weput in two large trench areas,
let's say. One of which actuallydid uncover the city wall, and
another which did actuallyuncover a big house. And I'll
talk through those separately,right? The first trench that we
(12:43):
put in, you can actually see inthe low mounds within the area
that we chose, you can actuallymore or less see the line of
what might possibly be the citywall. Okay, so we did start a 10
by 10 there, and we foundimmediately below, almost below
the surface, a fabulous citywall. It's about three meters
wide, preserved at maximum aboutone and a half meters high. And
(13:07):
as we dug for several weeks, wewere thinking that that was the
Ur III city wall, because, ofcourse, that's the one that is
documented in the texts. Andthat was the best preserved wall
that was actually exposed in the1970s and 1980s excavations.
But as we dug down and dug down,we kept finding Kassite material
{LAUGHS} and thinking, "Oh,well, this is possibly reuse of
(13:29):
the city walls, early Kassitere-use of the Ur III city wall
when they were doing whateverelse they were doing".
Ultimately, we had to completelychange our minds and decide
that, in fact, this was theKassite city wall, not the Ur
III city wall. So we have theKassite city wall, which is
brand new. It was not reallyknown of before. The Kassite
city wall in the otherexcavations was significantly
(13:51):
eroded, and roughly we knew moreor less that it was there. But
this new excavation actually hasthe whole thing.
Ellie Bennett (13:58):
Oh, that's exciting, though.
Augusta McMahon (14:00):
Yeah, oh very exciting. We were really hoping
for the Ur III city wall, butthe Kassite city wall, this is
fine. And it takes a kind ofzigzag to deal with a major
erosion channel that runsthrough this area of the
trenches that we had. But thenas we dug down, we finally got
to the bottom of this Kassitecity wall. What we found
(14:21):
immediately below that was theUr III city wall. So at least we
did find that.
Ellie Bennett (14:26):
Yay!
Augusta McMahon (14:26):
Yes, yay.
{LAUGHS} It was unfortunatelykind of damaged by this weird
erosion channel that we had thatsort of cut through that must
belong to either the very latethird millennium or the early
second millennium BC. Soprobably during the Isin-Larsa
time period, this area isabandoned, and the Ur III city
wall actually just has this likemassive erosion channel that
(14:47):
cuts through the middle, andthen the Kassite city wall is
then built over the top of that.
So clearly something of the UrIII city wall was still visible
when the Kassite engineers andarchitects came in to basically
use that as a foundation. So wedid find that. And as we then
dug down, because, you know,this is our target, we were
looking for these potential UrIII houses that were below the
(15:08):
Ur III city wall, what we foundwas another big Ur III piece of
architecture, let's say.
We still have to examine that.
We literally found that in thelast two days of excavation. So
we have this stack of at leasttwo city walls and then
something else Ur III that isactually below that. So that's
what we have of that so far.
(15:29):
Ideally we would, you know, havefound houses, and be able to
look at diversity and mobilityand who is actually living in
this area in the Ur III and theKassite period. But we haven't.
We haven't quite gotten to thatyet.
Then the other excavation areathat we have initially, we had
placed the trench sort ofnearest to where there was this
big Kassite villa, thinking thatwe would be able to see, does
(15:50):
that Kassite villa haveneighbours? Is there, again,
gardens or some kind of farmingor something out in this general
area? We were expecting to findKassite at the basically, sort
of right below the surface, inpart because when we did a very
casual survey of the area,pretty much all the ceramics
were Kassite. Kassite and UrIII. So we started digging, and
(16:11):
we found, pretty quickly, rightbelow the surface a big house,
it looks like, again, a bigvilla. Looked pretty similar to
this Kassite villa, but itturned out to be Neo-Babylonian.
Not what we were expecting, notreally initially part of our
research plan, but somethingwhich absolutely we can embrace.
This is fine.
(16:33):
It turned out that we actuallythen expanded this trench so we
have about 200 square meters atleast, of excavation, and found
this absolutely enormousNeo-Babylonian house with ...
what it looks like a couple ofdifferent courtyard spaces
within it. It's hard to explainwithout actually showing a map.
You know, I'm always used todoing lectures with the
(16:53):
PowerPoint right behind me. Butthere were two pairs of parallel
rectangular spaces, one of whichis roofed, and the other which
is unroofed. So two courtyardsthat are slightly offset from
each other that make it look asif it's potentially the house or
the household of two brothers,or a very extended family, where
(17:14):
you have almost like twofamilies with their own sets of
semi-public and semi-privatespace within it. But it is all
one absolutely enormous housewith just room after room after
room. We only found the exteriorwall on the west side, and even
though we expanded our trenchesand expanded we never actually
got the northeast or southernfull extent of this house, which
(17:36):
is now over 200 meters squared.
Then the interesting thing thatwe found further west of that is
we found a little street, whichis amazing. I love streets.
Again, that's one of the mostoverlooked and under examined
contexts within Mesopotamianarchaeology. But, you know,
they're full of this amazingtrash and just enormous amounts
of sort of scientific data thatyou can explore and think
(17:57):
through. So there is a streetthat's on the essentially along
the western extent of thishouse, and immediately on the
other side of the street, weactually found another city
wall. So we found the firstmillennium, the Neo-Babylonian
city wall there as well, andthis little space in between. So
this big Neo-Babylonian villa isessentially right next to the
(18:19):
city wall as it exists in theneo-Babylonian period. But the
interesting thing about theNeo-Babylonian wall is it
actually re-uses the Kassitewall. So what we found was
essentially like a kind ofcasemate arrangement in which
the interior wall was built inthe Neo-Babylonian period, but
the exterior wall is actuallythe re-used Kassite wall.
(18:40):
So anyway, the upshot of allthis is we can now more or less
trace the city wall along quitea significant distance between
the 1970s and 1980s excavationsthat touched on it in a few
places, our own excavations.
Plus we actually had a colleaguefrom the University of
Pennsylvania, Emily Hammer, whodid magnetometry in this whole
area and has managed to trackthe line of the city wall
(19:03):
between our excavations, andalso significantly on either
side as well. And outside ofthat, it turns out that there's
a moat or a water channel, whichis about 50 meters wide on the
outside of that which she hasalso managed to track in this
magnetometry. So that's our mainresult, is we're starting to get
to grips with the occupation ofthis southern suburb at various
(19:25):
times, very preliminary stagefor the Ur III and the Kassite
period, a little bit more forthe Neo-Babylonian period. But
gives us an amazing foundationfor further work in the next few
years.
Jon Taylor (19:40):
This is all very exciting, isn't it? There's, I
guess, lots of bonuses for you.
Your original goal was to lookfor Ur III. And with the other
city walls and this hugeNeo-Babylonian house, how are
you going to deal with that?
Will you remove part of it? Willyou extend to try and work
around it? How will you confrontthat?
Augusta McMahon (19:59):
Yeah, so within the city wall excavation, we can
continue to dig down quiteeasily. So we're actually
leaving each of the city wallsthat we find. We're actually
leaving those and not removingthose at the moment. We do have
space inside them to continuedown and hopefully to target the
Ur III period. Unfortunately, inthat particular area, there is
(20:19):
some erosion. There's a bit of aridge, so we should actually be
fairly near to the Ur IIIperiod, even though it's a
little bit hard to explain.
Potentially, the Neo-Babylonianis completely eroded in that
area. And the Kassitearchitecture in that area also
seems to be extremely minimal,so we can probably get to the Ur
III period pretty easily withoutactually having to remove
(20:40):
anything.
That said, the one thing that Iforgot to say was we also found
a Parthian cemetery in thisarea. This is, again, not really
part of our research questions,but is very interesting. Nippur
is an amazing city. In theParthian period, there's a huge
fortress around the ziggurrat.
There's a big, a quite big town,or Parthian city, on the west
(21:02):
mound. And then in this southernsuburban area is where the
cemetery is. And between thevarious trenches that we have,
we have, I think, more than 60Parthian burials. They are very,
very close to the surface andunfortunately, very, very badly,
badly damaged and kind of erodedand not in particularly good
condition. But that's our mainthing that overlies the Ur III
(21:27):
period occupation within thecity wall excavation.
In the Neo-Babylonian houseexcavation, we're probably going
to cut through that. What we'lldo is actually expand the
trenches so we can actually seethe entire house. We want to get
right to the actual edges of it,so we can get a sense of, like,
(21:48):
what the exterior is, is thestreet along the west edge also?
You know, are there also streetsor alleys and then nearby
structures on the other sides?
What is surrounding the actualhouse? And we still need an
entrance. We don't even know howthey got into the house, either.
So we want the front door. Wewant the back door. We want just
to understand a lot more aboutcirculation within the house
(22:09):
itself. So we'll do that.
Certainly expand out and try toexpose the entirety of the house
as well.
But then ideally, we will simplyremove that and excavate down
into what I'm assuming isprobably Kassite, given the
quantity of Kassite pottery thatwe actually have sort of
(22:30):
up-churned into theNeo-Babylonian structure. In
some of the contexts, we hadactually more Kassite pottery
than Neo-Babylonian pottery.
Just because, you know, they'reconstantly digging pits, or
there's kind of up-churn ofceramics from the earlier
occupation. So we assume there'sKassite occupation immediately
below. But that's, again, we'rebraced for being surprised, and
there not being anything there,but I'm sure there was something
(22:54):
Kassite below it for sure,whether this is houses or some
kind of fields or gardens,remains to be seen.
Jon Taylor (23:02):
I imagine your epigrapher will be very pleased
if you find Kassite.
Augusta McMahon (23:05):
Yes, yes, indeed. {LAUGHS} We did have ...
we have Susanna Paulus, who isour main epigrapher. We also
have a number of otherepigraphers who are part of the
team, and a large part of thestudents as well. The students
from the University of Chicagowho are part of the team are
actually cuneiform students. Sowe are well braced if we find
any tablets. That said, I'mhappy they're all there, because
(23:27):
there's nothing like having awhole bunch of epigraphers on
the team to make sure you don'tfind any tablets. {LAUGHS} We
did not do. We found oneinscribed sherd, which actually
Susanna found when we werewalking around near the ziggurat
near the neighborhood area; theTablet Hill area. She did find
an inscribed sherd out of themillions and millions of sherds
on the surface. Trust ourepigrapher to find one inscribed
(23:50):
sherd. And then we found ...
there was an Ur III tablet thatwas actually found, again, just
on the surface, a littleeconomic tablet. So that was our
two epigraphic finds from thislast year, both of which were
surface finds and interesting,but not really significant for
our goals.
Ellie Bennett (24:06):
It sounds like you're very well placed for any
cuneiform finds. Do you have anyother expertise on your team?
Augusta McMahon (24:13):
Yes, so we pretty much cover all the bases.
So we have five Iraqi colleaguesfrom the State Board of
Antiquities and Heritage, whoare working with us. Many of
whom have very, very deep andvery diverse excavation
experience as well. So they wereabsolutely key members of the
team in terms of us working outthings like stratigraphy and
(24:36):
architecture and so on. Ourstudents also. So there are
students from the University ofChicago and the University of
Cambridge. You know, the youngergeneration, who just simply have
an innate ability at grapplingwith data collection, say. What
we do in terms of our recordingin the field is we actually use
high resolution GPS receivers,these Emlid Reach receivers,
(24:57):
which give centimetre levelcontrol. They're connected
directly to laptop computers anda whole sort of complicated
database. And so the students,not only are they, they have
excellent excavation experience,but they're also good at
grappling with all the potentialissues that can arise if you're
trying to do digital datacollection in the field, with
(25:20):
wind and rain, dirt and so on.
They managed to deal with thatunbelievably professionally.
We also have an excellent datamanager, a dedicated data
manager who also does thingslike photogrammetry and so on.
We have these epigraphicexperts. We have an
archaeozoologist--my colleague,Tina Greenfield from the
(25:40):
University of Manitoba, who alsoworks with isotope analyses as
well. And isotopes can give usinformation about mobility and
diet of both animals and humans.
Then Emily Hammer of theUniversity of Pennsylvania is an
expert in magnetometry, ingeneral sort of landscape
interpretation. We also do moretraditional interpretation of
ceramic assemblages. Mycolleague, Luca Volpi, who's at
(26:04):
the University of Madrid andUniversity of Rome, and I are
working on the ceramics. Andthen also people who are looking
at material culture analyses andso on. So we have a pretty good
range.
We do not have anarchaeobotanist yet, in part
because there are challengeswith flotation and archaeobotany
in general in south Iraq,because of salinity and
(26:25):
preservation and so on. So we'relooking for a potential
archaeobotanist. We also don'thave yet a human remains
analyst, though we have savedall the human remains from the
Parthian cemetery, and also fromthe ... we have a couple of
Neo-Babylonian graves as well.
We've saved all of that, andthose have all been
comprehensively documented interms of, again, photographs and
photogrammetry as well. So thoseare the sort of two experts that
(26:48):
we lack at the moment. But no,we find that we have a pretty
good range of expertise. There'snothing that we really find
like, oh, we we can't do this.
We can pretty much deal withalmost anything.
Ellie Bennett (27:01):
Wow. That's a massive range. And I hope you
are able to fill those gaps inthe ...was it archaeobotany and
human remains?
Augusta McMahon (27:09):
Archaeobotany and human remains are our two
acknowledged gaps at the moment.
Ellie Bennett (27:14):
And I'd love, just really quickly ... can you
talk more about theneo-Babylonian graves?.
Augusta McMahon (27:19):
Yeah. So what we had were basically three
coffin burials within the houseitself. One was in one of the
traditional bathtub coffins. Onewas actually in a round or oval
coffin, and then there wasanother. There were actually, in
fact, two others, but they werebadly crushed and damaged. And
(27:40):
one was probably in a bathtubcoffin, and the other one maybe
in some other kind of vessel.
The two that were the bestpreserved did have adult remains
in them, together with theselittle glazed jars that are
quite common in elitehouseholds, elite house
contexts. In terms of just beingabove your average everyday
(28:01):
vessel. Little glazed jars thathave this kind of flower petals
and little things, almost likelittle bulls eyes on them in
this beautiful yellow and whiteglaze, in one case. And another
one was actually just kind oflike all entirely green as well.
So these beautiful little glazedjars, they also sometimes come
with a few beads and so on. Thatreinforces that what we're
looking at is an elitehousehold, rather than just a
(28:24):
large poor household.
The material culture that wehave from the house also
includes things like incenseburners, fragments of incense
burners, and these glazed jars.
It just reinforces that this isa household that has access to
elite material culture and soon. Interestingly, the diet,
also in terms of thearchaeozoological remains, also
(28:46):
reinforces that. So they havethe usual sheep, goat, pig, you
know, the normal kind of diet,but quite a lot of animal
remains, and also quite a lot ofwild animals as well. So they
were hunting deer and doing alot of fishing and yanking
turtles out of the Euphrates andso on. So the diet was really
(29:07):
quite varied. That, again,reinforces this idea of an elite
household was living there. Youknow, basically that is played
out in terms of these gravesthat we have.
Ellie Bennett (29:18):
You've painted this really complex picture of a
really interesting site. So I'mwondering if there have been any
challenges that you've facedwith organising these
excavations.
Augusta McMahon (29:31):
There are always challenges. Working in
Iraq can be unpredictable,because of just global politics
and internal bureaucracy. Thebiggest challenges on the site,
as I said, are really theprevious excavations and trying
to extract the maximuminformation from those. And to
(29:52):
work around things like spoilheaps and so on that are left
behind from legacy excavations.
And while it's enormouslyvaluable to have all those
legacy excavations, so we knowso much about the occupation of
the site, that still means thatsometimes you think "Gosh. It
would be great to dig rightthere, but there is an
absolutely enormous spoil heapon top of that". That's one of
(30:15):
the main challenges.
There are always challenges.
Working in Iraq can beunpredictable, because of just
global politics and internalbureaucracy. The biggest
challenges on the site, as Isaid, are really the previous
(30:36):
excavations and trying toextract the maximum information
from those. And to work aroundthings like spoil heaps and so
on that are left behind fromlegacy excavations. And while
it's enormously valuable to haveall those legacy excavations, so
we know so much about theoccupation of the site, that
still means that sometimes youthink "Gosh. It would be great
to dig right there, but there isan absolutely enormous spoil
heap on top of that". That's oneof the main challenges.
And the winter is really ideal.
That said, you get rain. So welost a few days to very, very
(31:00):
heavy rain. That just turns thethe entirety of south Iraq into
this sort of clay swamp. Wealso, unusually this time
around, also had a few dayswhere it was well below
freezing, so we would wake upand in the house, all the water
pipes were frozen. That'sunusual to get that cold, but
that can also happen. Climatechange doesn't just mean
(31:21):
warming, it means a higherdegree of fluctuation. So the
weather is always a challenge.
That said, also global politicscan be a challenge as well. This
was technically meant to be oursecond season in 2025. We did
attempt to have a season in2024, but we had to evacuate
(31:42):
quite rapidly because of athreat, a specific threat
against us that did not have todo with anything that we had to
do. But we are deemed to be anAmerican project, and the global
political situation made itunsafe for Americans to be
there.
That said, our project isactually international. We have
Iraqis, we have Spanish,Italian, Canadian, German, you
(32:06):
know, people from all over. Andtechnically, this is an
international project, not anAmerican one, but of course, it
is associated with an Americaninstitution, and that comes with
a certain amount of justpolitical baggage that we have
to be careful and diplomaticabout. Having been there now for
two months this last season, youknow, we've developed very close
and positive relations with anumber of people around in the
(32:28):
area, and I hope that we willhave a positive association,
rather than this being a problemagain in future.
Jon Taylor (32:35):
Thank you. I mean, I think you touched there on what
was going to be my next questionin that you have this very long
archaeological experience. Andthe situation is slightly
different now from the last timeChicago was excavating at
Nippur. You have theinternational situation,
obviously is different, and withclimate change. But are there
any other differences you'venoticed working in Iraq nowadays
(32:57):
from how things used to be?
Augusta McMahon (32:59):
I still fondly remember in the 1980s you know,
the possibility to travel aroundon your own. And I didn't do too
much of that, but I stillremember, you know, when I was a
student, I arrived in Baghdad, Iwas a little bit late arriving
after the rest of the team werealready at Nippur. And they
didn't know I was there. And soI arrived in Baghdad, and
basically I just ... I went tothe bus station, and I took a
(33:21):
bus from Baghdad to Diwaniyah,and then found a medical student
from the University of Hatra,who was driving a taxi. And we
drove down from Diwaniyah to tryto find where Nippur were was.
And you can't do that kind ofthing anymore. I mean, it was a
positive experience, you know, Ilearned a lot, but the ability
(33:42):
to travel around on one's own isnot really possible anymore.
We do have with us at all times,various sets of security police,
basically for our own safety,not because of any kind of
issue. This is just kind ofnormal to have a contingent of
antiquities police who guard thesite and guard us as a team, and
also a SWAT team that basicallyassures our personal safety.
(34:05):
This is all positive. Usuallythey're very, very friendly
guys. You know, we talk aboutarchaeology, we wander out in
the site together and so on.
They're there doing their job,and I'm not sure they're really
that necessary. But that doesmean there's a certain there's a
degree of layers of bureaucracyif we then want to go and visit
a colleague. So when we go to wewent to visit Uruk, we went to
(34:26):
visit Babylon, we went to Kish.
Every time one travels around,you have to organise this with
you know which police are goingto come with us to guard us en
route. And that's different.
It's a different political worldthan it used to be even in the
1980s. And the first time I wasthere was actually during the
Iran-Iraq War, and yet I stillmanaged to, like I said, take a
(34:49):
bus from Baghdad to Diwaniyahwithout anyone really caring,
right? It's also, I think, amore litigious time as well, and
so can't imagine allowing any ofmy students to do that at the
moment. I'd be too worried fortheir personal safety, because
there is this larger world inwhich we're operating now where
we just have to be respectfuland careful and diplomatic to an
(35:12):
extent which is ... you know,which is very, very positive,
but also has its constraints aswell.
Ellie Bennett (35:19):
So what are the longer term plans for the site?
I'm expecting that you'rewanting to return.
Augusta McMahon (35:25):
Yes.
Ellie Bennett (35:26):
What's the future of Nippur in your mind?
Augusta McMahon (35:29):
Alright, so at the moment, we have a five year
permit. And we're in technicallywe've just finished the second
year of that, so we only haveone year of excavation. So we
have another three years. I wantto continue working in this
southern suburb for at leastnext year and probably the year
after that. I really do want toget down to that Ur III initial
occupation to look at thatdiversity of peoples in this
(35:52):
edge zone. We're also hoping toadd in some geomorphological
studies, both of the Shattan-Nil, which runs through the
centre--the water course, whichruns through the centre of the
city. And also this newwatercourse, moat, canal,
whatever it is, which is on thewestern edge of the site. And do
some geomorphological studiesthere, potentially with local
(36:14):
colleagues at the University ofQadisiyah, to look at the
variations in that water coursein terms of how much water there
is, how fast it's flowing, thekind of health of the water
system during these time periodsin which we have expansion and
contraction. So hoping to addthat in.
Eventually also going toexcavate somewhere on the main
(36:35):
mounds as well. In part this is... we're sort of waiting to see
what the optimal place for thatmight be. We're also being
encouraged by the localDepartment of Antiquities and by
the Antiquities Department ofDiwaniyah province as well to
further develop the site fortourism. Diwaniyah province
(36:57):
doesn't have a lot of otherplaces where tourists might go,
other than Nippur. And I have tosay that sort of signage and the
tourist experience at Nippur isnot really ... is sub-optimal,
let's say. Sort of working onsmall things initially. Think,
better tourist signage. We wantto get an archaeo trail app
pulled together so that peoplecan actually zap a QR code on a
(37:21):
sign and then be guided aroundthe site for when we're not
there.
This also involves someconservation preservation on the
ziggurat as well, which has verybadly eroded, again, due to
climate change, due to rain, butparticularly from wind and
sandstorms, has eroded theziggurat quite a bit. And so one
of the things we're hoping to dois actually some preservation
(37:43):
and conservation on the zigguratThat will also involve some
excavation near the ziggurat aswell, because a lot of the
ziggurat has eroded down. And sothe base of the ziggurat is now
surrounded by eroded soil fromthe top of it. So we'll be doing
some excavation around theziggurat as well, in terms of
just working that out andworking out the optimal
(38:05):
conservation preservationproject. That is very long term,
that also requires a separateconservation permit, which we
don't have yet, but which I'm inthe process of applying for. And
once that's pulled together,that would be another five year
overlapping project just tograpple with that.
And then what I hope is, at theend of our five year excavation
(38:27):
permit, I'll apply for anotherfive years for either potential
continuation of the same projector something which is related,
but slightly different, that isrelated to whatever we're
finding but we'll hopefully findin the next three years. So we
get, we'll build on the firstfive years of excavation for the
next five year permit. At thatpoint, I might be close to
(38:48):
retirement {LAUGHS}, so that, itwould depend on who of the next
generation might be willing totake on, therefore that stage,
but you know, all remains to beseen. You know, it depends on a
number of other factors whathappens at the end of those two
five year, hopefully, permits.
Ellie Bennett (39:06):
My fingers are crossed for you. That end goal
sounds wonderful.
Jon Taylor (39:11):
Yeah, yeah. Before we let you go, Augusta, I would
like to ask about publication.
So I guess, firstly, where canwe read more about the work
you've been doing so far? Butthen secondly, what's your
overall plan for disseminatingthe results of the work you do
to the various audiences whomight be interested?
Augusta McMahon (39:27):
So far, I'm actually right now working on a
preliminary report of that firstexcavation season that will go
into a journal. I haven't reallyquite targeted that yet, because
this is very preliminary stagesof this. Also, I have a short
report for a more generalaudience, which will be in the
institute called News and Notes,the Institute for Study of
(39:51):
Ancient Cultures here at theUniversity of Chicago, we have a
general newsletter, and therewill be a report, a very
preliminary report, very generalreport in that. And that is
available online once it'sactually pulled together. I just
submitted that, so I think itwill be out in three or four
weeks or so, and that'savailable online.
We'll also be putting togetherand adding information to the
(40:15):
website as well. There is aNippur project website, but it
is, at the moment, a little bitout of date, I'll say. A little
bit defunct in terms of actualactivity there, but we will
actually put something up thereas well. There is a YouTube
video of a lecture that I gave acouple of years ago with all the
plans. This was before weactually went to the field, but
(40:37):
does actually have my plans andhopes and vision for the
project, and that is availableon the ISAC YouTube channel as
well, if you want an extendedversion of that. You know,
things were at the planningstage at that point. So there's
nothing about the resultsbecause we had not yet been in
the field, but at least it givesinformation about the larger
setting of what it is that we'redoing.
(41:00):
We're also hoping to give morepublic lectures in Iraq itself.
We haven't yet had a chance todo that. Education of local
stakeholders. Obviously, we talka lot with our workmen. Some of
the workmen are quite interestedin and very knowledgeable about
the history of Mesopotamia, eventhough, in the schools, there
(41:20):
seems to be variable degrees ofeducation within the local
schools about local history andso on. But many of them,
actually, they know and willtalk to you about the Ur III
period, or the Parthians and soon. And so we do a lot of
education at the same time we'reactually doing excavation.
We hope to do more, potentially,interaction in the local
schools. We have school groupscome out and walk around and
(41:43):
look at our excavations, andalso the in the local
universities as well. A numberof us from the team did actually
go to the University ofQadisiyah. Their archaeology
department there runs an annualconference with local
archaeologists and any foreignarchaeologists who are in
country at the time. So we diddo a little bit of local
(42:05):
dissemination of our results.
That was in mid-February, so wehad only really had about half
of the season, and so we'll hopeto go back to that next year and
in future years as well. So avariety of different academic
conferences, also hopefullyschool groups, and this variety
of different degrees ofpublication, including
traditional academic ones, butalso more web-based versions as
(42:28):
well, and more generaldissemination to the public
also.
Jon Taylor (42:37):
Well, super. Thank you very much indeed. And good
luck with the rest of theproject.
Ellie Bennett (42:41):
Good luck.
Augusta McMahon (42:42):
Alright, thank you.
Jon Taylor (42:43):
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(44:39):
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you’ll join us next time.
Hello, and welcome to the Thin End of the Wedge,
the podcast where experts fromaround the world share new and
interesting stories about lifein the ancient Middle East. My
name is Jon. Each episode, Italk to friends and colleagues
and get them to explain theirwork in a way we can all
understand.
Nippur is one of the most famoussites in Mesopotamian history.
(00:36):
Perhaps best known as the sacredheart of the Sumerian world, the
city enjoyed a life maybe 5000years long. More than a century
of excavations there revealedthe remains of great temples, as
well as tablets documentingeducation in the second
millennium and banking in thefirst. A new series of
excavations has started atNippur. Interests have changed,
(01:00):
and new types of researchquestion are being designed. In
the 21st century, new challengesface archaeology in Iraq.
Our guest is an experiencedfield archaeologist, who now
leads the new excavations atNippur. She explains her plans,
the results so far, and how itall works in 2025. So get
(01:22):
yourself a cup of tea, makeyourself comfortable, and let's
meet today's guest.
Hello and welcome to Thin End ofthe Wedge. Thank you for joining
us.
Augusta McMahon (01:39):
Thank you for the invitation. I'm excited to
have a chat.
Jon Taylor (01:43):
Could you tell us please
you do?
Augusta McMahon (01:47):
I'm Augusta McMahon. I'm a Mesopotamian
archaeologist. That means I workin what is now traditionally
Mesopotamia, or in Iraq andnortheast Syria. My research
focuses on ancient cities.
Mesopotamia is the region whichhas the earliest cities in the
world, particularly looking atthe past lived experience of
people who live in cities, urbandwellers. Whether that's their
(02:10):
neighbourhood interactions asthey walk around in streets and
plazas, or their daily routinesas they do housework or work for
the state. And also whatemployment opportunities they
have and how that potentiallychanges over time.
I was at the University ofCambridge for 27 years in the
(02:30):
department of archaeology there.
And about two and a half yearsago, I moved to the University
of Chicago. I used to be thefield director of the Tell Brak
excavation in northeast Syria.
That ceased in 2011 because ofglobal political issues. And now
I am the director of the Nippurexcavation in south Iraq.
Jon Taylor (02:51):
And you're freshly back from the spring season,
aren't you?
Augusta McMahon (02:53):
Yes, we just had a two month long season from
January to middle of March. Itwas an absolutely excellent
field excavation. Got someamazing results. The team was
absolutely incredible; one ofthe best teams I've ever worked
with. And we're just very, veryhappy to relaunch the
excavations at Nippur.
Jon Taylor (03:13):
Okay, I'm excited to hear more detail. We should
start though with, why Nippur?
Augusta McMahon (03:19):
Nippur is probably best known as an
important religious centrewithin Sumer, within south Iraq.
It's the city of which thepatron deity is Enlil, who is
the god of winds and air, and isreally one of the chief deities
within the Mesopotamian pantheonin the third millennium BCE.
(03:39):
There's a number of temples.
There is an actual ziggurat anda temple to Enlil on the site,
which we can come back to later.
We're not actually digging thereyet, but there might be a
conservation project there.
There are a number of otherimportant temples there. There's
Ninurta, Inanna. There's anumber of sort of big religious
institutions there. But it'salso an important city and an
important economic centre aswell as a religious centre. And
(04:03):
it has incredibly longoccupation from at least the
Ubaid period around, probablyaround 6000 BCE, right the way
through most of the first volumeBCE. And there's also Sassanian
and early Islamic occupationthere as well, and Parthian
occupation. So clearly there's... it's a city to which a lot
of people have this very, verylong connection with and sense
(04:25):
of belonging.
It's also an amazing case studyfor the expansion and
contraction of urban size andurban scale over time, depending
on things like political eventsand political churn, and also
climate change as well. We knowof a sequence of political
(04:46):
expansions and collapses, andalso particular climate change
events. And those can actuallybe studied directly at Nippur as
those have an effect on just thesize and diversity of the city.
So it's an amazing place to dig.
It also happens to be a very,very long-term University of
Chicago project. So in manyways, I kind of inherited it
(05:06):
when I moved to the Universityof Chicago. Obviously, this is
dependent on the State Board ofAntiquities and Heritage in
Iraq. And so we had to develop afive year plan of what we would
actually do in order to have thepermit renewed. It's just an
incredible, exciting, dynamicplace to be doing research.
Ellie Bennett (05:26):
Really exciting.
So what are the goals for thecurrent excavations, then?
Augusta McMahon (05:30):
Okay, so our current goal is a little bit
off-beat, given that when youwalk onto Nippur, the most
important building is theziggurat. And you know that's
the thing that Nippur is thebest known for. We're actually
concentrating on the city edgezone in what I'm calling the
southern suburb. So you walkonto the city and there's the
(05:51):
enormous mound, and there's abig channel ... water channel
that runs through the middle.
And all the best-knownexcavations are on this high
mound. But we're actuallyworking on an area which is a
very, very low, mounded part ofthe site, which is down to the
south. In part because there'ssome interesting things that are
happening there. So during theUr III period, so late third
millennium BCE, in the Kassiteperiod, so mid- to later second
(06:14):
millennium BC, and again in theNeo-Babylonian period, so in the
second half of the firstmillennium BCE.
The city has been consciouslyexpanded in each one of those
time periods by the regional ornational government. And in part
what's happening is there's arebuilding on the big temples,
(06:35):
but that comes with also sort ofrevitalisation of the city, and
expansion of its population andincreased diversity of its
population as well. And what wecan see in the southern suburb
is that's a sort of optimal areafor people who are basically
haven't lived there before,right? You get immigration,
migration inward for either jobopportunities with the regional
(07:00):
administration. You know,they're rebuilding the temples.
So there's a whole bunch of newpositions as scribes and
administrators within the templeinstitutions. But also
potentially people who arecoming to lay bricks for the
state. You know, build the citywall, make pottery for all the
new people who are showing up.
So that just the jobopportunities and employment
opportunities just have thishuge uplift. And so where are
(07:21):
these people going to live whenthey arrive to a city which has
this long established traditionof other people who've been
living there?
It tends to be that people moveinto the suburbs of this sort of
city edge zone. So that's whatwe're looking at. It's actually
this city edge zone. And how isthat used? How is it framed? Is
(07:42):
it originally open space. Onceyou would get these expansions,
is this very crowded withdisenfranchised, poor people, or
is it? And it turns out, in somecases, it actually turns out to
be where it's more like a gardensuburb, where you have these
enormous villas, because thewealthy have new space where
they can come in and build idealhouses. So that's what we're
(08:05):
looking at to just investigatethe diversity of the urban edge
zone.
Jon Taylor (08:11):
You have this fantastic site with a very long
history of excavations. How doesyour current work fit with those
previous campaigns? Is it insome way related, or have you
made a conscious break to lookat this very different type of
archaeology?
Augusta McMahon (08:25):
Nippur is, you know, one of these famous
poisoned chalices where it's anamazing, amazing site, but also
has this history of excavationsince the 1890s. And so there
was a massive University ofPennsylvania project in the
1890s, which has left a legacyof enormous holes and also
enormous spoil heaps and dumpsall over the site. So it can be
(08:49):
a real challenge to work aroundthose. The publication of that
University of Pennsylvaniaexcavation campaign is also
sometimes a little bitinadequate according to modern
... modern standards, let's say.
There are also significantexcavations from the 1950s,
1960s, 1970s onwards, which havebeen variously much better
(09:09):
published, but also have left adifferent kind of legacy on the
site. So that means that if youwant to really start over,
right, one is restricted interms of where you actually
excavate and what targetresearch questions one has. And
in part, that's why we aretargeting this southern suburb
or southern extension, becausethere's been less excavation
(09:32):
there. That said there have beenexcavations there in the 1970s
and 1980s by my predecessor,McGuire Gibson, that have been
variously published. And whatwe're doing is building on those
to a great extent.
So from those excavations, we doknow that this southern suburb
was first occupied in the Ur IIIperiod. There's nothing prior to
(09:54):
that. And also that the earliestUr III occupation does seem to
be from one excavation, one verysmall excavation, possibly sort
of smaller houses ofdisenfranchised people. So we
want to simply excavate more ofthe early Ur III occupation to
see if that one very smallexcavation is representative of
what's happening in the largerarea. We also know from the
(10:16):
1970s and 1980s excavationswhere the more or less where the
Ur III city wall is in oneplace, right? The city wall is
actually, it's known to havebeen built by Ibbi-Sin in his
sixth year. So this is the finalking of the Ur III dynasty. And
so we know that this Ur III citywall was built basically over
the top of some earlier Ur IIIhouses. So we have the Ur III
(10:40):
occupation sequence, but only inone tiny area. So we're looking
at that and trying to see whatthe actual extent and the plan
of the Ur III city wall is.
We also know from the 1970s and80s excavations that in the
Kassite period, there was a bigvilla-like building down in this
southern suburb. But again, wewant to see if that was
(11:02):
representative, or if, basicallythat was one building, and then
there's a whole bunch of otherlittle Kassite shacks around, or
there's open space. Theinteresting thing about the
Kassite period is we do havethis Kassite map of Nippur,
which is now in the Hilprechtcollection, that seems to show
... it shows basically, it'slike a plan of the entire site,
(11:23):
including the ziggurat and theShatt an-Nil, which is the water
course, which runs through themiddle. And city walls that go
around in this area of thesouthern suburb, it is labelled
"gardens in the city". And itwould be nice to see that,
right? {L (11:36):
AUGHS} Are there genuinely gardens and small
fields and garden agriculture togo with this one villa that we
know of from the earlyexcavations. And so we're
looking at that as well, just toexpand our picture on that and
building on this earlierdocumentation and earlier
excavation. So we're workingwith the more ... the most
(11:57):
recent excavations, and tryingas much as possible to avoid the
massive holes and dumps from thevery early University of
Pennsylvania excavations ...
working on that.
Ellie Bennett (12:09):
I guess the key question is whether you've
actually been able to do that.
Have you been able to find thesegardens and villas and see if
those finds in the 70s wererepresentative?
Augusta McMahon (12:20):
So far, we've just had really one season of
excavation. So we're justgetting started on this project.
What we have found so far is weput in two large trench areas,
let's say. One of which actuallydid uncover the city wall, and
another which did actuallyuncover a big house. And I'll
talk through those separately,right? The first trench that we
(12:43):
put in, you can actually see inthe low mounds within the area
that we chose, you can actuallymore or less see the line of
what might possibly be the citywall. Okay, so we did start a 10
by 10 there, and we foundimmediately below, almost below
the surface, a fabulous citywall. It's about three meters
wide, preserved at maximum aboutone and a half meters high. And
(13:07):
as we dug for several weeks, wewere thinking that that was the
Ur III city wall, because, ofcourse, that's the one that is
documented in the texts. Andthat was the best preserved wall
that was actually exposed in the1970s and 1980s excavations.
But as we dug down and dug down,we kept finding Kassite material
{LAUGHS} and thinking, "Oh,well, this is possibly reuse of
(13:29):
the city walls, early Kassitere-use of the Ur III city wall
when they were doing whateverelse they were doing".
Ultimately, we had to completelychange our minds and decide
that, in fact, this was theKassite city wall, not the Ur
III city wall. So we have theKassite city wall, which is
brand new. It was not reallyknown of before. The Kassite
city wall in the otherexcavations was significantly
(13:51):
eroded, and roughly we knew moreor less that it was there. But
this new excavation actually hasthe whole thing.
Ellie Bennett (13:58):
Oh, that's exciting, though.
Augusta McMahon (14:00):
Yeah, oh very exciting. We were really hoping
for the Ur III city wall, butthe Kassite city wall, this is
fine. And it takes a kind ofzigzag to deal with a major
erosion channel that runsthrough this area of the
trenches that we had. But thenas we dug down, we finally got
to the bottom of this Kassitecity wall. What we found
(14:21):
immediately below that was theUr III city wall. So at least we
did find that.
Ellie Bennett (14:26):
Yay!
Augusta McMahon (14:26):
Yes, yay.
{LAUGHS} It was unfortunatelykind of damaged by this weird
erosion channel that we had thatsort of cut through that must
belong to either the very latethird millennium or the early
second millennium BC. Soprobably during the Isin-Larsa
time period, this area isabandoned, and the Ur III city
wall actually just has this likemassive erosion channel that
(14:47):
cuts through the middle, andthen the Kassite city wall is
then built over the top of that.
So clearly something of the UrIII city wall was still visible
when the Kassite engineers andarchitects came in to basically
use that as a foundation. So wedid find that. And as we then
dug down, because, you know,this is our target, we were
looking for these potential UrIII houses that were below the
(15:08):
Ur III city wall, what we foundwas another big Ur III piece of
architecture, let's say.
We still have to examine that.
We literally found that in thelast two days of excavation. So
we have this stack of at leasttwo city walls and then
something else Ur III that isactually below that. So that's
what we have of that so far.
(15:29):
Ideally we would, you know, havefound houses, and be able to
look at diversity and mobilityand who is actually living in
this area in the Ur III and theKassite period. But we haven't.
We haven't quite gotten to thatyet.
Then the other excavation areathat we have initially, we had
placed the trench sort ofnearest to where there was this
big Kassite villa, thinking thatwe would be able to see, does
(15:50):
that Kassite villa haveneighbours? Is there, again,
gardens or some kind of farmingor something out in this general
area? We were expecting to findKassite at the basically, sort
of right below the surface, inpart because when we did a very
casual survey of the area,pretty much all the ceramics
were Kassite. Kassite and UrIII. So we started digging, and
(16:11):
we found, pretty quickly, rightbelow the surface a big house,
it looks like, again, a bigvilla. Looked pretty similar to
this Kassite villa, but itturned out to be Neo-Babylonian.
Not what we were expecting, notreally initially part of our
research plan, but somethingwhich absolutely we can embrace.
This is fine.
(16:33):
It turned out that we actuallythen expanded this trench so we
have about 200 square meters atleast, of excavation, and found
this absolutely enormousNeo-Babylonian house with ...
what it looks like a couple ofdifferent courtyard spaces
within it. It's hard to explainwithout actually showing a map.
You know, I'm always used todoing lectures with the
(16:53):
PowerPoint right behind me. Butthere were two pairs of parallel
rectangular spaces, one of whichis roofed, and the other which
is unroofed. So two courtyardsthat are slightly offset from
each other that make it look asif it's potentially the house or
the household of two brothers,or a very extended family, where
(17:14):
you have almost like twofamilies with their own sets of
semi-public and semi-privatespace within it. But it is all
one absolutely enormous housewith just room after room after
room. We only found the exteriorwall on the west side, and even
though we expanded our trenchesand expanded we never actually
got the northeast or southernfull extent of this house, which
(17:36):
is now over 200 meters squared.
Then the interesting thing thatwe found further west of that is
we found a little street, whichis amazing. I love streets.
Again, that's one of the mostoverlooked and under examined
contexts within Mesopotamianarchaeology. But, you know,
they're full of this amazingtrash and just enormous amounts
of sort of scientific data thatyou can explore and think
(17:57):
through. So there is a streetthat's on the essentially along
the western extent of thishouse, and immediately on the
other side of the street, weactually found another city
wall. So we found the firstmillennium, the Neo-Babylonian
city wall there as well, andthis little space in between. So
this big Neo-Babylonian villa isessentially right next to the
(18:19):
city wall as it exists in theneo-Babylonian period. But the
interesting thing about theNeo-Babylonian wall is it
actually re-uses the Kassitewall. So what we found was
essentially like a kind ofcasemate arrangement in which
the interior wall was built inthe Neo-Babylonian period, but
the exterior wall is actuallythe re-used Kassite wall.
(18:40):
So anyway, the upshot of allthis is we can now more or less
trace the city wall along quitea significant distance between
the 1970s and 1980s excavationsthat touched on it in a few
places, our own excavations.
Plus we actually had a colleaguefrom the University of
Pennsylvania, Emily Hammer, whodid magnetometry in this whole
area and has managed to trackthe line of the city wall
(19:03):
between our excavations, andalso significantly on either
side as well. And outside ofthat, it turns out that there's
a moat or a water channel, whichis about 50 meters wide on the
outside of that which she hasalso managed to track in this
magnetometry. So that's our mainresult, is we're starting to get
to grips with the occupation ofthis southern suburb at various
(19:25):
times, very preliminary stagefor the Ur III and the Kassite
period, a little bit more forthe Neo-Babylonian period. But
gives us an amazing foundationfor further work in the next few
years.
Jon Taylor (19:40):
This is all very exciting, isn't it? There's, I
guess, lots of bonuses for you.
Your original goal was to lookfor Ur III. And with the other
city walls and this hugeNeo-Babylonian house, how are
you going to deal with that?
Will you remove part of it? Willyou extend to try and work
around it? How will you confrontthat?
Augusta McMahon (19:59):
Yeah, so within the city wall excavation, we can
continue to dig down quiteeasily. So we're actually
leaving each of the city wallsthat we find. We're actually
leaving those and not removingthose at the moment. We do have
space inside them to continuedown and hopefully to target the
Ur III period. Unfortunately, inthat particular area, there is
(20:19):
some erosion. There's a bit of aridge, so we should actually be
fairly near to the Ur IIIperiod, even though it's a
little bit hard to explain.
Potentially, the Neo-Babylonianis completely eroded in that
area. And the Kassitearchitecture in that area also
seems to be extremely minimal,so we can probably get to the Ur
III period pretty easily withoutactually having to remove
(20:40):
anything.
That said, the one thing that Iforgot to say was we also found
a Parthian cemetery in thisarea. This is, again, not really
part of our research questions,but is very interesting. Nippur
is an amazing city. In theParthian period, there's a huge
fortress around the ziggurrat.
There's a big, a quite big town,or Parthian city, on the west
(21:02):
mound. And then in this southernsuburban area is where the
cemetery is. And between thevarious trenches that we have,
we have, I think, more than 60Parthian burials. They are very,
very close to the surface andunfortunately, very, very badly,
badly damaged and kind of erodedand not in particularly good
condition. But that's our mainthing that overlies the Ur III
(21:27):
period occupation within thecity wall excavation.
In the Neo-Babylonian houseexcavation, we're probably going
to cut through that. What we'lldo is actually expand the
trenches so we can actually seethe entire house. We want to get
right to the actual edges of it,so we can get a sense of, like,
(21:48):
what the exterior is, is thestreet along the west edge also?
You know, are there also streetsor alleys and then nearby
structures on the other sides?
What is surrounding the actualhouse? And we still need an
entrance. We don't even know howthey got into the house, either.
So we want the front door. Wewant the back door. We want just
to understand a lot more aboutcirculation within the house
(22:09):
itself. So we'll do that.
Certainly expand out and try toexpose the entirety of the house
as well.
But then ideally, we will simplyremove that and excavate down
into what I'm assuming isprobably Kassite, given the
quantity of Kassite pottery thatwe actually have sort of
(22:30):
up-churned into theNeo-Babylonian structure. In
some of the contexts, we hadactually more Kassite pottery
than Neo-Babylonian pottery.
Just because, you know, they'reconstantly digging pits, or
there's kind of up-churn ofceramics from the earlier
occupation. So we assume there'sKassite occupation immediately
below. But that's, again, we'rebraced for being surprised, and
there not being anything there,but I'm sure there was something
(22:54):
Kassite below it for sure,whether this is houses or some
kind of fields or gardens,remains to be seen.
Jon Taylor (23:02):
I imagine your epigrapher will be very pleased
if you find Kassite.
Augusta McMahon (23:05):
Yes, yes, indeed. {LAUGHS} We did have ...
we have Susanna Paulus, who isour main epigrapher. We also
have a number of otherepigraphers who are part of the
team, and a large part of thestudents as well. The students
from the University of Chicagowho are part of the team are
actually cuneiform students. Sowe are well braced if we find
any tablets. That said, I'mhappy they're all there, because
(23:27):
there's nothing like having awhole bunch of epigraphers on
the team to make sure you don'tfind any tablets. {LAUGHS} We
did not do. We found oneinscribed sherd, which actually
Susanna found when we werewalking around near the ziggurat
near the neighborhood area; theTablet Hill area. She did find
an inscribed sherd out of themillions and millions of sherds
on the surface. Trust ourepigrapher to find one inscribed
(23:50):
sherd. And then we found ...
there was an Ur III tablet thatwas actually found, again, just
on the surface, a littleeconomic tablet. So that was our
two epigraphic finds from thislast year, both of which were
surface finds and interesting,but not really significant for
our goals.
Ellie Bennett (24:06):
It sounds like you're very well placed for any
cuneiform finds. Do you have anyother expertise on your team?
Augusta McMahon (24:13):
Yes, so we pretty much cover all the bases.
So we have five Iraqi colleaguesfrom the State Board of
Antiquities and Heritage, whoare working with us. Many of
whom have very, very deep andvery diverse excavation
experience as well. So they wereabsolutely key members of the
team in terms of us working outthings like stratigraphy and
(24:36):
architecture and so on. Ourstudents also. So there are
students from the University ofChicago and the University of
Cambridge. You know, the youngergeneration, who just simply have
an innate ability at grapplingwith data collection, say. What
we do in terms of our recordingin the field is we actually use
high resolution GPS receivers,these Emlid Reach receivers,
(24:57):
which give centimetre levelcontrol. They're connected
directly to laptop computers anda whole sort of complicated
database. And so the students,not only are they, they have
excellent excavation experience,but they're also good at
grappling with all the potentialissues that can arise if you're
trying to do digital datacollection in the field, with
(25:20):
wind and rain, dirt and so on.
They managed to deal with thatunbelievably professionally.
We also have an excellent datamanager, a dedicated data
manager who also does thingslike photogrammetry and so on.
We have these epigraphicexperts. We have an
archaeozoologist--my colleague,Tina Greenfield from the
(25:40):
University of Manitoba, who alsoworks with isotope analyses as
well. And isotopes can give usinformation about mobility and
diet of both animals and humans.
Then Emily Hammer of theUniversity of Pennsylvania is an
expert in magnetometry, ingeneral sort of landscape
interpretation. We also do moretraditional interpretation of
ceramic assemblages. Mycolleague, Luca Volpi, who's at
(26:04):
the University of Madrid andUniversity of Rome, and I are
working on the ceramics. Andthen also people who are looking
at material culture analyses andso on. So we have a pretty good
range.
We do not have anarchaeobotanist yet, in part
because there are challengeswith flotation and archaeobotany
in general in south Iraq,because of salinity and
(26:25):
preservation and so on. So we'relooking for a potential
archaeobotanist. We also don'thave yet a human remains
analyst, though we have savedall the human remains from the
Parthian cemetery, and also fromthe ... we have a couple of
Neo-Babylonian graves as well.
We've saved all of that, andthose have all been
comprehensively documented interms of, again, photographs and
photogrammetry as well. So thoseare the sort of two experts that
(26:48):
we lack at the moment. But no,we find that we have a pretty
good range of expertise. There'snothing that we really find
like, oh, we we can't do this.
We can pretty much deal withalmost anything.
Ellie Bennett (27:01):
Wow. That's a massive range. And I hope you
are able to fill those gaps inthe ...was it archaeobotany and
human remains?
Augusta McMahon (27:09):
Archaeobotany and human remains are our two
acknowledged gaps at the moment.
Ellie Bennett (27:14):
And I'd love, just really quickly ... can you
talk more about theneo-Babylonian graves?.
Augusta McMahon (27:19):
Yeah. So what we had were basically three
coffin burials within the houseitself. One was in one of the
traditional bathtub coffins. Onewas actually in a round or oval
coffin, and then there wasanother. There were actually, in
fact, two others, but they werebadly crushed and damaged. And
(27:40):
one was probably in a bathtubcoffin, and the other one maybe
in some other kind of vessel.
The two that were the bestpreserved did have adult remains
in them, together with theselittle glazed jars that are
quite common in elitehouseholds, elite house
contexts. In terms of just beingabove your average everyday
(28:01):
vessel. Little glazed jars thathave this kind of flower petals
and little things, almost likelittle bulls eyes on them in
this beautiful yellow and whiteglaze, in one case. And another
one was actually just kind oflike all entirely green as well.
So these beautiful little glazedjars, they also sometimes come
with a few beads and so on. Thatreinforces that what we're
looking at is an elitehousehold, rather than just a
(28:24):
large poor household.
The material culture that wehave from the house also
includes things like incenseburners, fragments of incense
burners, and these glazed jars.
It just reinforces that this isa household that has access to
elite material culture and soon. Interestingly, the diet,
also in terms of thearchaeozoological remains, also
(28:46):
reinforces that. So they havethe usual sheep, goat, pig, you
know, the normal kind of diet,but quite a lot of animal
remains, and also quite a lot ofwild animals as well. So they
were hunting deer and doing alot of fishing and yanking
turtles out of the Euphrates andso on. So the diet was really
(29:07):
quite varied. That, again,reinforces this idea of an elite
household was living there. Youknow, basically that is played
out in terms of these gravesthat we have.
Ellie Bennett (29:18):
You've painted this really complex picture of a
really interesting site. So I'mwondering if there have been any
challenges that you've facedwith organising these
excavations.
Augusta McMahon (29:31):
There are always challenges. Working in
Iraq can be unpredictable,because of just global politics
and internal bureaucracy. Thebiggest challenges on the site,
as I said, are really theprevious excavations and trying
to extract the maximuminformation from those. And to
(29:52):
work around things like spoilheaps and so on that are left
behind from legacy excavations.
And while it's enormouslyvaluable to have all those
legacy excavations, so we knowso much about the occupation of
the site, that still means thatsometimes you think "Gosh. It
would be great to dig rightthere, but there is an
absolutely enormous spoil heapon top of that". That's one of
(30:15):
the main challenges.
There are always challenges.
Working in Iraq can beunpredictable, because of just
global politics and internalbureaucracy. The biggest
challenges on the site, as Isaid, are really the previous
(30:36):
excavations and trying toextract the maximum information
from those. And to work aroundthings like spoil heaps and so
on that are left behind fromlegacy excavations. And while
it's enormously valuable to haveall those legacy excavations, so
we know so much about theoccupation of the site, that
still means that sometimes youthink "Gosh. It would be great
to dig right there, but there isan absolutely enormous spoil
heap on top of that". That's oneof the main challenges.
And the winter is really ideal.
That said, you get rain. So welost a few days to very, very
(31:00):
heavy rain. That just turns thethe entirety of south Iraq into
this sort of clay swamp. Wealso, unusually this time
around, also had a few dayswhere it was well below
freezing, so we would wake upand in the house, all the water
pipes were frozen. That'sunusual to get that cold, but
that can also happen. Climatechange doesn't just mean
(31:21):
warming, it means a higherdegree of fluctuation. So the
weather is always a challenge.
That said, also global politicscan be a challenge as well. This
was technically meant to be oursecond season in 2025. We did
attempt to have a season in2024, but we had to evacuate
(31:42):
quite rapidly because of athreat, a specific threat
against us that did not have todo with anything that we had to
do. But we are deemed to be anAmerican project, and the global
political situation made itunsafe for Americans to be
there.
That said, our project isactually international. We have
Iraqis, we have Spanish,Italian, Canadian, German, you
(32:06):
know, people from all over. Andtechnically, this is an
international project, not anAmerican one, but of course, it
is associated with an Americaninstitution, and that comes with
a certain amount of justpolitical baggage that we have
to be careful and diplomaticabout. Having been there now for
two months this last season, youknow, we've developed very close
and positive relations with anumber of people around in the
(32:28):
area, and I hope that we willhave a positive association,
rather than this being a problemagain in future.
Jon Taylor (32:35):
Thank you. I mean, I think you touched there on what
was going to be my next questionin that you have this very long
archaeological experience. Andthe situation is slightly
different now from the last timeChicago was excavating at
Nippur. You have theinternational situation,
obviously is different, and withclimate change. But are there
any other differences you'venoticed working in Iraq nowadays
(32:57):
from how things used to be?
Augusta McMahon (32:59):
I still fondly remember in the 1980s you know,
the possibility to travel aroundon your own. And I didn't do too
much of that, but I stillremember, you know, when I was a
student, I arrived in Baghdad, Iwas a little bit late arriving
after the rest of the team werealready at Nippur. And they
didn't know I was there. And soI arrived in Baghdad, and
basically I just ... I went tothe bus station, and I took a
(33:21):
bus from Baghdad to Diwaniyah,and then found a medical student
from the University of Hatra,who was driving a taxi. And we
drove down from Diwaniyah to tryto find where Nippur were was.
And you can't do that kind ofthing anymore. I mean, it was a
positive experience, you know, Ilearned a lot, but the ability
(33:42):
to travel around on one's own isnot really possible anymore.
We do have with us at all times,various sets of security police,
basically for our own safety,not because of any kind of
issue. This is just kind ofnormal to have a contingent of
antiquities police who guard thesite and guard us as a team, and
also a SWAT team that basicallyassures our personal safety.
(34:05):
This is all positive. Usuallythey're very, very friendly
guys. You know, we talk aboutarchaeology, we wander out in
the site together and so on.
They're there doing their job,and I'm not sure they're really
that necessary. But that doesmean there's a certain there's a
degree of layers of bureaucracyif we then want to go and visit
a colleague. So when we go to wewent to visit Uruk, we went to
(34:26):
visit Babylon, we went to Kish.
Every time one travels around,you have to organise this with
you know which police are goingto come with us to guard us en
route. And that's different.
It's a different political worldthan it used to be even in the
1980s. And the first time I wasthere was actually during the
Iran-Iraq War, and yet I stillmanaged to, like I said, take a
(34:49):
bus from Baghdad to Diwaniyahwithout anyone really caring,
right? It's also, I think, amore litigious time as well, and
so can't imagine allowing any ofmy students to do that at the
moment. I'd be too worried fortheir personal safety, because
there is this larger world inwhich we're operating now where
we just have to be respectfuland careful and diplomatic to an
(35:12):
extent which is ... you know,which is very, very positive,
but also has its constraints aswell.
Ellie Bennett (35:19):
So what are the longer term plans for the site?
I'm expecting that you'rewanting to return.
Augusta McMahon (35:25):
Yes.
Ellie Bennett (35:26):
What's the future of Nippur in your mind?
Augusta McMahon (35:29):
Alright, so at the moment, we have a five year
permit. And we're in technicallywe've just finished the second
year of that, so we only haveone year of excavation. So we
have another three years. I wantto continue working in this
southern suburb for at leastnext year and probably the year
after that. I really do want toget down to that Ur III initial
occupation to look at thatdiversity of peoples in this
(35:52):
edge zone. We're also hoping toadd in some geomorphological
studies, both of the Shattan-Nil, which runs through the
centre--the water course, whichruns through the centre of the
city. And also this newwatercourse, moat, canal,
whatever it is, which is on thewestern edge of the site. And do
some geomorphological studiesthere, potentially with local
(36:14):
colleagues at the University ofQadisiyah, to look at the
variations in that water coursein terms of how much water there
is, how fast it's flowing, thekind of health of the water
system during these time periodsin which we have expansion and
contraction. So hoping to addthat in.
Eventually also going toexcavate somewhere on the main
(36:35):
mounds as well. In part this is... we're sort of waiting to see
what the optimal place for thatmight be. We're also being
encouraged by the localDepartment of Antiquities and by
the Antiquities Department ofDiwaniyah province as well to
further develop the site fortourism. Diwaniyah province
(36:57):
doesn't have a lot of otherplaces where tourists might go,
other than Nippur. And I have tosay that sort of signage and the
tourist experience at Nippur isnot really ... is sub-optimal,
let's say. Sort of working onsmall things initially. Think,
better tourist signage. We wantto get an archaeo trail app
pulled together so that peoplecan actually zap a QR code on a
(37:21):
sign and then be guided aroundthe site for when we're not
there.
This also involves someconservation preservation on the
ziggurat as well, which has verybadly eroded, again, due to
climate change, due to rain, butparticularly from wind and
sandstorms, has eroded theziggurat quite a bit. And so one
of the things we're hoping to dois actually some preservation
(37:43):
and conservation on the zigguratThat will also involve some
excavation near the ziggurat aswell, because a lot of the
ziggurat has eroded down. And sothe base of the ziggurat is now
surrounded by eroded soil fromthe top of it. So we'll be doing
some excavation around theziggurat as well, in terms of
just working that out andworking out the optimal
(38:05):
conservation preservationproject. That is very long term,
that also requires a separateconservation permit, which we
don't have yet, but which I'm inthe process of applying for. And
once that's pulled together,that would be another five year
overlapping project just tograpple with that.
And then what I hope is, at theend of our five year excavation
(38:27):
permit, I'll apply for anotherfive years for either potential
continuation of the same projector something which is related,
but slightly different, that isrelated to whatever we're
finding but we'll hopefully findin the next three years. So we
get, we'll build on the firstfive years of excavation for the
next five year permit. At thatpoint, I might be close to
(38:48):
retirement {LAUGHS}, so that, itwould depend on who of the next
generation might be willing totake on, therefore that stage,
but you know, all remains to beseen. You know, it depends on a
number of other factors whathappens at the end of those two
five year, hopefully, permits.
Ellie Bennett (39:06):
My fingers are crossed for you. That end goal
sounds wonderful.
Jon Taylor (39:11):
Yeah, yeah. Before we let you go, Augusta, I would
like to ask about publication.
So I guess, firstly, where canwe read more about the work
you've been doing so far? Butthen secondly, what's your
overall plan for disseminatingthe results of the work you do
to the various audiences whomight be interested?
Augusta McMahon (39:27):
So far, I'm actually right now working on a
preliminary report of that firstexcavation season that will go
into a journal. I haven't reallyquite targeted that yet, because
this is very preliminary stagesof this. Also, I have a short
report for a more generalaudience, which will be in the
institute called News and Notes,the Institute for Study of
(39:51):
Ancient Cultures here at theUniversity of Chicago, we have a
general newsletter, and therewill be a report, a very
preliminary report, very generalreport in that. And that is
available online once it'sactually pulled together. I just
submitted that, so I think itwill be out in three or four
weeks or so, and that'savailable online.
We'll also be putting togetherand adding information to the
(40:15):
website as well. There is aNippur project website, but it
is, at the moment, a little bitout of date, I'll say. A little
bit defunct in terms of actualactivity there, but we will
actually put something up thereas well. There is a YouTube
video of a lecture that I gave acouple of years ago with all the
plans. This was before weactually went to the field, but
(40:37):
does actually have my plans andhopes and vision for the
project, and that is availableon the ISAC YouTube channel as
well, if you want an extendedversion of that. You know,
things were at the planningstage at that point. So there's
nothing about the resultsbecause we had not yet been in
the field, but at least it givesinformation about the larger
setting of what it is that we'redoing.
(41:00):
We're also hoping to give morepublic lectures in Iraq itself.
We haven't yet had a chance todo that. Education of local
stakeholders. Obviously, we talka lot with our workmen. Some of
the workmen are quite interestedin and very knowledgeable about
the history of Mesopotamia, eventhough, in the schools, there
(41:20):
seems to be variable degrees ofeducation within the local
schools about local history andso on. But many of them,
actually, they know and willtalk to you about the Ur III
period, or the Parthians and soon. And so we do a lot of
education at the same time we'reactually doing excavation.
We hope to do more, potentially,interaction in the local
schools. We have school groupscome out and walk around and
(41:43):
look at our excavations, andalso the in the local
universities as well. A numberof us from the team did actually
go to the University ofQadisiyah. Their archaeology
department there runs an annualconference with local
archaeologists and any foreignarchaeologists who are in
country at the time. So we diddo a little bit of local
(42:05):
dissemination of our results.
That was in mid-February, so wehad only really had about half
of the season, and so we'll hopeto go back to that next year and
in future years as well. So avariety of different academic
conferences, also hopefullyschool groups, and this variety
of different degrees ofpublication, including
traditional academic ones, butalso more web-based versions as
(42:28):
well, and more generaldissemination to the public
also.
Jon Taylor (42:37):
Well, super. Thank you very much indeed. And good
luck with the rest of theproject.
Ellie Bennett (42:41):
Good luck.
Augusta McMahon (42:42):
Alright, thank you.
Jon Taylor (42:43):
I’d also like to thank our patrons
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I really appreciate yoursupport. It makes a big
difference. Every penny receivedhas contributed towards
translations. Thanks of courseto the lovely people who have
worked on the translations on avoluntary basis or for well
below the market rate. ForArabic, thanks in particular to
Zainab Mizyidawi, as well asLina Meerchyad and May Al-Aseel.
(44:39):
For Turkish, thank you to PinarDurgun and Nesrin Akan. TEW is
still young, but I want to reacha sustainable level, where
translators are given propercompensation for their hard
work.
And thank you for listening toThin End of the Wedge. If you
enjoy what we do, and you wouldlike to help make these podcasts
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