Elizabeth C. StoneLegend
Protoliterate and Early Dynastic I SitesFigure 8.2 Plan showing an Uruk to Early Dynastic I landscape with radiating lines visible
around the early sites (imagery of Uruk Survey Site 382. Courtesy of the Digital Globe
Corporation)these traces are not dissimilar to the results of excavations at the only excavations of a
contemporary urban site, those at Khafajah where, to the extent that these remains are
preserved, entrance to the houses seems to have been by way of a courtyard, not a small
entrance chamber (Delougaz, Hill and Lloyd, 1967: pi. 3-5).
It may be possible to connect these scraps of excavated data to the early third
millennium landscape preserved in the vicinity of the large Early Dynastic I center at
Umm al-cAjaj. There, in addition to the remains of this city (which unfortunately does
not preserve surface remains), there are a number of other Uruk to Early Dynastic I
sites of various sizes, as well as later sites, especially those dating to Sassanian times.
All of the early sites are surrounded by radiating lines, but only one of the Sassanian
sites has these, and it might well have buried an earlier settlement. Jennifer Pournelle
(2003, 2007, and this volume), and her mentor Guillermo Algaze (2008) have argued
persuasively that during the developmental stages of Mesopotamian civilization higher
sea levels in the Gulf resulted in a much wetter world, dominated more by marsh than
by desert. It would have been precisely this environment which would have supported
the cattle recorded in both art and text-cattle which would have grazed happily in the
reed beds as is still often seen today.7
If the sites in this area were surrounded more by marsh than by irrigated fields, then
the traces surrounding these southern Iraqi sites, similar to those identified as drovers’
0 0.5 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Kilometers0 .1-3 ha.
3.1-5.3 ha.
5.4-8.8 ha.
8.9-14.9 ha.
15-31 ha.
Sites dating after the Early Dynastic I
0.1-3 ha.
3.1-5.3 ha.
5.4-8.8 ha.
8.9-14.9 ha.
Radiating Lines