dwellings at Tell Asmar, was rebuilt a number of times through the Early Dynastic to
Akkadian periods (Delougaz et al. 1967 : 154 – 58 , pl. 33 ). Named the Arch House
because of the four or five distinctive arched doorways that led off the central hall, this
home embodies most of the characteristics of the other houses of Eshnunna.
In Early Dynastic III (level Vc) the house was already larger than its neighbours,
consisting of an irregular plan of ten or eleven small rooms. The entrance doorway led
into a narrow vestibule, the floor of which was partially covered with a thin coating of
gypsum; a pot set into the floor next to the entrance, suggests that water was used here,
perhaps as part of a reception ritual for inhabitants and/or guests. The vestibule led into
a small room that gave access to both the central courtyard and a kitchen which
contained a large bread oven and range. On the floor of the courtyard, in the east
corner, a rectangle of gypsum plaster with a basin-like depression lined was perhaps
where a water pot stood. Niche-like recesses in two of the rooms may have served as
cupboards.
At some point, the house was rebuilt (level Vb) and, although it now incorporated
much of the next door house and was therefore larger, the number of rooms remained
the same. The courtyard was provided with a mud brick bench in the south corner
and one of the internal walls was pierced by a window with wooden lintels set about
- 70 metres above the floor. A depression in the floor of the courtyard may have been
a fireplace or open hearth. Two large bread ovens were built at the end of one rectilinear
room, adjacent to the kitchen but not connected to it. The presence of large jars and
thick-walled ribbed pots, a number of goat horns and a quern with rubbing stones
indicate domestic processing and production.
By the early Akkadian period (level IVb) the Arch House had been rebuilt again and
while the southwestern part was hardly modified, the northeastern section was
completely changed in layout. Three querns were discovered in one room and storage
bins formed from walls of unbaked clay, one paved with baked bricks, were a feature
of a number of rooms. Narrow sills were found in the doorways. A baked clay grill, its
slot-like perforations giving the appearance of bars, was found on the floor but was
probably fitted into a small window. One of the most significant additions to the house
was a room containing a paved rectangle of baked bricks that supported a toilet from
which a baked-brick drain ran through an outer wall and emptied into a baked clay
trough.
What is clear from this brief survey of the fittings and fixtures in the Arch House is
how few there were. Elsewhere at Tell Asmar and Abu Salabikh, the evidence for
domestic installations is equally minimal (the presence of hearths and ovens will be
discussed below). Similarly, there is little evidence for the use of furniture in ordinary
domestic settings (Crawford 1996 ). Ethnographic studies suggest in place of wooden
furniture, rugs, carpets and carpet-encased pillows placed atop reed mats covered the
floor (Ochsenschlager 2004 : 165 ). These are all ephemeral and therefore do not survive
well in the archaeological record. Mats, rugs and low stools may be depicted on seals
of the late fourth millennium BCthat show them being used by women squatting while
engaged with the production of pottery or textiles (e.g., Collon 1987 : 16 , no. 15 ). Indeed
evidence for reed mats (and baskets) has been recovered from a number of sites (e.g.,
Crawford 1981 : 109 ; Ochsenschlager 2004 : 144 ).
Beds appear on cylinder seals from the mid-third millennium BC(Crawford 1996 :
38 ), and Leonard Woolley reports finding a wooden bedstead in a house at Ur dating
–– Everyday life in Sumer ––