to c. 1900 BC(Woolley and Mallowan 1976 : 25 ). However, like the other furniture of
Sumerian homes, beds are transient in nature. Studies of modern village life suggest
that during the extreme heat of summer, people spent the evenings outside their
houses, constructing sleeping platforms in their courtyards to raise their bedding high
enough above the ground to avoid disturbance from animals and ground-dwelling
pests. These platforms are formed from parallel walls of mud with reeds laid across the
top onto which bedclothes are placed. During the winter, when the structure is no
longer used, the reed platform is often used for fuel and the foundations fall into
disrepair (Ochsenschlager 2004 : 108 – 110 ). It is possible that similar constructions were
made in Sumerian houses, perhaps on the roof where there would have been more
space than in the courtyard.
COOKING, EATING AND DRINKING
Evidence for both the cooking and serving of food has been found in the Early Dynastic
homes of Abu Salabikh and the Diyala sites. Houses were outfitted with hearths and/or
ovens, and storage jars set into the floors. The most common form of fire installations
was small, clay-lined open hearths that vary in size and shape. Occasionally, as in the
Arch House at Tell Asmar, they were formed of baked bricks set on edge on the floor
or by a mud enclosure paved with baked bricks. More elaborate cooking devices are
bread ovens; the remains of the lower portions of which have been recognised in many
excavations. Their form is very similar to the tannursstill in use in the Middle East where
the oven is heated by a fire of dung patties and reeds. It is sometimes used to cook meat
and fish but primarily used for baking flat wheat bread. Some tannursat Abu Salabikh
were encased in a brick or clay surround. Crawford ( 1981 : 108 ) suggests this structure
might have been used to support pots for boiling or stewing. It may also have provided
additional protection for the oven during the rainy season (Ochsenschlager 2004 : 52 ).
Bread ovens were placed, almost without exception at Tell Asmar, near the outer door.
In addition, examples of two-storey ovens, with perforated floors over a firebox below
floor level are known close to tannursat Abu Salabikh and Khafajeh (Crawford 1981 :
108 – 111 ). Other forms of cooking apparatus found in homes at both Abu Salabikh and
Tell Asmar are so-called ranges, a covered clay box, that contained the fire, with holes
in the top, the inside divided into three parts.
Ovens, hearths and ranges were not just for cooking but, as winters can be cold in
southern Iraq, they were an important source of heat. This makes it all the more
extraordinary that in Early Dynastic I Khafajeh the houses have no cooking or heating
facilities. Susan Pollock has explained this by arguing that the houses belonged to
temple personnel and that their food was being produced and supplied by their
employing institution (Pollock 1999 : 123 – 134 ). There may also have been communal
ovens serving neighbourhoods; a group of houses at Abu Salabikh with elaborate two-
storey ovens, for example, may have been a baker’s quarter (Crawford 1983 ). By Early
Dynastic III, however, many of the houses at Khafajeh contained fire installations
suggesting that the inhabitants had by that time become responsible for preparing their
own food. This may reflect the gradual loss of economic control by the temples in
favour of households.
Other cooking equipment has been identified in the archaeological record based on
ethnographic analogies. For example, at Al-Hiba fragments of a heavy disk of sun-dried–– Paul Collins ––