the Sumerian pantheon was also an achievement of the scribes attached to Early
Dynastic elite households.^81
THE COMMONERSWhat of the average Sumerians? We still know very little about the Sumerian
countryside of the period. The common cereal varieties were apparently cultivated,
with the predominance of barley (Hordeum vulgare) and emmer (Triticum dicoccum) over
other grain varieties and over such garden produce as lentils or dates.^82 The Tell Brak
evidence includes chiefly two-rowed hulled barley, einkorn and emmer wheat,
‘bread/macaroni wheat’ (Triticum aestivum ssp. durum), lentils and common peas.^83 The
rural hinterlands of Sumerian settlement sites still await detailed mapping of the
worn-sherd clusters likely to have resulted from manuring tilled land by domestic
refuse containing such admixtures, and thus to visualize the extent of ancient arable
land.^84 However, large-scale deforestation of Near Eastern landscapes had very likely
not set in until about 2000 BC.^85 Cereals seem to have been harvested close to the
soil, as low-growing weed taxa are present among the surviving grain samples from
Brak.^86 Straw obviously represented an article of common utility, for instance, as a
tempering agent for mud-bricks. The post-harvest procedures included threshing,
winnowing, coarse-sieving and fine-sieving.^87 Only then was the product passed on
to the millers.
The rising predominance of oxen, together with increasing representation of donkey
and horse, give evidence of employment of domestic animals as a source of traction
power.^88 For the inhabitants of late Early Dynastic Abu Salabikh, pigs supplied pork
for the table, and sheep and goats were likely sources of milk and wool.^89 The Brak
donkeys enjoyed reasonably good care, were stabled, though ridden and probably also
used as pack animals, and obeyed orders transmitted by bits.^90
At least some villages could have assumed the dispersed settlement pattern,
consisting presumably of individual households or farmsteads, as appears to be the
case at Tell Yelkhi.^91
The arts and crafts now. Complex and sophisticated technologies, such as bronze
casting, apparently became widely accessible.^92 Surprisingly enough, both stone-
working production waste and copper slag turned up at the Jebel-Hamrin site of Tell
Yelkhi, indicating that rural settlements also practised some craft production.^93
Traditional manufacturing procedures continued, side by side with more advanced
ones, as is indicated by the persistence of chipped-flint sickle blades throughout the
Early Dynastic and Akkadian levels at the same site.^94 Trade in food staples must
have enriched many a table in early Mesopotamia, as is indicated by the presence of
marine fish species in Early Dynastic and Akkadian inland sites. A few turned up as
far as Tell Brak, some 2 , 000 kilometres from the Persian Gulf they came from.^95 The
import of wine from abroad, though primarily aimed at the needs of the elite, gives
evidence of the logistical capability of Sumerian transporters.^96
Some new social developments are visible. At Shuruppak, the im-ru-a communities
(re?)emerged. The term for such groupings denotes both ‘land segment, rural district’
and ‘a structured and coherent group of people’. Such im-ru-a seem to refer to
independent social bodies which might have accepted obedience to an external power
such as the royal palace, which would then send a ‘liaison officer’ (ugula), to see that
— Social configurations in Early Dynastic Babylonia —