Between wedges, tablets and scribes: the materiality of the funerary landscapes in Mesopotamia during the Third Dynasty of Ur
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31048/1852.4826.v12.n2.23526Keywords:
Mesopotamia, Third Dynasty of Ur, Funerary landscape, Materiality, Administrative textsAbstract
The aim of this paper is to analyze the funerary spatiality during the Third Dynasty of Ur (2110-2003 BCE) in Lower Mesopotamia, based on the theoretical postulates of the so-called studies on materiality in Archeology –which propose the overcoming of the subject/object dialectic– and, for that matter, we will also consider the Peircian semiotic perspective, which will allow us to understand how the available sources (clay tablets and burial structures) could be studied from a view that is no longer dichotomous, but triadic. The discussion about the cuneiform tablets not only as carriers of messages –in our case, administrative texts– is transcendental in the reconstruction of Mesopotamian funerary landscapes. We are interested in analyzing the role of the so-called “funeral chapels” in the administrative/political reconfiguration during the Third Dynasty of Ur, at which time the palace appropriated the control mechanisms of the temples. Likewise, the funeral chapels supposed the strengthening of links between the dead of the elite (ancestors), the goods deposited in their honor (funerary offerings), and the location of evocative places. In short, the funeral chapels pointed out the performance of ritual practices, the political foundation of the emerging palace elite, and the monumentalization of the funerary landscape.Downloads
References
Balke, T., & Tsouparopoulou, C. (2016). Introduction. En T. Balke & C. Tsouparopoulou (Eds.). Materiality of Writing in Early Mesopotamia (Materiale Textkulturen 13) (pp. 1-10). Berlin / New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Barrett, J.C. (1999). The Mythical Landscapes of the British Iron Age. En W. Ashmore & B. Knapp (Eds.). Archaeologies of Landscape. Contemporary Perspectives (pp. 253-265). Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Bartash, V. (2014). E2-mi2 – ‘Women’s Quarters’: the Earliest Written Evidence. En F. Buccellati, T. Helms & A. Tamm (Eds.). House and Household Economies in 3rd Millennium B.C.E. Syro-Mesopotamia (British Archaeological Reports/ International Series 2682) (pp. 9-20). Oxford: Archaeopress .
(BDTNS): Molina, M. (Ed.). (2002-). Base de Datos de Textos Neosumerios. Recuperado de: http://bdts.filol.csic.es
Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice, traducción de Richard Nice (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology 16). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cabrera, R. (2016). Reconstruyendo “espacios materiales” a partir de tablillas cuneiformes. La frecuencia terminológica del vocablo ki-ma? (tumba) en textos administrativos de Ur III. En: Actas del XIX Congreso Nacional de Arqueología Argentina, 8-12 de agosto de 2016 (Serie Monográfica y Didáctica 54) (pp. 3103-3106). San Miguel de Tucumán: Facultad de Ciencias Naturales e Instituto Miguel Lillo, Universidad Nacional de Tucumán.
Cabrera, R. (2017). La inter-textualidad y la inter-materialidad de los objetos. La “ofrenda funeraria” en la tensión entre cultura material y evidencia epigráfica entre el Dinástico Temprano IIIB y la época neo-sumeria (Baja Mesopotamia, c. 2600-2100 a.C.). Sociedades precapitalistas. Revista de Historia Social, 7(1), e020. https://doi.org/10.24215/22505121e020.
Cabrera, R., & Calomino, E.A. (2016). Inventando muertos: paisajes funerarios y prácticas de memoria en la Baja Mesopotamia entre los períodos Dinástico Temprano IIIB y neo-sumerio. En V. Aldazábal, L. Amor, M. Díaz, R. Flammini, N. Franco & B. Matossian (Comps.). Territorios, Memorias e Identidades. Actas de las IV Jornadas Multidisciplinarias, Buenos Aires, 4 al 5 de noviembre de 2015 (pp. 107-124). Buenos Aires: Latingráfica / Instituto Multidisciplinario de Historia y Ciencias Humanas, CONICET.
(CAD): Biggs, R.D., Brinkman J.A., Civil, M., Farber, W., Gelb, I.J., Landsberger, B., Oppenheim, A.L., Reiner, E., Roth, M., & Stolper, M. (Eds.) (1956-2010). The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. 21 vols. Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.
Cohen, A. (2005). Death Rituals, Ideology, and the Development of Early Mesopotamian Kingship: Toward a New Understanding of Iraq’s Royal Cementery of Ur (Ancient Magic and Divination 7). Leiden: Brill.
Cohen, M.E. (1993). The Cultic Calendars of the Ancient Near East. Bethesda: CDL Press.
Garfinkle, S.J. (2013). Ancient Near Eastern City-States. En P. Figiber Bang & W. Scheidel (Eds.). The Oxford Handbook of the State in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean (pp. 94-119). Oxford / New York: Oxford University Press.
Gibson, J.J. (1979). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception: Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
González Ruibal, A. (2012). Hacia otra arqueología: diez propuestas. Complutum, 23(2), 103-116.
Gosden, C. (1994). Social Being and Time. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Heidegger, M. (1967 [1927]). Sein und Zeit. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.
Heidegger, M. (1994). Construir, habitar, pensar. En Conferencias y artículos de Martin
Heidegger, traducción de Eustaquio Barjau (pp. 127-142). Barcelona: Ediciones del Serbal.
Ingold, T. (2007). Materials against Materiality. Archaeological Dialogues, 14(1), 1-16.
Jagersma, B. (2007). The Calendar of the Funerary Cult in Ancient Lagash. Bibliotheca Orientalis, 64: 289-307.
Katz, D. (2003). The Image of the Netherworld in the Sumerian Sources. Bethesda: CDL Press.
Keane, W. (2005). Signs Are Not the Garb of Meaning: On the Social Analysis of Material Things. En D. Miller (Ed.). Materiality (pp. 182-205). Durham / London: Duke University Press.
Kobayashi, T. (1985). The ki-a-nag of Enentarzi. Orient, 21, 10-30.
Laneri, N. (2008). Texts in Context: Praxis and Power of Funerary Rituals among Elites in Ancient Mesopotamia. En L. Fogelin (Ed.). Religion, Archaeology, and the Material World (pp. 196-215). Carbondale: Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
Latour, B. (1991). Nous n’avons jamais été modernes. Essai d’anthropologie symétrique. Paris: La Découverte.
Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: an Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Miller, D. (2005). Materiality. An Introduction. En D. Miller (Ed.). Materiality (pp. 1-50). Durham / London: Duke University Press.
Miller, N.F. (2013). Symbols of Fertility and Abundance in the Royal Cemetery at Ur, Iraq. American Journal of Archaeology, 117(1), 127-33.
Molina, M. (1995). Las «reformas» de UruKAgina. Lengua e historia, Antigüedad y Cristianismo XII. Scripta Fulgentina, 5(9/10), 47-80.
Molina, M. (2008). The Corpus of Neo-Sumerian Tablets: an Overview. En S.J. Garfinkle & J.C. Johnson (Eds.). The Growth of an Early State in Mesopotamia: Studies in Ur III Administration (pp. 19-53) (Biblioteca del Próximo Oriente Antiguo 5). Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas.
Molina, M. (2016). Archives and Bookkeeping in Southern Mesopotamia during the Ur III Period. Archéologie de la comptabilité. Culture matérielle des pratiques comptables au Proche-Orient ancien, 8. Recuperado de : http://journals.openedition.org/comptabilites/1980
Piquette, K.E., & Whitehouse, R.D. (2013). Introduction: Developing an Approach to Writing as Material Practice. En K.E. & R.D. Whitehouse (Eds.). Writing as Material Practice: Substance, Surface and Medium (pp. 1-13). London: Ubiquity Press.
Porter, A. (2002). Communities in Conflict: Death and the Contest for Social Order in the Euphrates River Valley. Near Eastern Archaeology, 65(3), 156-173.
Porter, A. (2007-2008). Evocative Topography: Experience, Time and Politics in a Landscape of Death. En G. Bartoloni & M.G. Benedettini (Eds.). Sepolti tra i vivi. Evidenza ed interpretazione di contesti funerari in abitato. Atti del Convegno Internazionale, Roma, 26-29 Aprile 2006 (Scienze dell’Antichità 14/1) (pp. 71-80). Roma: Quasar.
Preucel, R.W. (2006). Archaeological Semiotics. Malden / Oxford: Blackwell.
Ricoeur, P. (1983). Temps et récit I: L’intrigue et le récit historique. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.
Sallaberger, W. (1993). Der kultische Kalender der Ur-III-Zeit (Untersuchungen zur Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie 7/1). Berlin / New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Sallaberger, W., & Schrakamp, I. (2015). History & Philology (Associated Regional Chronologies for the Ancient Near East and the Eastern Mediterranean 3). Turnhout: Brepols.
Saussure, F. (1995 [1916]). Cours de linguistique générale. Paris: Payot.
Sharlach, T. (2004). Provincial Taxation and the Ur III State. Leiden / Boston, MA: Brill Styx.
Steinkeller, P. (2013). Corvée Labor in Ur III Times. En S.J. Garfinkle & M. Molina (Eds.). From the 21st Century B.C. to the 21st Century A.D. Proceedings of the International Conference on Sumerian Studies Held in Madrid 22-24 July 2010.: (pp. 347-424). Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns.
Tilley, C. (1994). A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths and Monuments. Oxford / Providence: Berg.
Tilley, C. (2006). Objectification. En C. Tilley, W. Keane, S. Ku?chler, M. Rowlands & P. Spyer (Eds.). Handbook of Material Culture (pp. 60-73). London: Sage Publications Ltd.
Tsouparopoulou, C. (2015). Spreading the Royal Word: The (Im)Materiality of Communication in Early Mesopotamia. En S. Enderwitz & R. Sauer (Eds.). Communication and Materiality in Pre-Modern Societies (Materiale Textkulturen 8) (pp. 7-23). Berlin / New York: Walter de Gruyter
Tsouparopoulou, C. (2016). Deconstructing Textuality, Reconstructing Materiality. En T. Balke & C. Tsouparopoulou (Eds.). Materiality of Writing in Early Mesopotamia, editado por (Materiale Textkulturen 13) (pp. 257-275). Berlin / New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Vaquer, J.M. (2012). Apuntes para una semiótica de la materialidad. Comechingonia, 16(1), 13-29.
Vaquer, J.M. (2014). El Tiempo de los Ancestros. Temporalidad, Ideología Semiótica y Poder en Cruz Vinto (Norte de Lípez, Bolivia) durante el Periodo de Desarrollos Regionales Tardío (1200 – 1450 DC). Arqueología Sudamericana, 6(1/2), 57-86.
Veldhuis, N. (2011). Levels of Literacy. En K. Radner & E. Robson (Eds.). Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture (pp. 68-89). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Woolley, L. (1934). The Royal Cemetery. A report on the Predynastic and Sargonic Graves Excavated between 1926 y 1931 (Ur Excavations 2). London / Philadelphia: Trustees of the British Museum and of the Museum of University of Pennsylvania.
Woolley, L. (1974). The Building of the Third Dynasty (Ur Excavations 6). London / Philadelphia: Trustees of the British Museum and of the Museum of University of Pennsylvania.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Those authors who have publications with this Journalaccept the following terms:
a. Authors will retain their copyrights and guarantee the journal the right of first publication of their work, which will be simultaneously subject to the Creative Commons Attribution License (Licencia de reconocimiento de Creative Commons) that allows third parties to share the work as long as its author and his first publication in this journal.
b. Authors may adopt other non-exclusive licensing agreements for the distribution of the version of the published work (eg, deposit it in an institutional electronic file or publish it in a monographic volume) provided that the initial publication in this journal is indicated.
c. Authors are allowed and recommended to disseminate their work on the Internet (eg in institutional telematic archives or on their website) before and during the submission process, which can lead to interesting exchanges and increase citations of the published work. (See The Effect of Open Access - El efecto del acceso abierto)