Affluent Suburbs or Disenfranchised Banlieue: The Urban Edge at Nippur, Iraq

Augusta McMahon, professor of Mesopotamian archaeology, ISAC, University of Chicago
The Sumner Memorial Lecture
Join Augusta McMahon, professor of Mesopotamian archaeology, as she examines the nature of occupation in the southern edge zone at Nippur. This southern edge was inhabited only during periods of the city’s maximum growth, particularly in the Ur III (late 3rd millennium BCE) and Kassite (late-2nd millennium BCE) periods. In each of these periods, the regional government of the time commissioned expansions of the religious institutions at Nippur, which may have caused both internal movements of city residents and immigration of new administrators and laborers. The new Nippur project aims to compare the use of the city’s southern edge zone in these two key periods. Previous excavations suggest that this area was occupied in the 2nd millennium BCE by suburban houses of the affluent. Was the situation the same in the earlier, 3rd millennium BCE, phase of expansion, or was this area a crowded banlieue of internally displaced poor residents and newly-arrived workers? Did past city growth mirror modern processes of urban expansion?
c. ISAC, 2023

[@braxtonmay391]

I love the lectures you have provided in this site. Please never stop!

[@Italianmoose0]

A fascinating talk, thank you!

[@tulittaify]

Employmwnt opportunity or job .. were such concepts even exist in the lives and minds of people two thousand somthing bc? Industrial era concepts to undresrand what was going on back then???? :(((

[@kaarlimakela3413]

Choose, cruelty or humanity.

[@jackwt7340]

Hawaii, New Zealand and Rapa Nui have 5,000 years of human history, as long as Iraq.🌴🐖