Joan Oates
Biographic Data
| ID | 126322 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Joan Oates |
| GIVEN NAMES | Joan |
| FAMILY NAME | Oates |
| SIGNATURE | OATES J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cambridge |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 63 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 254 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 63 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1957 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Prehistory and the Rise of Cities in Mesopotamia and Iran
A Neolithic excavation in the Near East partakes of a hybrid character. . . . Taking account of the dual parameters of time/resources faced by any archaeologist, one cannot claim, from top to bottom of a tell, to both excavate an area sufficient to demonstrate the structures of a “village zone” (not limited to a single house), while at the same time imposing everywhere micro-stratigraphic rigour and the integral harvesting of transient details. .…
Mesopotamia
The early development of writing in Mesopotamia (Chapter 3.7) carries with it an early although limited literacy contemporary with several millennia of prehistory in other parts of the world. A fully developed writing system was in use in Mesopotamia by the middle of the 4th millennium bce , although its use was restricted to a limited, especially educated group. There is even a slightly later group of texts, obviously written for scribal amuseme…
Behnam Abu Al-Soof, BA, PhD (1931–2012)
Behnam Abu al-Soof was the senior member of the second generation of Iraqi archaeologists.He came from a Christian family in Mosul, where he was raised and educated.His father was a stone mason, and Behnam went to the local schools.He completed his college education in Baghdad and, under the guidance of David Oates, was admitted to Trinity College and the
The Spatial Dimensions of Early Mesopotamian Urbanism: The Tell Brak Suburban Survey, 2003–2006
The 2003–2006 Suburban Survey at Tell Brak investigated the spatial dimensions of the city's urban origins and evolution via intensive systematic surface survey. This report places this research in the broader context of research on Near Eastern urban origins and development, describes the survey and remote sensing methods and summarises the results, which challenge several long-held models for the timing and geographical origins of urbanism in t…
Thomas A. Holland. Excavations at Tell Es-Sweyhat, Syria, volume 2. Archaeology of the Bronze Age, Hellenistic, and Roman remains at an ancient town on the Euphrates River. Part 1: Text; Part 2: Figur…
Thomas A. Holland. Excavations at Tell Es-Sweyhat, Syria, volume 2. Archaeology of the Bronze Age, Hellenistic, and Roman remains at an ancient town on the Euphrates River. Part 1: Text; Part 2: Figures & Plates (Oriental Institute Publications 128). lx+620 pages, 335 figures, 340 plates, 3 maps, 108 tables. 2006. Chicago (IL): Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago; 1-885923-33-3 hardback 2 volumes £90. - Volume 83 Issue 319
Equids and an acrobat: Closure rituals at Tell Brak
Deposits of human and animal bodies in a monumental Akkadian building at Tell Brak (ancient Nagar) superficially suggest random killing and disposal. But here the authors produce evidence that these represent the deliberate sacrifice of valued creatures. Among the human remains were those argued to represent a specialist acrobat, while the donkey remains reflect the association of the building with the breeding of the much-debated onager-donkey h…
Professor Tariq Madhloom (1933–2007)
Excavations at Tell Brak 2006–2007
Excavations at Tell Brak in 2006–7 explored two key episodes in Mesopotamian political and social history, developing early social complexity in the fifth to fourth millennia BC and the shift from territorial state to early empire in the second millennium BC. Late Chalcolithic complexity is represented in Area TW on the main mound and at the outlying sub-mound of Tell Majnuna, while investigation of the Old Babylonian to Mitanni state-to-empire t…
Lisa Cooper. Early Urbanism on the Syrian Euphrates. xx+316 pages, 82 illustrations, 3 tables. 2006. London & New York: Routledge; 978-0-415-35351-9 hardback £60; 0-203-30672-4 e-book £60
Lisa Cooper. Early Urbanism on the Syrian Euphrates. xx+316 pages, 82 illustrations, 3 tables. 2006. London & New York: Routledge; 978-0-415-35351-9 hardback £60; 0-203-30672-4 e-book £60. - Volume 81 Issue 312
Early Mesopotamian urbanism: A New View From the North
For many years, the southern Mesopotamia of Ur and Uruk, ancient Sumer, has been seen as the origin centre of civilisation and cities: 'The urban implosion of late-fourth- and early-third-millennium Mesopotamia resulted in a massive population shift into large sites' said Nissen in 1988. 'These new city-states set the pattern for Mesopotamia as the heartland of cities' (Adams 1981; Yoffee 1998). And for Stone & Zimansky (2005) 'Remains of the wor…
Mitchell S. Rothman with Brian Peasnall. Tepe Gawra: The evolution of a small prehistoric center in northern Iraq (University Museum Monograph 112). xxii+494 pages, 135 figures, 31 tables, 84 plates. …
Mitchell S. Rothman with Brian Peasnall. Tepe Gawra: the evolution of a small prehistoric center in northern Iraq (University Museum Monograph 112). xxii+494 pages, 135 figures, 31 tables, 84 plates. 2002. Philadelphia (PA): University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology; 0-924171-89-8 hardback $75. - Volume 79 Issue 306
Babylonian
Uruk
Samarra’
Mesopotamia: Pottery
Ubaid, Tell al
Gawra, Tepe
Mesopotamia: Architecture
Choga Mami
Sawwan, Tell es
Mesopotamia
Mohammed Ali Mustafa 1910–1997
Mustafa was born in 1910 in Falluja on the Euphrates, where his family owned land, and his first-hand knowledge of the land and farming was of considerable value in his archaeological career.He gained a degree by correspondence from the American University in Beirut and entered the Iraqi Antiquities Service in the mid-1930s.With Fuad Safar and Taha Baqir, he was offered the opportunity to pursue a higher degree in Chicago, but he chose to stay in…
An Open Gate: Cities of the Fourth Millennium BC (Tell Brak 1997)
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Spinning or sailing: The boat models from Eridu
More on whether the prehistoric pottery vessels from Eridu, in Mesopotamia, are models of precocious boats, or as was argued in a recent ANTIQUITY, spinning bowls
A Prehistoric Communication Revolution
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The Structure and Dynamics of Dry-Farming States in Upper Mesopotamia [and Comments and Reply]
The Balance of Trade in Southwestern Asia in the Mid-Third Millennium B.C. [and Comments and Reply]
Trade frequently is considered an important and distinct subsystem that is integrated within a prehistoric cultural system. This paper rejects this interpretation and attempts a structural analysis of a specific trading network that existed in southwestern Asia in the mid-3d millennium B.C. in order to uncover the motivational factors and contradictions operative in trading relationships. An ideal dichotomy between sparsely populated, resource-ri…
Early Mesopotamian urbanism: A New View From the North
For many years, the southern Mesopotamia of Ur and Uruk, ancient Sumer, has been seen as the origin centre of civilisation and cities: 'The urban implosion of late-fourth- and early-third-millennium Mesopotamia resulted in a massive population shift into large sites' said Nissen in 1988. 'These new city-states set the pattern for Mesopotamia as the heartland of cities' (Adams 1981; Yoffee 1998). And for Stone & Zimansky (2005) 'Remains of the wor…
Trade and power in the fifth and fourth millennia BC: New evidence from northern Mesopotamia
The formation of the earliest known cities was accompanied by the foundation of colonies in Syria and Anatolia, established to secure raw materials lacking in the Mesopotamian homeland. The growth in Sumer of organization(s) capable of constructing and administering such distant colonies both reflected and contributed to increasing levels of social and economic complexity. The paper summarizes new evidence from Tell Brak and Tell Shaikh Hassan, w…
Seafaring merchants of Ur
Less than ten years have passed since the first discovery in Saudi Arabia of prehistoric pottery superficially identical with that known from the earliest farming settlements in Sumer 6-700 km to the north. Some 40 sites have now been identified in the Eastern Province. More recently comparable pottery has been found at sites in nearby Qatar and Bahrain. These discoveries have provoked much speculation about the nature of the contact between Sume…
Religion and ritual in sixth‐millennium B.C. Mesopotamia
Surprisingly little evidence that can be interpreted in terms of religious ritual or beliefs has survived from sixth‐millennium B.C. Mesopotamia. From the Hassuna phase there are virtually no relevant data, and only the cemeteries of Sawwan and Samarra reveal the existence of 'religious' beliefs among Samarran communities. Halaf settlements have yielded evidence of both ritual activity and buildings, but there is no persuasive evidence for either…
Early tokens and tablets in Mesopotamia: New information from Tell Abada and Tell Brak
Although it is generally agreed that small clay objects may have functioned in prehistory as accounting devices, there exists in Mesopotamia no sequence of evidence from their extensive 8th/7th millennium occurrence to the period in which writing developed, sometime in the 4th millennium. Indeed such objects are not common on 6th/5th millennium sites, a time when ‘potters’ marks’, another plausible precursor of writing, are found in both Mesopota…
Equids and an acrobat: Closure rituals at Tell Brak
Deposits of human and animal bodies in a monumental Akkadian building at Tell Brak (ancient Nagar) superficially suggest random killing and disposal. But here the authors produce evidence that these represent the deliberate sacrifice of valued creatures. Among the human remains were those argued to represent a specialist acrobat, while the donkey remains reflect the association of the building with the breeding of the much-debated onager-donkey h…
An Open Gate: Cities of the Fourth Millennium BC (Tell Brak 1997)
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The Background and Development of Early Farming Communities in Mesopotamia and the Zagros
Mesopotamia is an elongated basin running from Syria south-eastwards to the Persian Gulf. It is bordered on the south-west by the Arabian massif, on the north by the mountains of Anatolia, and on the east by the Zagros range. Agriculture in this basin is controlled by climate to an extent unknown in Europe, particularly by water supply, which may come from rainfall or from rivers that flow out of the mountains. The modern boundary of rainfall suf…
A Prehistoric Communication Revolution
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Prehistory in Northeastern Arabia
In 1968 Geoffrey Bibby, then carrying out an archaeological survey in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, was shown a collection of flint implements and 'about two hundred potsherds, of a thin, greenish-yellow ware decorated with geometric patterns in dark-brown paint' (1970, 376). They had been found by an American school teacher, Grace Burkholder, who, together with other amateur archaeologists from the headquarters of the Arabian American Oi…
Spinning or sailing: The boat models from Eridu
More on whether the prehistoric pottery vessels from Eridu, in Mesopotamia, are models of precocious boats, or as was argued in a recent ANTIQUITY, spinning bowls
Early hydraulic civilization in Egypt, a study in cultural ecology
From the Tablets of Sumer: Twenty-Five Firsts in Man's Recorded History . By Samuel Noah Kramer
Nimrud 1957: The Hellenistic Settlement
Previous reports on the current series of campaigns at Nimrud have from time to time referred to discoveries of post-Assyrian material, indicating an impoverished, and probably intermittent, occupation of the site during the last six centuries B.C. Analysis and identification of the finds has hitherto been impeded by two obstacles, the lack of dated comparative material from Northern Mesopotamia, and the difficulty of obtaining an undisturbed str…
Late Assyrian Pottery from Fort Shalmaneser
The pottery from Fort Shalmaneser is a homogeneous collection that spans the period from the fall of Nimrud and the sack of the fortress in 612 B.C. to the last squatter occupation of the ruined building, perhaps some fifty years later. The time interval cannot have been long, as there is absolutely no difference between the pottery that was in use at the time of the sack and that of the latest squatter settlement. This pottery is, of course, ide…
Ain Sinu: A Roman Frontier Post in Northern Iraq
The Roman occupation of Northern Iraq lasted less than a hundred and seventy years, from A.D. 197 to 364, and was little more than a turbulent episode in the long struggle between Rome on the west and Persia, under her successive Parthian and Sassanian rulers, on the east. The purely military character of this frontier extension is the first of the factors controlling the nature and distribution of its material remains; the second is the high deg…
Ur and Eridu, the Prehistory
Sir Leonard Woolley's excavations at Ur, and his meticulous publication of the results, made available to Mesopotamian archaeologists a vast body of information on a great many topics, and the subsequent investigations which his work inspired have in no way detracted from its importance. He pointed the way to the solution of many major problems, the existence of which had not hitherto been realized; and in particular, his account of the prehistor…
Assyrian Chronology, 631-612 B.C.
In recent years many different suggestions have been made in an effort to solve the admittedly difficult problem of the chronology of the last kings of Assyria. Any new proposal must take account of the following:1. Aššurbanipal (a) accession year, 669 B.C. year 1 begins with Nisannu 668.(b) last attested date: Nippur, 20.iii.381 (5 June 631 B.C).(c) according to the Harran inscription (AS VIII, 35-92), Aššurbanipal died in his 42nd year, i.e. af…
The Baked Clay Figurines from Tell es-Sawwan
The recent discoveries at the site of Tell es-Sawwan, south of Samarra, have completely revolutionized our ideas concerning early village communities in Mesopotamia. Earlier excavations at sites like Jarmo, Matarrah, and Hassuna had in no way led us to expect the elaborate and extraordinary ground stone industry or the early mud-brick architecture that was to emerge from this site. Moreover, the evidence for cereal cultivation reveals an agricult…
The Advent of the Era of Townships in Northern Mesopotamia. Abdul Jalil Jawad
Prehistoric Investigations near Mandali, Iraq
In the spring of 1966 a survey of archaeological sites was begun in the qadha of Mandali, Diyala Liwa, east of Baghdad, and between Mandali and Badra, Kut Liwa, along the foothills bordering the Iranian frontier (Fig. 1). The survey was undertaken initially with financial support from the American Philosophical Society and continued in 1967 with the assistance of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. It is hoped that ultimately all archa…
Choga Mami, 1967-68: A Preliminary Report
The first season of excavations at Choga Mami began on December 2nd, 1967, and continued until February 26th, 1968. The work was sponsored by the British School of Archaeology and supported by generous grants from the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, and the American Philosophical Society. The staff consisted of Mr. David Oates (Field Director and architect), Miss Elizabeth Dowman (conservator and registrar), Miss Carolyn Prater (archae…
A Radiocarbon Date from Choga Mami
There are two reasons for the regrettable shortage of radiocarbon dates for prehistoric Mesopotamia. One is that much of the relevant excavation took place before the development of such techniques; the second, the inconvenient fact that the prehistoric farmers of Mesopotamia were uncommonly tidy and swept clean their house floors, leaving for posterity little in the way of carbonized or any other remains. Excavations like that at Ras al ‘Amiya f…
The Background and Development of Early Farming Communities in Mesopotamia and the Zagros
Mesopotamia is an elongated basin running from Syria south-eastwards to the Persian Gulf. It is bordered on the south-west by the Arabian massif, on the north by the mountains of Anatolia, and on the east by the Zagros range. Agriculture in this basin is controlled by climate to an extent unknown in Europe, particularly by water supply, which may come from rainfall or from rivers that flow out of the mountains. The modern boundary of rainfall suf…
Late Assyrian Temple Furniture from Tell al Rimah
One of many distinguished contributions to Near Eastern archaeology made by Professor Sir Max Mallowan has been the investigation of Late Assyrian Nimrud. Thus it would seem fitting to dedicate to him this small note on a type of object previously unidentified in Assyria, from Late Assyrian Rimah.The Late Assyrian settlement at Tell al Rimah was of a provincial nature and in no way comparable with contemporary cities in the Tigris valley. That it…
Prehistory in Northeastern Arabia
In 1968 Geoffrey Bibby, then carrying out an archaeological survey in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, was shown a collection of flint implements and 'about two hundred potsherds, of a thin, greenish-yellow ware decorated with geometric patterns in dark-brown paint' (1970, 376). They had been found by an American school teacher, Grace Burkholder, who, together with other amateur archaeologists from the headquarters of the Arabian American Oi…
Seafaring merchants of Ur
Less than ten years have passed since the first discovery in Saudi Arabia of prehistoric pottery superficially identical with that known from the earliest farming settlements in Sumer 6-700 km to the north. Some 40 sites have now been identified in the Eastern Province. More recently comparable pottery has been found at sites in nearby Qatar and Bahrain. These discoveries have provoked much speculation about the nature of the contact between Sume…
Early hydraulic civilization in Egypt, a study in cultural ecology
Religion and ritual in sixth‐millennium B.C. Mesopotamia
Surprisingly little evidence that can be interpreted in terms of religious ritual or beliefs has survived from sixth‐millennium B.C. Mesopotamia. From the Hassuna phase there are virtually no relevant data, and only the cemeteries of Sawwan and Samarra reveal the existence of 'religious' beliefs among Samarran communities. Halaf settlements have yielded evidence of both ritual activity and buildings, but there is no persuasive evidence for either…
The Balance of Trade in Southwestern Asia in the Mid-Third Millennium B.C. [and Comments and Reply]
Trade frequently is considered an important and distinct subsystem that is integrated within a prehistoric cultural system. This paper rejects this interpretation and attempts a structural analysis of a specific trading network that existed in southwestern Asia in the mid-3d millennium B.C. in order to uncover the motivational factors and contradictions operative in trading relationships. An ideal dichotomy between sparsely populated, resource-ri…
Some Late Early Dynastic III Pottery from Tell Brak
It is with the greatest pleasure that I dedicate this brief article to Professor Seton Lloyd, an archaeologist of enormous distinction, and one whom I am pleased and honoured to call friend, whose work in Iraq still forms the basis for all prehistoric interpretation.Well-dated ceramic materials are rare, even in the archaeology of the historic periods in Mesopotamia. In particular the third millennium remains imprecisely documented, especially in…
The Archaeology of Mesopotamia from the Old Stone Age to the Persian Conquest
Tell Brak: Uruk Pottery from the 1984 Season
It has long been evident that by the late fourth millennium Brak was a large urban site, and that at this time its inhabitants were in close contact with southern Mesopotamia. Mallowan's excavation of the Eye Temple provides important evidence in this respect, although we now know that the Eye Temple itself could not have been Brak's major shrine (D. Oates, n.d.). Our own excavations have produced large quantities of Late Uruk pottery, in 1978 in…
Early tokens and tablets in Mesopotamia: New information from Tell Abada and Tell Brak
Although it is generally agreed that small clay objects may have functioned in prehistory as accounting devices, there exists in Mesopotamia no sequence of evidence from their extensive 8th/7th millennium occurrence to the period in which writing developed, sometime in the 4th millennium. Indeed such objects are not common on 6th/5th millennium sites, a time when ‘potters’ marks’, another plausible precursor of writing, are found in both Mesopota…
A Note on 'Ubaid and Mitanni Pottery from Tell Brak
The purpose of this short note is two-fold. First, to present the very unexpected evidence for Hajji Muhammad pottery at Tell Brak, an occurrence of some considerable interest to Mesopotamian prehistorians. Second, to publish three vessels from the Mitanni palace and a unique example of transcaucasian type of sufficient interest in themselves to merit their preliminary publication, however brief. A final report on the Mitanni buildings and their …
An Urartian Stamp Cylinder from North-eastern Syria
Akkadian Buildings at Tell Brak
Our work at Tell Brak in 1987 and 1988 included investigations in all three periods of major interest on the site, the fourth, third and second millennia B.C., but this brief article is not intended as the regular biennial report on all our discoveries, for two reasons. There is unusual pressure of space in this volume of Iraq, and we have also called a temporary halt to excavation in 1989 in order to prepare Volume I of a series of final reports…
History (45 works) · Archaeology (42 works) · Ancient Near East History (34 works) · Geography (33 works) · Ancient history (28 works) · Ancient Egypt and Archaeology (27 works) · Archaeology and Historical Studies (24 works) · Mesopotamia (17 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (15 works) · Eurasian Exchange Networks (15 works)