Indholdsfortegnelse for November/December 2022 i ARCHAEOLOGY

One of the fundamental questions archaeologists ask about ancient cultures is how people governed themselves. In this issue, you’ll find stories that explore many different ways in which people have ruled and been ruled. The city dwellers of the Indus civilization, a sophisticated culture that flourished in what is now India and Pakistan from about 2600 to 1900 B.C., seem not to have followed the dictates of kings or pharaohs. Instead, they enjoyed a somewhat equitable society. In about 2350 B.C., their Mesopotamian trading partners to the west were all brought under the rule of the Akkadian king Sargon the Great, who used the earliest professional army to forge the world’s first empire. His daughter, the priestess Enheduanna, is history’s first known author. She wrote sacred songs that helped bind…

ASSYRIAN SOFT POWER Starting from a base in Mesopotamia, the Neo-Assyrian Empire (883–609 B.C.) expanded to control territory that stretched from western Iran to the Mediterranean and from Anatolia to Egypt. In the course of establishing the largest empire in the history of the world up to that point, the Assyrians needed to find ways to bring a diverse range of peoples into their orbit. At times, this involved such heavy-handed tactics as forcibly moving large groups to the Assyrian heartland, where they would be indoctrinated into the Assyrian worldview. But the Assyrians also employed more subtle approaches, as illustrated by a recently discovered underground complex in the village of Başbük in southeastern Turkey. The site came to the attention of authorities after it was targeted by looters, who had…

EVERYWHERE PEACE, every-where serenity, and a marvelous freedom from the tumult of the world,” wrote the twelfth-century saint Aelred, describing Rievaulx Abbey in the English county of North Yorkshire. Aelred had been born in 1110 in Hexham, Northumbria, and educated by Benedictine monks at the cathedral school at Durham, one of England’s leading centers of learning. He served for a decade at the court of David I of Scotland (r. 1124–1153), where he trained in the diplomatic arts and attained the position of master of the household. At the age of 24, Aelred left the royal court to enter Rievaulx, which had been founded a few years before by 10 monks sent from France by Bernard of Clairvaux, a leading reformer in the Cistercian movement—a form of monasticism that branched…

The name of the world’s first known author appears on the back of a 4,000-year-old white alabaster disk that resembles the moon. Uncovered in a temple in the ancient Sumerian city of Ur by archaeologist Leonard Woolley in 1927, the disk is decorated with a relief depicting four figures facing an altar. They appear to be participating in a sacred rite. One of the figures—a woman who wears a head-dress and a layered gown—is larger than the others and seems to be in charge of the proceedings. An inscription identifies her as Enheduanna, priestess of the moon god Nanna, servant of the goddess Inanna, and daughter of Sargon, king of the world. When the disk was unearthed, Assyriologists, scholars who specialize in ancient Mesopotamia, were already familiar with the historical…

For the residents of ancient Maresha in southern Israel, animal bones that may seem like useless leftovers destined for the trash heap were used to play games and as a way to contact the gods. Archaeologists working in a series of man-made caves in the lower part of this once-bustling Hellenistic metropolis have uncovered more than 600 astragali, or knucklebones. Caprids such as sheep and goats, as well as cows and pigs, have knucklebones that are six-sided and symmetrical, and thus were frequently used as dice throughout much of antiquity. Although astragali are commonly found at sites across the world, such a large collection is otherwise unknown in sites dating to the Hellenistic period in the Levant. As the knucklebones were used for entertainment, gaming, and religious purposes, explains archaeologist…

Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) members and readers of this magazine are well aware of the various risks to which archaeological sites are exposed, be it in conflict zones abroad, from commercial development here at home, or by lawsuits intended to remove the protections granted to national monuments like Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante. However, you may not know as much about the threats to archaeologists themselves and the risks so many of them have taken to safeguard the sites and artifacts under their care. Extremist groups have used looted antiquities to fund their activities and weapons. Archaeologists who stand in their way, such as Khaled al-Assad, the former director of the Palmyra Museum in Syria, and Abdulaziz al-Jobouri, head of antiquities security in the province of Nineveh, Iraq, have…

Malaysia’s Lembah Bujang, or Bujang Valley, is one of the earliest archaeologically documented crossroads for trade goods and religious ideas in Southeast Asia. The valley, which is located south of Mount Jerai in Kedah State near the coast of the Strait of Malacca, has been the subject of scholarly interest since the early nineteenth century. At that time, colonial officials with the East India Company uncovered evidence of a civilization bearing the influence of the Indian subcontinent, including traces of religious buildings and objects with motifs associated with Hinduism and Buddhism. Multiple excavations have since unearthed dozens of archaeological sites that suggest the region was home to a port and trade center where merchants from around Southeast Asia and beyond, including what is now the Arabian Peninsula, India, the Malay…

Alongside manual labor, one of the requirements of Cistercian monasticism was that the monks be silent during meals—they went so far as to all sit on the same side of the table to discourage conversation. How then to get someone to pass the bread? “If a monk needed to communicate while dining, he used sign language,” says medievalist Kirk Ambrose of the University of Colorado. There are accounts of tenth-century monastic sign language, but the earliest sign lists date to the eleventh century, including one in Latin describing 127 signs. “Early lists are comprised of nouns, and the vocabulary for food is especially rich,” says Ambrose. From these lists, scholars have gained insights into what the monks were eating, including a large quantity of eels, for which the sign, according…

OVERNIGHT TEMPERATURES IN the fir forests of central Mexico hover just above freezing in January. It’s the ideal temperature for the enormous colonies of monarch butterflies that, in late August, begin their 3,000-mile migration south to this small mountainous region. They overwinter until March, when they begin the journey back to the north. This sliver of fir forest, first discovered by biologists in 1975, has a microclimate that draws the monarchs that spend their summer months in the vast swath of Canada and the United States east of the Rocky Mountains. Scientists estimate that by October, when all the butterflies have arrived, each acre occupied by a colony can hold up to 25 million monarchs. It’s thought that, even though monarch butterfly populations have dropped 84 percent in just the…

THE SHOW GOES ON The last page of the article “A Ticket to the World’s Fair” (July/August 2022) describes various surviving artifacts of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. There’s at least one more. Part of the Kansas exhibit was the “Panorama of North American Mammals,” which included taxidermy of mammals from various climates that had been collected and preserved by Lewis Lindsay Dyche of the University of Kansas. This exhibit was wildly popular, with long lines of people waiting to see it. After the exhibition closed, the animals were returned to Lawrence, Kansas. A museum was built on campus to house them—and they are still there. Jann Rudkin Los Gatos, CA AVIAN AVARS The gold bird head illustrated in “The Avars Advance” by Sara Toth Stub (September/October 2022) strikes me…

NEW JERSEY: Archaeologists surveying land newly acquired by Red Bank Battlefield Park found hundreds of Revolutionary War–era artifacts, including a rare 1776 King George III gold guinea, as well as a mass grave containing 12 Hessian soldiers. In 1777, a contingent of the German mercenaries fighting for the British attacked Fort Mercer. Although vastly outnumbered, the revolutionaries repelled their assailants and won the day. The valuable gold coin was likely hidden in a boot or sewn into the clothing of one of the deceased. ENGLAND: Some medieval monks were riddled with parasitic worms. Analysis of soil collected near pelvic remains in graves in Cambridge dating from the 12th to 15th century suggests that Franciscan friars were almost twice as likely to suffer from intestinal parasites as was the general population. This…

Not all European Cistercian abbeys were the size of Rievaulx and Fountains. What was surely one of the smallest was located on the 1.5-square-mile Norwegian island of Hovedøya, off Oslo. There, on May 18, 1147, a dozen monks and a few lay brothers from Kirkstead Abbey in Lincolnshire founded a monastery, building it around an already existing church, unlike Rievaulx or Fountains, which were established on previously unoccupied land. Like those in the English abbeys, the Hovedøya monks were required to be self-suffcient. “Self-suffciency was all-important to the Cistercians, and new monasteries were raised in areas where there was agriculture and access to fishing,” says archaeologist Marianne Vedeler of the University of Oslo’s Museum of Cultural History, who is part of a project that studies urban food culture in medieval…

RISING FROM THE FLOODPLAINS of Pakistan’s Sindh Province is a 750-acre testament to Bronze Age labor and ingenuity. This almost impossibly orderly city, now known as Mohenjo-Daro, is set on mudbrick platforms that were built up over the years to mitigate the danger posed by floods from the Indus River. It has a grid plan, covered sewers, and many tidy homes with shared walls. The city’s largely undecorated buildings are set at precise right angles. The order of Mohenjo-Daro, which may have been home to 40,000 or more people, stands up to close scrutiny. Nearly every one of the millions of fired clay bricks used to build the city comes in one of two sizes and has exactly the same proportions: one unit high, two units wide, and four units…

Treeless, almost uninhabited, buffeted by winds and ocean swells, the 100 islands and coral reefs known as the Houtman Abrolhos, off Australia’s west coast, is a hazard that sailors have tried to avoid for four centuries. The islands teem with sea lions, wallabies, lizards, and seabirds. Trawlers today ply the waters nearby to scoop up fish and lobster by the ton. Yet as scores of sea captains have learned the hard way, the archipelago’s coral reefs can rip the bottom off a wayward ship. Sitting as monuments to hubris, or at least carelessness, remains of a few of these wrecked vessels can still be seen shifting in the waves. Before dawn on June 4, 1629, with just over 300 people aboard, the Dutch merchant ship Batavia struck a reef near…