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