States of Clay: Integrated Scientific Approaches to Clay Bureaucratic Objects from Early Mesopotamia, 3700-2700 BCE

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Barbara Helwing
• Subject Area: Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 508270479

The world's first system of bureaucratic recording was developed during 3700-2700 BCE by the societies living in the earliest states of ancient Mesopotamia (Iraq and NE Syria). Elite groups used sophisticated recording methods to control the production, storage and redistribution of commodities. The physical medium employed by these early bureaucrats was clay modelled into three major forms: (1) tokens used in counting, (2) clay sealings used to secure storage facilities, and (3) tablets bearing seal impressions, number signs and pictographic signs in proto-cuneiform style. This integrated system of counting, sealing, and writing with clay endured for more than 3000 years as the bureaucratic framework across the ancient Near East.In the States of Clay project, we develop and apply an integrated scientific methodology to the full spectrum of clay bureaucratic objects, or CBOs, to address the functioning of early urban and state level societies of Mesopotamia. Our focus is on the millennium 3700-2700 BCE, when sites such as Uruk, Ur, Jemdet Nasr, Fara, Brak, Nineveh and others rose to prominence. All these centres used CBOs to administer their resources, but they each developed divergent patterns of CBO usage through space and time. We propose to articulate these patterns of clay use across a thousand years of urban rise and fall, addressing major societal issues, including (1) the significance of gender in use of CBOs and the role of females within ancient bureaucracy, (2) the choice and use of clays for specific roles city by city, interrogating evidence for mobility of CBOs within and between contemporary settlements, and (3) the associations of CBOs with contextual evidence relating to their use within domestic households and higher status contexts. We will apply a highly innovative methodology, synthesised through a GIS-related database and interpretive Network Analysis. We propose to study a total of 6500 CBOs housed principally in the Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin and in other museum collections in Germany, Iraq, Holland and the UK. Our methods will comprise: (1) recording of CBO attributes, including archaeological context, seal impression iconography, fingerprints, textual content, and evidence for function; (2) application of high-resolution imaging to CBOs for reconstruction of details such as fingerprints as indicators of age and sex, and of fragmentary seal impressions; (3) archaeometric analyses of CBO clays, including pXRF and minimally destructive analyses from selected CBOs, plus microscopic analysis of micro-fauna and -flora within the clays to build up a reference library of clays; (4) use of Network Analysis through a GIS-database to trace divergent and shifting patterns of usage of CBOs in time and space, addressing the societal issues articulated above. The project's results and interpretations will be shared as Open Access research resources, and as an online exhibition hosted by the German Digital Library.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: United Kingdom
• Partner Organisation: Arts and Humanities Research Council
• Co-Investigator: Dr. Helen Gries
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Dr. Roger Matthews; Dr. Amy Richardson