This module investigates the nature of the society of 3rd millennium southern Mesopotamia, the first urban society. It concerns the problem of providing a ‘holistic’ interpretation of many aspects of ‘Sumerian’ culture. It concerns the reconstruction of social and political organisation, economic activity, religious and ideological aspects of society. It concerns the relationships between the diverse and disparate elements of this early state and questions of the degree to which politically supreme elements within society were or were not able influence other elements and bind them in an overarching political and cultural ideology.
Issues of interpretation concern problems of understandings of the earliest written texts, reading a complex but fragmentary archaeological record, readings of early iconography and literature and the combining of such textual and archaeological sources.
The course therefore provides students with knowledge of primary examples of some of the key developments in human history, and with a view of how archaeology can be used to identify social, political, and economic developments. In addition, it is hoped that students will finish the course with a better understanding of complex societies, urbanism and the state as phenomena in their own right.