The Archaeology Lecture Series Presents: Augusta McMahon

Professor McMahon's lecture is titled, ""The Peri-Urban Revolution: City Edges in Ancient Mesopotamia." Their abstract reads:

The edges of ancient cities are rarely excavated, but peri-urban areas are vital for reconstruction of present and past urban economies and demography. This lecture will discuss the use of space in peri-urban areas of Mesopotamian cities, using case studies of Tell Brak, northeast Syria, and Nippur, south Iraq. Tell Brak was one of Mesopotamia’s earliest cities, and in the 4th millennium BCE, its loosely-defined edge was used for burials, rubbish discard, and crafting. Small scale workshops and flexible use of space suggest the importance of the urban edge as an economic ‘safety valve’, as this new experiment in group living developed. By contrast, Nippur in the 3rd - 1st millennia BCE was an established city, outlined by a series of city walls. However, its southern area remained dynamic, expanding and contracting with climate or political changes and absorbing internally displaced residents and immigrants. Echoing the flexible situation at Brak, burials, rubbish discard and aspects of the unregulated economy were located outside the city wall.