Product Description

What can the present tell us about the past? From 1968 to 1990, Edward Ochsenschlager conducted ethnoarchaeological fieldwork near a mound called al-Hiba, in the marshes of southern Iraq. In examining the material culture of three tribes—their use of mud, reed, wood, and bitumen, and their husbandry of cattle, water buffalo, and sheep—he chronicles what is now a lost way of life. He helps us understand ancient manufacturing processes, an artifact's significance and the skill of those who create and use it, and the substantial moral authority wielded by village craftspeople. He reveals the complexities involved in the process of change, both natural and enforced.

Al-Hiba contains the remains of Sumerian people who lived in the marshes more than 5,000 years ago in a similar ecological setting, using similar material resources. The archaeological evidence provides insights into everyday life in antiquity. Ochsenschlager enhances the comparisons of past and present by extensive illustrations from his fieldwork and also from the University Museum's rare archival photographs taken in the late nineteenth century by John Henry Haynes. This was long before Saddam Hussein drove one of the tribes from the marshes, forced the Bedouin to live elsewhere, and irrevocably changed the lives of those who tried to stay.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1066011 in Books
• Published on: 2004-10-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 264 pages

About the Author
Edward L. Ochsenschlager is Professor Emeritus at Brooklyn College and director of excavations at Thmuis and Taposiris Magna in Egypt; and Sirmium in Yugoslavia; assistant director at al-Hiba in Iraq; and Shibam, Yemen.

Customer Reviews

Archaeology's Finds Illuminated by Anthropology
The title is somewhat misleading. The Garden of Eden is not the subject. The author is interested in studying presentday village life near Tell el Hiba (ancient Sumerian Lagash) from an anthropological aspect to gather insights about objects found in that ancient location. For example, archaeologists excavated at Lagash pottery that was baked (fired) and unbaked (unfired). They were "mystified" over the creation and obvious usage of unfired pottery. Upon visiting the local Arabs, the author discovered that they too utilized baked and unbaked pottery and by questioning the Arabs over this phenomenon they learned "why" such a custom existed. So a modern anthropological investigation illuminated some of the ancient customs of Lagash.
To repeat: The Garden of Eden motif is not the subject, the employment of Anthropological methods to explain the ancient past at Lagash is the author's main intent.

present informs the past
This is the region where "history began" as noted Sumerologist S. Kramer wrote. Ochenschlager's account of his time spent in the marshlands of southern Iraq is an important addition to scholarship of this remarkable landscape in that he clearly demonstrates the usefulness of undertaking ethnoarcheological research in order for the past to be informed by the present. As a result, I was incredibly grateful when Ochsenschlager agreed to write the foreword for my own book about the area: "Wetlands of Mass Destruction: Ancient Presage for Contemporary Ecocide in Southern Iraq" whose purpose is the reciprocal; i.e. how the present can be informed by the past.