Time.news – An outdoor dining area with benches, an oven, storage containers, ancient food remains and even a 5,000-year-old refrigerator, referred to as a “zeer”Arabic term that identifies the technique of “jar within a jar” for storing drinks and food. This is what archaeologists have discoveredUniversity of Pisa engaged, together with colleagues from the University of Pennsylvania, in the excavations of the Lagash Archaeological Project che, a fine 2022, they unearthed what could be uin the tavern of 2,700 BC
A treasure, the one found by the team led by Holly Pittman of the University of Pennsylvania and by Sara Pizzimenti of the Department of Civilization and Forms of Knowledge of the University of Pisa, which was hidden just 50 cm from the surface and which today gives us a insight into what was to be the daily life of one of the most important city-states of Mesopotamia: Tell al-Hiba (ancient Lagash).
“The discovery made in Lagash is able to shed new light on the study of nutrition and cuisine of ancient Mesopotamia, until now mainly known and studied in depth through texts, which however do not cover the most ancient periods of Sumer – explains Sara Pizzimenti, associate professor of Archeology and Art History of the Ancient Near East of UniPi – Inside what was a public place for the production, distribution and consumption of meals, which probably had to take place inside the large courtyard with banquettes, are in fact, around a hundred bowls containing food remains were found, together with devices for the conservation of drinks and food.The ‘tavern’ of Lagash is consequently an important element in reconstructing knowledge in the field of food production and distribution, economics at the basis of the first complex societies in human history”.
Tell al-Hiba is located 24 km east of the city of Shatra, in Dhi Qar governorate in southern Iraq. Covering more than 400 hectares, Lagash is one of the oldest and largest city-states in southern Mesopotamia and the capital of the state of the same name. Occupied from the fifth millennium BC and largely abandoned around 2,300 BC, it was one of the most important commercial hubs in the region, home to an intense and varied artisan production, and with immediate access to agricultural land.
Until the Lagash Archaeological Project which started in 2019, excavations had always focused on religious architecture and understanding the elites. With the new project, however, the attention of archaeologists has focused on the non-elite areas of the city, so as to be able to better understand what life was like in the ancient Mesopotamian city.
The discovery of the tavern therefore sheds new light on the daily life of a popular Sumerian neighborhood probably linked to the artisanal activities of ceramic production. 135 years of archaeological excavations – The first archaeological explorations at Tell al-Hiba date back to the end of the 19th century (1887), but it was only in 1953, thanks to the discovery of an inscription by the Danish Assyriologist Thorkild Jacobnsen and Fuad Safar , that it has been possible to identify the site with ancient Lagash.