Marc Marin Webb, Ph.D. Candidate in Near Eastern Language & Civilization
This summer I became a summer intern at the Al-Hiba Publication Project. This project is aimed at publishing the legacy data of archaeological excavations at the site of Tell al-Hiba (ancient Sumerian city of Lagash, in southern Iraq). Tell al-Hiba was excavated between 1968 and 1990 by the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The final reports of these excavations were never published. Excavations at Tell al-Hiba resumed in 2019 by the Penn-based Lagash Archaeological Project (LAP), this time under the direction of Prof. Holly Pittman. Prof. Pittman is currently the keeper of the Al-Hiba Archive hosting the legacy data of the 1968-1990’s excavations.
This summer the Al-Hiba Publication Project focused on the analysis and publication of the results of the second season (1970-71), when a large complex of rooms and corridors covering an area of around a thousand square meters was exposed in the central part of the mound, known as ‘Area C’.
The goal of my internship was to examine the legacy data from Tell al-Hiba Area C. I was responsible for reevaluating the function and architecture of the Area C building complex, a unique dataset that can represent a substantial contribution to our understanding of urban craft production in the formative period of the first cities. This building dates to the Early Dynastic period (ca. 2800-2350 BCE), a time for which archaeological evidence is still scarce, especially in non-elite residential and industrial sectors in the cities. This research will hopefully allow to revise previous assumptions on the reasons behind the rapid development of sociopolitical and economical complexity that culminated, by the end of the Early Dynastic, in the emergence of the first territorial state, or Akkadian Empire.
This internship provided an ideal opportunity to collaboratively explore inter-disciplinary approaches to complex research questions applying the skills and knowledge acquired previously at Penn through archaeological fieldwork, coursework, and professional architectural practice. Although my background is in architecture, I have been involved for over a decade in archaeological and heritage preservation projects in the Middle East. This internship exposed me to research methodologies, subjects, and publications that I would otherwise not have obtained through my dissertation research. It was an opportunity to foster key skills for the analysis and publication of archaeological data, including data analysis, software applications (remote sensing and data visualization), foreign languages (Sumerian), and technical writing for dissemination purposes. Especially valuable for my career development was to explore how to blend my architectural knowledge into archaeology, drafting GIS and Autocad models to map the original locations of objects and constructive elements, reveal spatial distribution diagrams, and compare this building complex to other examples of contemporary Early Dynastic architecture.
Overall, this internship represented an excellent opportunity to expand my previous experience in archaeological excavations with archival research, as well as to apply the knowledge acquired at Penn through courses on archaeological methodologies, Early Mesopotamian urban theories, ancient Sumerian language, and art history. It provided an ideal framework for joining past and present archaeological and surface survey techniques to revise traditional models of Early Mesopotamian urbanism.
This is part of a series of posts by recipients of the 2023 GAPSA Summer Internship Funding Program that is coordinated by Penn Career Services. We’ve asked funding recipients to reflect on their summer experiences and talk about the industries in which they spent their summer. You can read the entire series here.
