36: Interviews: Karrar Sabah on Eridu, Malath Feadha & Jaafar Jotheri on the geology of the Sumerian wetlands

Two interviews with three Iraqi academics!

I interviewed Karrar Sabah Al Ramahi, then a PhD student at Baghdad University, about his research on the city of Eridu! Furqan Salam helped with the translation.

We talk about its earliest settlement during the Ubaid period, its prominence as a temple town, the building projects of the kings of Ur, and the reason for its primacy in the Sumerian King List.

Thanks to Karrar & Furqan for the interview!

Then: I talk to Malath Feadha and Dr. Jaafar Jotheri, two Iraqi archaeologists studying ancient Mesopotamia at Al-Qadisiyah University, about the relationship between the early inhabitants of the alluvium (in southern Iraq) and the rivers and wetlands that shaped their landscape.

We talk about the history of irrigation, from a few Ubaid households digging small canals from gaps in the natural levees (in the 5000s BCE) to Sumerian city-states levying armies of manual laborers to incorporate the entire alluvium into a single irrigation network (in the 2000s).

We also talk about a recent paper* they coauthored, a geoarchaeological analysis of ancient human movement through the alluvial wetlands. Both boats and domestic herds of water buffalo stirred up the sediment on the river floor over time, leaving tracks still visible in the modern desert landscape. What can these tell us about daily life in early southern Mesopotamia?

Follow Malath and Grandchildren of the Sumerians on Twitter!

*Jaafar Jotheri, Michelle de Gruchy, Rola Almaliki, & Malath Feadha. "Remote Sensing the Archaeological Traces of Boat Movement in the Marshes of Southern Mesopotamia" Remote Sensing, 2019, 11, 2474.

See also: its sequel, coauthored by our guests (et al)! Jaafar Jotheri, Malath Feadha, Jassim Al-Janabi, & Raheem Alabdan (2022). "Landscape archaeology of Southern Mesopotamia: identifying features in the dried marshes." Sustainability, 2022 14 (17), 10961.

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Works cited