A 5,000-year-old fish restaurant: the details of the discovery at an archaeological site that promises many more

An international archaeological mission has discovered the remains of what is believed to be a 5,000-year-old restaurant or tavern in the ancient city of Lagash in southern Iraq.

The discovery of old dining hall, with a rudimentary refrigeration system, hundreds of crudely made clay bowls and the fossilized remains of an overcooked fishannounced at the end of January by a team led by the University of Pennsylvania, caused a sensation beyond the Iraqi borders.

It came against the backdrop of a resurgence of archeology in a country often referred to as the “cradle of civilization” but where archaeological exploration has been curbed by decades of conflict before and after the 2003 US invasion. These events they exposed the country’s wealth, sites and collections to the looting of tens of thousands of artifacts.

“The impacts of looting in the field of archeology have been very severeLaith Majid Hussein, director of the Iraqi State Council for Antiquities and Heritage, told The Associated Press. “Unfortunately, wars and periods of instability have greatly affected the situation in the country in general.”

With relative calm in recent years, excavations have resumed. At the same time, thousands of stolen items have been repatriatedoffering the hope of an archaeological renaissance.

“‘Improve’ is a good term to describe it, or ‘cure’ or ‘recover’,” said Jaafar Jotheri, professor of archeology at Al-Qadisiyah University, describing the current state of the field in his country.

Iraq is home to six UNESCO World Heritage Sites, including the ancient city of Babylon, the site of several ancient empires under rulers such as Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar.

In the years leading up to the 2003 US invasion, a limited number of international teams came to excavate sites in Iraq. During Saddam Hussein’s rule, Jotheri said, the foreign archaeologists who attended were under strict control by a distrustful government in Baghdad, limiting their contact with locals. He said there were few opportunities to transfer skills or technology to local archaeologists, meaning the international presence “brought no benefit to Iraq”.

The country’s ancient sites have faced “two waves of destruction”, Jotheri said, the first after the imposition of harsh international sanctions following Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait and desperate Iraqis’ found artifacts and looted as a means of income” and the second in 2003 after the American Invasion, when “everything fell apart”.

Amid the ensuing security vacuum and the rise of the Islamic State militant group, excavations were all but halted for nearly a decade in southern Iraq, while continuing in the more stable area of the north controlled by the Kurds. Ancient sites were looted and artifacts smuggled overseas.

The first international teams to return to southern Iraq arrived in 2014, but their numbers increased hesitantly thereafter.

The excavations in Lagashwhich were first excavated in 1968, were closed after 1990, and the site remained inactive until 2019.

Unlike many others, the site it was not plunderedlargely through the efforts of tribes living in the area, said Zaid Alrawi, an Iraqi archaeologist who is the project manager at the site.

Would-be looters who came to the area were chased away by “local villagers who basically consider these sites their property”, he said.

Previous excavations had uncovered a temple complex and the remains of institutional buildings. So when archaeologists returned in 2019, Alrawi said, they focused on areas that would provide clues to the lives of ordinary people. They started with what turned out to be a pottery workshop containing several kilns, with disposable figurines apparently made by bored workers and date pits from their shift snack.

Digging further into the area surrounding the workshop, a large room was found containing a fireplace used for cooking. The area also had benches to sit on and a refrigeration system consisting of layers of clay pots sunk into the ground with clay shards in between.

The site is thought to date to around 2700 BC, as beer drinking was widespread among the ancient Sumerians inhabiting Lagash at the time, many envisioned the space as some sort of ancient gastropub.

But Alrawi said he thought it was it was more likely a cafeteria to feed the workers of the nearby pottery workshop.

“I think it was a place to serve everyone who worked in the big pottery production next door, right next to where people work hard and where they had to have lunch,” he said. declared.

Alrawi, whose father was also an archaeologist, grew up visiting sites across the country. Today, he is happy to see “a lot of digging” coming back to Iraq.

“It is very good for the country and for archaeologists, for international universities and academia”said.

In medida that expanded the archaeological exploration, the international dollars fluyeron hacia the restoration of damaged heritage sites such as the mezquita al-Nouri in Mosul, and the Iraqi autoridades pressured to repatriate artefactos robados de pays tan cercanos como el Líbano y tan lejanos como los UNITED STATES.

Last month, the National Museum of Iraq began opening its doors to the public free of charge on Fridays, for the first time in recent history. Families wandered the corridors lined with Assyrian tablets and got to see up close the crown jewel of artifacts repatriated from Iraq: a small clay tablet dating back 3,500 years and containing a looted portion of the epic of Gilgamesh in an Iraqi museum 30 years ago. . ago and returned from the United States two years ago. The tablet is among 17,000 looted artifacts returned to Iraq by the United States.

Ebtisam Khalaf, a history teacher who was one of the visitors to the museum on his first day off, said: “It’s a great initiative because we are seeing things that we only heard about before.”

Before, he says, his students “could only see these antiquities in books. But now we can see these beautiful artifacts for real.”

(with information from AP)

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