Children in the Ancient (and Present-day) Near East
The archaeological record and the cuneiform literature provide us with compelling information to assess how children lived 3000 years ago. This should open our eyes to current real
Animal Dung and Energy — A View from Mesopotamia
Long before coal or oil, fire depended on whatever you could gather. In the ancient Near East, animal dung was essential fuel. What cultural, political, and legal rules governed it
Fish Sauces – The Food that Made Rome Great
January 2021 | Vol. 9.1 By Benedict Lowe Recent research has done much to stress the importance of fish in the ancient Roman diet. But there were many ways to consume fish. The mos
The Sound and the Fury: The Passion for Chariot Racing in Imperial Rome
The Circus Maximus in Rome could have held as many as 250,000 spectators. The attraction of an edge-of-your-seat, high-speed spectacle is familiar, but the experience was much more
Sunlight and Shade in the First Cities – A Sensory Archaeology of Early Iraq
There are two periods of about five days each, in the Spring and in the Autumn, when the weather in southern Iraq is quite nice. Otherwise it’s cold, windy and rainy, or roasting
Trash and Toilets in Mesopotamia: Sanitation and Early Urbanism
For much of the world sanitary disposal of human and other waste remains a critical issue. What do the first cities of ancient Mesopotamia have something to teach us about this ver