Sumer and the Sumerians

Harriet Crawford

Cambridge University Press, 1991; Pages: x, 182

Written with the nonspecialist in mind, Crawford's Sumer and the Sumerians presents the most up-to-date archaeological evidence about the life and times of the ancient civilization in Mesopotamia. Sumer is the earliest known civilization in the world, at least for now, predating Egypt's by several hundred years. Located in the southern part of Mesopotamia, Sumer began as a collection of small scattered farming villages around 5000 BCE and developed the first cities, complete with religious and secular administration. The civilization, helped in no small measure by its cuneiform system of writing (which, by the way survived until the 2nd century CE), weathered the conquest of the Akkadians under Sargon I (circa 2370 BCE, the Agade period), and then went on to see another age of prosperity under the Third Dynasty of Ur until it finally succumbed to the Amorites and the Babylonians.

Crawford is not interested in much of the historical and cultural detail except as targets for close examination based on archaeological evidence. The first two chapters cover in some detail the physical environment and the known history of the people who inhabited the area during the period of interest. With this background in mind, she then examines the different ways these people adapted to or changed their environment.

She examines the patterns of settlement (a preliminary picture since most of the recently started surveys have not been completed due to the Gulf War) and agriculture, the latter being especially important since the Sumerian civilization, like most ancient ones, was based on the availability of agricultural surplus and grew mostly out of the need to organize the labor necessary to secure the artificial irrigation and record transactions.

"Large-scale settlement was impossible in this inhospitable environment without the development of a social system sufficiently complex to provide the co-operation between groups of people which enabled them to produce an economic surplus through irrigation agriculture, which in turn allowed them to trade and to develop the specialist skills necessary for survival" (p. 7).

The next two chapters deal with town planning, public buildings (mostly temples), and private housing. Unfortunately, because much of the material, like metal, wood, and stone, had to be imported, the Sumerians scrupulously reused just about every implement they had, and as such very little evidence remains in the excavated ruins. Ironically, it is the burials that yield most information about the living, and there is an entire chapter that deals with these findings.

The final two chapters deal, in a somewhat cursory manner, with manufacture, trade, and the arts. Given the abundant evidence for long-distance trade and its apparent importance for the ancient economy (most of the inter-city wars were economic in nature and even the foreign conquests were mostly raids and "mining expeditions" to secure the necessary raw materials), it is somewhat surprising that Crawford pays less attention to it (e.g. as compared to architecture).

Each chapter is divided into subsections, each covering with a particular period of Sumer's history: Uruk (3800-3200 BCE), Jemdat Nasr (3200-2900 BCE), Early Dynastic (ED, further subdivided, 2900-2370 BCE), Agade (2370-2112 BCE), and the Third Dynasty of Ur (2112-2000 BCE). There is a wealth of detail, especially illustrations, architectural plans, and even some reproductions, that is invaluable in visualizing the culture of Sumer.

As the author mentions in the concluding chapter, the emphasis of the book is on description rather than explanation, and at that Sumer and the Sumerians clearly excels. However, it will not be of much use without frequent reference to some of the standard works that encompass history and culture in a more structured and explanatory way, like Samuel Noah Kramer does, for example, in his The Sumerians, or A. Leo Oppenheim does in his Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization. Still, Crawfrod's book is virtually indispensable for its accurate, though tentative, presentation of the current state of Sumerian archaeology.

December 13, 2001

@book{crawford-91:sumer,
  title     = {Sumer and the Sumerians},
  author    = {Harriet Crawford},
  year      = {1991},
  publisher = {Cambridge University Press},
  address   = {Cambridge},
  isbn      = {0-521-38850-3},
  note      = {Index; Pp. x, 182}
}