An Elite Mortuary Complex at Umm el-Marra: Ancestor Veneration and the Emergence of Syrian Complex Society

乌姆马拉的精英太平间综合体：祖先崇拜和叙利亚复杂社会的出现

• 批准号: 0137513
• 负责人: Glenn Schwartz
• 金额: $ 8.99万
• 依托单位: Johns Hopkins University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2002
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2002-04-01 至 2006-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0137513&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Elite; Mortuary; Complex; Umm; el

Support from the National Science Foundation will allow Dr. Glenn Schwartz to conduct two seasons of excavation at Umm el-Marra, Syria, in order to explore a "royal" mortuary complex dating to the period of Syria's first urban civilization. Previous excavation and survey work based at Umm el-Marra, located east of Aleppo in northern Syria, has revealed that the site was the predominant urban center of the Jabbul plain throughout the Bronze Age, ca. 2600-1200 BC. In the 2000 excavation season, an intact elaborate tomb dating to the earliest urban era was discovered in the site center. While an upper layer consisting of two young women, each with a baby, yielded numerous lavish ornaments of gold, lapis lazuli, and silver, the two layers of males underneath contained only modest amounts of burial goods. Such gender differentiation in grave wealth might be interpreted as evidence of high-ranking women accompanied by sacrificed lower-ranking males.Architectural evidence indicates that the Umm el-Marra tomb was a centrally-located, freestanding mausoleum, part of a larger complex on the site acropolis that may have been an elite funerary installation. In summer 2002 and 2003, Schwartz plans to conduct two excavation seasons in order to investigate this complex. An area of 640 square meters will be excavated in the acropolis center in order to expose as much as possible of the hypothesized mortuary complex and to determine if earlier phases of the feature are to be found underneath it. This research promises to yield a number of important results. The study of early urbanism in Syria and Mesopotamia has thus far concentrated on economic and environmental factors. Excavation of an elite mortuary complex will allow for the consideration of the role of ritual, religion, and ideology. An hypothesis proposing that the Syrian elites legitimized their authority through veneration of elite ancestors will be tested. Additional data on status and gender hierarchies will also be obtained and further scrutinized using artifact and skeletal analyses.The complex can be expected to reveal important new information on the dominant elites in early urban Syria, the bases of their power, and the gender-related dimensions of such power. A large sample of elite data, complementing non-elite results from other parts of the site, would allow for a holistic view of an early Syrian urban center.

在国家科学基金会的支持下，Glenn Schwartz博士将在叙利亚的Umm el-Marra进行两个季节的挖掘，以探索叙利亚第一个城市文明时期的“皇家”停尸房。 之前在位于叙利亚北方阿勒颇以东的乌姆马拉进行的挖掘和调查工作显示，该遗址是整个青铜时代Jabbul平原的主要城市中心。公元前2600-1200年。 在2000年的挖掘季节，在遗址中心发现了一座可以追溯到最早的城市时代的完整的精心制作的坟墓。 上层由两个年轻的女人组成，每个女人都有一个婴儿，产生了大量的黄金，天青石和银的奢侈装饰品，下面的两层男性只包含少量的陪葬品。 坟墓财富的这种性别差异可能被解释为高级女性伴随着牺牲的低级男性的证据。建筑证据表明，乌姆埃尔-马拉坟墓是一个位于中心的独立陵墓，是卫城上一个更大的建筑群的一部分，可能是精英的葬礼装置。 在2002年和2003年夏天，施瓦茨计划进行两个挖掘季节，以调查这个复杂的。 为了尽可能多地暴露假设的太平间建筑群，并确定是否在其下面发现了早期的特征，将在卫城中心挖掘640平方米的区域，这项研究有望产生一些重要的结果。 迄今为止，对叙利亚和美索不达米亚早期城市化的研究主要集中在经济和环境因素上。 对一个精英墓葬群的挖掘将使我们考虑到仪式、宗教和意识形态的作用。一个假设提出，叙利亚精英通过崇拜精英祖先合法化他们的权威将被测试。 通过人工制品和骨骼分析，还将获得更多关于地位和性别等级的数据，并对其进行进一步审查。预计该建筑群将揭示有关叙利亚早期城市中占主导地位的精英的重要新信息，他们的权力基础，以及这种权力与性别有关的方面。大量的精英数据样本，补充了遗址其他部分的非精英结果，将使人们能够全面了解早期叙利亚城市中心。