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

在国家科学基金会的支持下，格伦·施瓦茨博士将在叙利亚乌姆马拉赫进行两个季节的挖掘，以探索一座可追溯到叙利亚第一个城市文明时期的“皇家”太平间建筑群。此前在叙利亚北部阿勒颇以东的乌姆马拉进行的挖掘和调查工作表明，在整个青铜时代(约公元前2600-1200年)，该遗址是贾布尔平原的主要城市中心。在2000年的发掘季节，在遗址中心发现了一座完整的精心制作的坟墓，可以追溯到最早的城市时代。上层由两名年轻女子组成，每人带着一个孩子，产生了许多奢华的黄金、青金石和银饰品，而下面的两层男性只有少量的墓葬物品。墓地财富中的这种性别差异可能被解释为高级别女性伴随着牺牲的低级别男性的证据。建筑证据表明，乌姆马拉墓是一个位于中心位置的独立陵墓，是卫城遗址上一个更大的建筑群的一部分，可能是一个精英葬礼设施。施瓦茨计划在2002年和2003年夏天进行两个挖掘季节，以调查这个建筑群。卫城中心将挖掘640平方米的面积，以尽可能多地暴露假想的太平间建筑群，并确定是否在其下方发现早期特征。这项研究有望产生许多重要的结果。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。挖掘精英殡仪馆建筑群将允许考虑仪式、宗教和意识形态的作用。一种假设，即叙利亚精英通过崇拜精英祖先来使他们的权威合法化，这一假设将得到检验。还将获得关于地位和性别等级的更多数据，并使用人工制品和骨架分析进一步仔细审查。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、他们的权力基础以及这种权力的性别相关层面的重要新信息。大量的精英数据样本，与该网站其他部分的非精英数据结果相辅相成，将使人们能够全面了解叙利亚早期的城市中心。

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.