Sumerian Kinship: The Systematics and Role of a Basic Social Institution in the Complex Society of Early Southern Mesopotamia

亲属关系是一种普遍的、基本的、可能是最古老的社会组织形式。然而，我们对古代苏美尔（公元前4 - 3千年，伊拉克南部）最早的分层城市社会是如何在这个基本层面上组织起来的知识仍然不令人满意。特别是，我们不知道这个“简单”的机构在城市、社会阶级和国家的出现中扮演了什么角色。本项目旨在填补这一空白，a）重建苏美尔人的亲属制度（经验方面）和B）澄清在早期历史上南方美索不达米亚的社会和政治组织的各个层面上，亲属关系所扮演的结构和功能角色为了实现这一目标，申请人使用了语言学-词典编纂学，历史学和人类学方法以及数字人文学的现代方法，收集，分析和综合早期楔形文字文本（公元前第三至第二个千年早期）的数据。加州大学伯克利分校的主持人Niek Veldhuis教授将支持申请人进行数字数据收集和苏美尔亲属术语的词汇分析。Benjamin Porter教授将为研究者提供关于苏美尔亲属制度的人类学分析和解释的咨询意见，项目成果将作为三篇文章在高级国际期刊上传播。他们将详细阐述苏美尔社会如何在亲属关系层面上运作，并有助于当代关于亲属关系在早期文明出现中的作用的辩论，从而将亚述学与人类学和社会历史联系起来。最后，该项目将允许申请人为他的奖学金和德国大学的小组研究项目进行准备工作。

Kinship is a universal, fundamental and probably the oldest form of social organisation. However, our knowledge of how the earliest stratified urban society of ancient Sumer (4th–3rd millennia BCE southern Iraq) was organised on this basic level remains unsatisfactory. In particular, we do not know what role this "simple" institution played in the emergence of cities, social classes and the state.This project aims to fill in this gap and a) reconstruct the Sumerian kinship system (empirical aspect) and b) clarify the structural and functional role kinship fulfilled on various levels of social and political organisation in early historical southern Mesopotamia (theoretical aspect).To achieve this goal, the applicant uses a combination of philological-lexicographical, historical and anthropological methods as well as modern approaches of Digital Humanities in the collection, analysis and synthesis of data of early cuneiform texts (third – early second millennia BCE). The host at UC Berkeley, Professor Niek Veldhuis, will support the applicant in the digital data collection and the lexical analysis of Sumerian kinship terminology. Professor Benjamin Porter will advise the researcher on the anthropological analysis and interpretation of Sumerian kinship system.The project’s outcome will be disseminated as three articles in high-ranking international journals. They will elaborate on how Sumerian society operated on kinship level and contribute to contemporary debates on the role of kinship in the emergence of early civilizations thus bridging Assyriology with Anthropology and Social History. Finally, the project will allow the applicant to carry out preparatory work for his habilitation and a group research project at a German university.