States of Clay: Integrated Scientific Approaches to Clay Bureaucratic Objects from Early Mesopotamia, 3700-2700 BCE

世界上第一个官僚记录系统是在公元前3700-2700年由古代美索不达米亚(伊拉克和叙利亚东北部)的社会发展起来的。在最早的城市和国家发展的背景下，精英群体使用复杂的记录方法来控制许多商品的生产、储存和再分配，包括土地、农作物、动物、人和其他资源。对于考古学家和历史学家来说，幸运的是，这些早期官僚使用的物理媒介是粘土，他们将其模拟为三种主要形式：(1)用于计数的代币，(2)印有印记的印记，用于保护罐子、篮子和储藏室门等储存设施，以及(3)印有印记、数字符号和象形文字的所谓原始楔形文字风格的碑。这种用粘土计数、封存和书写的综合系统是如此成功，以至于它作为美索不达米亚和古代近东邻近地区的官僚框架持续了3000多年。在粘土之国项目中，我们首次提议开发和应用一种综合的科学方法论到粘土官僚物品的全部范围，或CBO，以最大限度地发挥它们的解释潜力，以了解美索不达米亚早期的城市和州一级的社会。我们的重点是公元前3700-2700年的千年，当时主要的遗址，如乌鲁克(经常被称为“世界第一城”)、乌尔、杰姆德特纳斯尔、法拉、布拉克、尼尼微和许多其他地点在美索不达米亚和邻近地区的区域间接触网络中崛起。虽然所有这些中心都以各种方式使用社区组织来管理其资源，但每个中心都在空间和时间上形成了不同的社区组织使用模式。在这个项目中，我们打算逐个地区地阐述这些粘土使用的模式，跨越一千年的城市兴衰。在此过程中，我们将解决主要的社会问题，包括(1)性别在使用CBO方面的重要性，考虑到新的证据表明女性在古代官僚机构中发挥重要作用，(2)在美索不达米亚的各个城市中选择和使用粘土扮演特定角色，询问关于CBO在当代住区内和之间流动的证据，以及(3)CBO与有关其使用的背景证据的关联，包括在家庭内和在寺庙和宫殿等较高地位的背景下。为了解决这些问题，我们将应用一种高度创新的方法，通过与地理信息系统相关的数据库和解释性网络分析来综合，这将最大限度地发挥各种科学方法对CBO的综合潜力。我们建议研究总共6500个CBO，主要收藏在柏林的Vorderasiatisches博物馆以及德国、伊拉克、荷兰和英国的其他博物馆藏品中。我们的方法将包括：(1)记录CBO的属性，包括考古背景、印章印记、指纹、文字内容和功能证据；(2)将高分辨率成像应用于CBO，以重建细节，如指纹(年龄和性别指标)和残缺的印章印记；(3)对CBO粘土进行一系列考古测量分析，包括对选定CBO的微小粘土碎片进行便携式X射线荧光和破坏性分析，以及对粘土中微型动物和微生物的微观分析，以建立一个逐个城市、逐个地区的粘土参考库；(4)通过地理信息系统数据库使用网络分析，在研究地点和区域的空间和时间模式上生成和解释不同的和变化的社区组织使用模式，处理上一段所述的社会问题。最后，该项目的成果和解释将作为开放获取研究资源和德国数字图书馆主办的在线展览公开分享。

The world's first system of bureaucratic recording was developed during 3700-2700 BCE by the societies of ancient Mesopotamia (Iraq and NE Syria). In the context of the development of the earliest cities and states, elite groups used sophisticated recording methods to control the production, storage and redistribution of many commodities, including land, crops, animals, people and other resources. Fortunately for the archaeologist and historian, the physical medium employed by these early bureaucrats was clay, which they modelled into three major forms: (1) tokens used in counting, (2) sealings bearing seal impressions, used to secure storage facilities such as pots, baskets and storeroom doors, and (3) tablets bearing seal impressions, number signs and pictographic signs in the so-called proto-cuneiform style. This integrated system of counting, sealing, and writing with clay was so successful that it endured for more than 3000 years as the bureaucratic framework across Mesopotamia and adjacent regions of the ancient Near East. In the States of Clay project, we propose for the first time to develop and apply an integrated scientific methodology to the full spectrum of clay bureaucratic objects, or CBOs, to maximise their interpretive potential for understanding early urban and state level societies of Mesopotamia. Our focus is on the millennium 3700-2700 BCE, when major sites such as Uruk (often cited as 'the world's first city'), Ur, Jemdet Nasr, Fara, Brak, Nineveh and many others rose to prominence within networks of interregional engagement across Mesopotamia and adjacent regions. While all these centres used CBOs to administer their resources in a range of ways, they each developed divergent patterns of CBO usage through space and time. In this project we propose to articulate these patterns of clay use across a thousand years of urban rise and fall, region by region. In so doing we will address major societal issues, including (1) the significance of gender in use of CBOs, considering new evidence for a major role for females within ancient bureaucracy, (2) the choice and use of clays for specific roles city by city across Mesopotamia, interrogating evidence for mobility of CBOs within and between contemporary settlements, and (3) the associations of CBOs with contextual evidence relating to their use, including within domestic households and within higher status contexts such as temples and palaces. To address these issues, we will apply a highly innovative methodology, synthesised through a GIS-related database and interpretive Network Analysis, which will maximise the combined potential of a range of scientific approaches to CBOs. We propose to study a total of 6500 CBOs housed principally in the Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin and in other museum collections in Germany, Iraq, Holland and the UK. Our methods will comprise: (1) recording of CBO attributes, including archaeological context, seal impression iconography, fingerprints, textual content, and evidence for function; (2) application of high-resolution imaging to CBOs for reconstruction of details such as fingerprints (indicators of age and sex) and fragmentary seal impressions; (3) a range of archaeometric analyses of CBO clays, including portable x-ray fluorescence and destructive analyses of tiny clay fragments from selected CBOs, plus microscopic analysis of micro-fauna and micro-flora within the clays to build up a reference library of clays city by city, region by region; (4) use of Network Analysis through a GIS-database to generate and interpret divergent and shifting patterns of usage of CBOs in spatial and chronological patterns across the study sites and regions, addressing the societal issues articulated in the preceding paragraph. Finally, the project's results and interpretations will be publicly shared both as Open Access research resources, and as an online exhibition hosted by the German Digital Library.