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02/28/2024 05:30 PM
ISAW Lecture Hall
The Politics of Flood and Flow in Early Dynastic Lagash:
New Evidence for the Environmental Collapse of a Mesopotamian City
Reed Goodman
This lecture will take place in person at ISAW. Registration is required; click through for the registration link. New research in southern Iraq at the ancient city of Lagash, modern Tell al-Hiba, indicates that systemic flooding contributed to the site's demise at the end of Sumer's Early Dynastic period, circa 2,350 BCE. We know from contemporary sources that the "Lagash-Umma Border Conflict," comprising the earliest record in both text and image of organized violence, involved a territorial dispute between the rival city-states of Lagash and Umma over water in the Gu'edena, the ecologically rich "edge" of the Lower Mesopotamian floodplain.
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