Ancient Lagash

English summary: This volume collects the papers presented in a workshop held at the 10th ICAANE in Vienna in 2016. The ancient state of Lagash, with the three main sites of Tello (ancient Girsu), al-Hiba (ancient Lagash) and Tell Zurghul (ancient Nigin), was once a central and powerful political institution of Sumerian history, at least in the 3rd millennium BC. Excavated in the past, between the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, with the pioneering works by Ernest de...
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English summary: This volume collects the papers presented in a workshop held at the 10th ICAANE in Vienna in 2016. The ancient state of Lagash, with the three main sites of Tello (ancient Girsu), al-Hiba (ancient Lagash) and Tell Zurghul (ancient Nigin), was once a central and powerful political institution of Sumerian history, at least in the 3rd millennium BC. Excavated in the past, between the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, with the pioneering works by Ernest de Sarzec at Girsu and a few soundings by Robert Koldewey at the three sites, the area was then neglected for a long time until the Tell al-Hiba Expedition, a joint project of the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, conducted six seasons of excavations at al-Hiba between 1968 and 1990. After a very long break in excavations and research in the region of the ancient state of Lagash, the resumption of activities in the field since 2015 is opening up new trajectories in the archaeological, historical and epigraphic research, filling the gaps in our knowledge of the morphology of the sites and the surrounding area, the ancient landscape and environment and the material culture. The volume thus presents the state of the art of information on the archaeology of Girsu, Lagash and Nigin and, at the same time, ongoing results from recent excavations and archive research through combining old and new data. Further research has been conducted since the time of the workshop, but the papers collected here set out the main issues and the new questions that the current archaeological projects at the three sites are attempting to answer. German description: Der Staat von Lagash im heutigen Sudirak war im 3. Jahrtausend v. Chr. eine der wichtigsten politischen Machte im Sumer, und ist archaologisch seit dem 5. Jahrtausend v. Chr. belegt. Dieser Staat bestand aus den drei Hauptstadten Girsu (Tello), Lagash (Tell al-Hiba) und Nigin (Tell Zurghul). Der vorliegende Sammelband prasentiert die Ergebnisse von Studien und Aus-grabungen, die bis 2015 an diesen Standorten durchgefuhrt wurden, und liefert neue Daten fur die historische Interpretation. Darunter finden sich Beitrage zur Forschung in al-Hiba (unter dem Vorsitz von H. Pittman), ein Abschnitt uber die erste archaologische Kampagne am Standort Nigin (unter der Leitung von D. Nadali und A. Polcaro) sowie zu Forschungen an der alten Stadt von Girsu (unter der Leitung von S. Rey und F. Husain).