"Unraveling ancient Kish. Archaeology and history of a Mesopotamian city"

Résumé de la conférence : 

"For more than three millennia the city of Kish stand out as one of the most relevant centres in the Mesopotamian floodplain. Its alternate fortunes have been strongly intertwined with those of other major cities like Ur, Uruk or Lagash as well as important rulers like Mesalim, Enshagkushanak and Sargon of Akkad.

While textual sources provided crucial support in the reconstruction of the events and people that shaped the political, social and economic faith of the city, archaeological researches slowly unravelled the complex urban and architectural development of this Mesopotamian megacity through time.

This lecture will illustrate the long path towards the reconstruction of the archaeology and history of ancient Kish, focusing on the 3^rd millennium BC, when the city reached its urban and political splendour, before the raise of the Akkadian empire and the 2^nd millennium BC regional kingdoms. Besides the archaeological excavations conducted during the 1^st half of the 20^th century, we will see how academic reassessments, conducted from the 1960s until today helped to shed light on the complex and rich stratigraphical sequence and the extended urban layout of the site.

However, these studies represented only the starting point for future studies, that applying modern methodologies will allow to tackle new research questions on the history of Kish and Mesopotamia. The last part of this presentation will be dedicated to these important perspectives."