Sumerian Sippin’ Spot: 5,000-Year-Old Tavern Unearthed in Southern Iraq

Archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Pisa have discovered the remains of a 5,000-year-old tavern in southern Iraq that could provide insight into the daily lives of ordinary people in the world’s first cities. The excavation was made in the ancient city of Lagash, northeast of the modern city of Nasiriyah, a former urban center of the Sumerian civilization. The team found a primitive refrigeration system, benches for diners, around 150 serving bowls, and a large oven for cooking food. Fish and animal bones were discovered in the serving bowls, along with evidence of widespread drinking of beer, the most common drink in Sumerian times, according to project director Holly Pittman.

The Lagash area, which was known as the “garden of the gods,” was one of the important cities of southern Iraq, where the first social classes emerged after the domestication of the first crops. The excavation of the tavern could provide a new perspective on the social structure of the first cities, said Pittman. She emphasized the importance of learning more about the daily lives of the regular people who used the tavern, as most of the work done at other sites focuses on kings and priests.

Detailed analysis will need to be carried out on the samples taken during the November excavation to uncover more information. The US-Italian team hopes to be able to characterize the neighborhoods and occupations of the people who lived in the big city who were not part of the elite class. Pittman said, “There is so much that we do not know about this early period of the emergence of cities and that is what we are investigating.”