Customer Reviews

Sumer and the Sumerians

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The cover blurb for "Sumer and the Sumerians" indicates that it is written "primarily for a non-specialist audience," but this is misleading; the book is actually an introductory textbook for university-level courses in Sumerian archaeology. As such, its primary scope is to introduce and summarize the archaeological evidence related to Sumerian chronology, settlement patterns, secular and religious architecture, grave goods, manufacturing, trade, and writing.

The book is written almost exclusively from an archaeological perspective. The outstandingly rich literature and art of ancient Sumeria is barely glanced at in passing. The book's prose is dry and academic, and it is illustrated meagrely, with black-and-white line drawings. Unless you are already deeply interested in Sumeria and the Sumerians, this book is unlikely to kindle your enthusiasm.

Although it can't be recommended for the general reader, serious university students will benefit from the book's high standard of scholarship and clear, if uninspiring, exposition. When used as a college text, it will need to be supplemented by visual aids and additional resources on the art, literature, and religion of Sumeria.

This 182 page book is one of several I have read in recent months on ancient Mesopotamia, so I was familiar with many of the topics which are included. Professor Crawford states in the preface that the book is intended for students and especially those beginning to study the archaeology and history of the Ancient Near East. She also states that the book attempts to combine a chronological account with that of a number of major themes, her emphasis being on descriptions rather than explanations.

The book covers the development of the Sumerian civilization in Mesopotamia during the period c 3800BC to 2000BC, with the following themes described in separate chapters:
(1) Rediscovery of the Ancient Near East: the physical environment
(2) History, chronology, and social organization
(3) Patterns of settlement and agriculture
(4) Town planning and temple architecture
(5) Public building and private housing
(6) Life, death, and the meaning of the universe
(7) Manufacturing industry, and trade
(8) Writing and the arts
(9) Conclusions - the development of Sumerian society
The book includes 8 maps and 80 illustrations most of which I have seen in the other books I have read on the subject, although I do believe them to be representative of the period The reference section lists the works of some 150 authors, which includes some of the works of the early archaeologists, as well as more recent works of the 1970s and 1980s, and there is also a short index.

For me the first three chapters are the most useful part of the book and provide a very good introduction to the subject.
Chapter 1 is an overview of the archaeological work done to about 1990 since the 19th century rediscovery of the major sites of the Sumerian civilization, and a general description of the nature of the land, the climate and ecological zones, and the trade routes.
Chapter 2 is a review of the basic periods of the development of the Sumerian civilization based on archaeological records, scientific methods of dating, and the historical record from tablets and inscriptions. Professor Crawford points out that while many of these are quite problematic and inconsistent with each other, they still provide much useful solid information
Chapter 3 is a very interesting summarization of the results of a number of geographical surveys performed by Robert Adams in the 1960s, which is covered in considerably more detail in the "The Early History of the Ancient Near East" by Hans J Nissen,
Chapters 4 - 8 provide detailed descriptions of the archaeological findings from the most significant Sumerian sites, with the concluding chapter discussing the outstanding characteristics which may have contributed to the development of the Sumerian civilization.

I liked the fact that Professor Crawford concentrates on the facts "on the ground" and is careful to explain why some proposals put forward by earlier and eminent archaeologists are difficult to accept due to inconsistent or insufficient evidence from which to draw sound conclusions. The book is well written and easy to read, but I must confess that I had to read it a second time in order to prepare this review, which shows that on the first time around I did not absorb as much of the material as I would have hoped.

For me, the weakest part is the chapter on "Writing and the arts" which concentrates more on the arts than on the development of writing which must be the most significant achievement and legacy of the Sumerian civilization. I was also surprised at her statement that there have been no drastic or fundamental changes in the weather patterns. It was my understanding that one of the major driving forces in the development of Sumerian civilization was the requirement to organize the development and maintenance of the irrigation channels as a result of the gradual drying up of the lower part of Mesopotamia during much of the 4th and 3rd millennia. I found that the maps were somewhat vague since they generally only included most important sites, and geographical features such as the Diyala and Hamrin valleys had to be deduced from the descriptions in the text. I also wonder if there have been any major new findings in the 15 years since 1991 when the book was first published.

In summary, I think that this is a solid introduction to the study of the Sumerian civilization, but I prefer "The Ancient Orient - An Introduction to the Study of the Ancient Near East" by Wolfram von Soden as an introduction to the subject. I also prefer "The Early History of the Ancient Near East: 9000 - 2000BC" by Hans J Nissen, since that provides the background of the earlier period leading up to the development of the Sumerian civilization.

This book deals with archaeological evidence of the Sumer region in a comprehensive and highly illustrated volume. Crawford's book has little to do with the historical view of Sumer like so many other books on the subject. However, she does not wonder far from most traditional views of the Sumerians and always backs those views up with a hard archaeological background. The book covers the physical environment of Sumer, social organisation, Settlement and agriculture patterns, (temple, town, housing architecture), some religious background of Sumer, Manufacturing, trade and lastly the beginnning of literature in Sumer. I suggest this book for any archaeology student interested in the use of technic in the field and evidence gathered from those technics. Crawford's book is a very educational read of the root of Mesopotamian civilsation "Sumer".

Crawford examines Sumerian culture from an archaeological perspective. Unlike, Kramer's _The_Sumerians_ the focus is more on daily life than on mythology or historical figures. Her discussion of Sumerian religion deals more with its social aspects, how one buries the dead, how temples were laid out and the importance of the role of the priests in society, and less on the doings of the deities. Much more of the work is focused on what types of buildings the Sumerians lived in, what kinds of occupations they had, who they traded what with, and so forth. Also, throughout the work are a number of helpful maps and illustrations. The work appears to be fairly up to date and my first encounter with it was as reccommended reading for an undergraduate archaeology course.

I was expecting an overview of Sumerian society with this, as it was implied that this was a beginners text. Instead, what we got was a 220 page piece of literature that seems to be aimed more for one who is well versed in the knowledge of Sumer.
There is several ways in which this occurs. The first is through a thematic approach, not chronological. While this in itself is never a bad thing, here we see the author delve into something without properly explaining the history (or at the most giving us a cursory knowledge) of the area. As a result, I find myself scratching my head at (for example) "Jemdat Nasr"... and trying to remember just when that took place.
Crawford also fails to explain many of the terms she uses. We see the mathematical unit "h.a." but in my reading I never came across it. Different "levels" are described, for example: "Children were predominantly buried in vessels or loose in the soil, while in level XIA/B only adults were found..." (pp. 141), or "...the house in H5 seems to be a wing of a larger unit" (pp.90). There is little explanation as to why the Ur III period sometimes has an a or b added to the end of it. The Ninevah V period just pops up out of nowhere when addressing types of pottery. Where is Ninevah I-IV? Why is it called Ninevah at all, and why is it important that we know this pottery is from that period? When one writes a study on something engineered for "students, and especially for students beginning [key word, there] to study the archeology and history of the ancient Near East" (pp. IX) it is important to operationally define all, or even most of, one's terms. To do otherwise leads to confusion and sometimes frustration.
Lastly, the writing style is honestly the driest I've ever seen. The only reason I finished the text was so I could remind myself in the future when I read a dry book that it could never be as dry as Sumer and the Sumerians-- and somehow I finished that.
All in all, Crawford put in alot of effort. She thorougly cites all of her sources throughout the book, and the amount of research done for this must have been astounding. The book suffers from too dry a writing style and lack of background both historically and in regards to the terms she uses. I think that many of these issues could be cleared up in her third edition. Better definitions, and maybe even a rough timeline at the beginning of the work (seeing as this is a thematic, not chronological approach) would help immensely for reference later on in the book. The book really does have alot of potential, it just stumbled a bit in the execution; as aforementioned, I have hope for these issues to be addressed in a future edition.

As other reviewers have mentioned this book is for university student archeologists. If you a regular Joe who wants to learn about ancient Sumer and it's literature, look elsewhere.

Books are totally obsolete as a tool for learning. Computers and HTML (hypertext markup language) have been around for decades and provide a vastly superior method for knowledge transference.

The only reason we still have books for learning is because Authors and Publishers are still trying to cling to an old profit-making paradigm in which distribution can be controlled and every copy will only be obtained for a fee.

I frequently find myself wishing for the quick reference capability of hypertext to remind myself of where a particular region, city, geographic feature etc. is located on a map or to link to a definition of a word or other locations where the word is used in the book. So many wonderful features of hypertext!!!

The maps included in the book often seem to use a randomly selected mixture of different city names from modern to ancient across multiple time frames with little regard to whether they match the nearby associated text. Hypertext would allow you to click on a name and instantly see it on a pop-up map!!! Sweet mother of immaculate saint Rosary cross the mercy blah blah, that's freakin' awesome! How are we still using books for crap's sake? OK, fiction novels, I'll let you have that.

The other problem with books is that every person's mind works differently. An author will compose a book in a way that jibes with their own unique brain function--the way in which they would prefer the content to be presented if THEY were the reader. For that reason, as a method of knowledge transference, a book will vary greatly in it's effectiveness from one reader to another.

I would much prefer that the book be divided into time periods and that each time period be dealt with one by one in order from oldest to youngest and then each time period section be divided into the various topics of (social organization, architecture, town-planning etc.) That how my brain likes things. I just don't have enough extra brain-power to re-organize an entire book of scatter-shot information in my head.