The site of Tell Aqab lies six kilometres south of the town of Amuda, in the Jezirah province of north-east Syria. It is one of a large number of early mounds which cluster along the northern edge of the Khabur triangle, an extensive and fertile plain drained by the Khabur River and its eastern tributaries. The rich well-watered soil of the Khabur triangle has attracted human settlement during many periods in the past. Earlier in this century excavations by von Oppenheim (Oppenheim 1931) at Tell Halaf and by Mallowan (Mallowan 1947) at Chagar Bazar and at Tell Brak demonstrated the great archaeological potential of the Khabur headwaters sites. The excavation of Tell Aqab was undertaken by the Department of Archaeology of the University of Edinburgh in order to gain a better understanding of the prehistory of this important area. In particular, the site of Tell Aqab promised to yield a long and well stratified Halaf and Ubaid culture sequence for the Khabur headwaters region.

The student of ancient Mesopotamian society is blessed not only in having access to written evidence, but in having that evidence frequently preserved in significant archaeological context. Although all artifacts both derive meaning from their context and aid in the interpretation of this context, none can equal the cuneiform tablet in informative power. Only partial understanding is possible from a study of the texts and the other archaeological data when the two are divorced; as the texts reveal the actions of the ancient structures' inhabitants, so the archaeological remains represent the physical manifestation of these recorded actions. In the following pages we will take advantage of this unique blessing and attempt an examination of Old Babylonian residence patterns as they are reflected in house property transactions and their accompanying architectural modifications.

Although Mesopotamian archaeologists spend much of their time clearing buildings, determining construction techniques and identifying architectural modifications, relatively little attention has been paid to the social and cultural implications of these structures. Domestic architecture reflects the social needs of its inhabitants and as such is a sensitive indicator not only of variations in wealth but of variations in social organization. Since real cultural change is manifested by changes in social, economic and political organization, and not necessarily by stylistic changes in artifacts, we must use all of the tools at our disposal, in this instance textual and ethnographic, to penetrate the implications of architectural remains. It is hoped that this study may move us one step closer to this goal.

In order to live one must eat and if one is to live a full and active life the food that is eaten must supply all the nutrients required to maintain the body in a healthy state. An appreciation of the importance of diet has led to many modern studies in this field. The methods used include an examination of the environment of the country concerned; of its economic basis—for example whether it is mainly an agricultural or an industrial country, what food is available and whether such food is locally grown or imported; dietary surveys, usually at family level, of the food intake of the population and clinical studies to assess the health of the individual. The information gained in these surveys is used to assess the adequacy of the nutritional intake of the population. It has proved difficult to set up an accepted standard by which to judge adequacy of diet, but the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations has produced tables of recommended daily intakes of nutrients which can be taken as a practical guide.

Some of these methods can be applied to ancient Mesopotamia in order to see whether the diet there can be considered adequate. Examination of the palaeoethnobotanical and palaeozoological evidence from excavated sites, together with references in cuneiform texts and representations of plants and animals on cylinder seals and reliefs, give information about the environment and the economic base. This was agriculture with cereals such as barley and wheat as the main crops and sheep, goats, cattle and pigs the main domesticated animals. Clinical studies of individual people are not possible: obviously no one is available for measuring and weighing or to supply blood and urine samples for tests! It may be, however, that the study of skeletal material will in future enable the likely height and weight of a population to be calculated and provide some information about calcium and Vitamin D deficiencies. It is impossible also to carry out the kind of dietary survey in which families are studied and their food weighed before eating so that exact food intake can be calculated. But by studying the botanical and faunal remains, cylinder seals and reliefs, and the cuneiform texts, it is possible to get some idea of the range of food which was available, which foodstuffs were utilized and how, and to a certain extent who ate what.

Of the excavations that have taken place in Iraq since the 1930s, many have revealed remains dating to the Early Dynastic period. None of these has been published as fully as the Diyala sites excavated by the Iraq Expedition of the Oriental Institute of Chicago from 1930 to 1938. (Frankfort, 1939, 1943, 1955; Delougaz, 1940, 1952, Delougaz and Lloyd, 1942; Delougaz, Hill and Lloyd, 1967.) It is these sites that still provide the largest collection of well-stratified pottery for this period, and thus material from newly-excavated sites has always been compared to that from the Diyala region.

There are two major disadvantages to this state of affairs. Firstly, it is undesirable that any kind of archaeological material comparison should be limited to just one region or site; and secondly, notwithstanding the importance of the city of Eshnunna (Tell Asmar), the Diyala region was a fringe area, and the style of its pottery should not have to be accepted as the norm for Southern Mesopotamia or anywhere else.

This paper reports on an attempt to apply the technology of ultrasonic cleaning to the conservation of clay tablets and to measure the effectiveness of ultrasound against the desalting technique now in use. It is hoped that the results of these preliminary experiments will inspire a thorough investigation into the possible advantages of employing an ultrasonic cleaning system. The author would not recommend switching from the standard soaking method to ultrasound before a good deal more study.

The conservation of cuneiform tablets involves the removal of water-soluble and less soluble salts present in the clay. This is usually accomplished by baking the tablets to approximately 1500° F and later washing them in cool, circulating water. Salt deposits that are not removed through conservation tend to crystallize, damaging the surface of the tablet with its inscription and causing internal disintegration as well.

The fragment of Mesopotamian music lexicography published here was identified in the tablet collection of the Babylonian Section of the University Museum, Philadelphia, during a search for certain Sumerian literary fragments. It is offered to Oliver Gurney since it supplements the text of Nabnitu XXXII of whose major source he is the copyist and pioneer decipherer. Furthermore, the new musical term revealed by the text here may have a bearing on the treatise for the tuning of the Babylonian harp published by Professor Gurney in a previous number of this journal.