New Delhi: A US-Italian joint team of archaeologists recently discovered the remnants of an ancient Sumerian public tavern in Lagash, an important nerve centre for the Sumerian civilization located in Southern Iraq. The site, where excavation work resulted in findings such as remains of a primitive refrigeration unit, benches, bowls, leftover food and beer, indicated that the site was used by locals and was not a domestic place, researchers said.
The study was conducted by teams from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Pisa, which further observed that fish and animal bones were found in the bowls, alongside beer, a prominent drink in Sumerian society.
"So we've got the refrigerator, we've got the hundreds of vessels ready to be served, benches where people would sit... and behind the refrigerator is an oven that would have been used... for cooking food," Holly Pittman, project director, said while speaking to news agency AFP. "Beer drinking was prominent in Sumerian civilization and one of the temples unearthed in the area also contained beermaking recipes on a cuneiform tablet," she was further quoted as saying.
The team made use of technologies such as thermal imaging, magnetometry, and drone shots for the task at hand. Lagash, which was an urban centre during the habitation about 4,700 years ago, lies Northeast of the modern city of Nasiriyah.
“At more than 450 hectares, Lagash was one of the largest sites in southern Iraq during the 3rd millennium,” Pittman is quoted as saying in a University of Pennsylvania press release. The area, which lies close to the confluence of the Tigris-Euphrates rivers, and is extremely fertile, was dubbed the "garden of the gods" for its bountiful agricultural production.
