The Harvard History and Archaeology of Ancient Near Eastern Societies Workshop presens a lecture by: Haider A. Oraibi Almamori State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, Iraq

The site of Umm al-Aqarib is situated in the semi-desert area, some 6 km to the southeast of Jokha, and approximately 300 km away from Baghdad. It site covers more than five square kilometres and is covered with sand dunes. It consists of a series of twenty-one mounds, the highest of which is about 20 m above the level of the plain. Numerous pits made by looters are visible all over the site, and have seriously changed the topography of the site. Umm al-Aqarib is essentially a site of the Early Dynastic III period, though it carries some remains of Parthian and/or Sasanian date on the north and northwest of the site. The locality was first described by the traveller John Punnett Peters at the end of the 19th century. During their early 1970s surveys, Adams and Nissen assigned Umm al-Aqarib #198 in their catalog. Donny George was the field director of excavations during the 1st and 2nd seasons, Haider Almamori during the 3rd and 4th seasons (2001-2002), and Mr. Taha Karim led excavations in seasons 5th through 7th (2008-2010). This talk presents the results of those excavations, introducing Temple H and the the White Temple, a Palace with associated houses, and more than four hundred graves, and shows a selection of the more than ten thousand objects discovered at the site.