Most of the time camels are kept tied by one foot and hobbled to prevent them from foraging in neighboring fields. They are fed on dried reed stalks and any kind of green grass or sedge that can be gathered or that grows near the area where the camel can be staked. Camels are usually walked to the marsh or canal for water once a day—twice a day when it is very hot. They need both the water and the exercise.
Females are bred every year or year and a half in order to provide her with a new calf about the time she ceases to nurse the old one. Pregnancy lasts for a year, and the mother will nourish the calf for up to a year and a half. Owners of camels usually allow the babies to nurse, since some mothers cease to give milk if their calf is taken from them. A cloth around the mother’s udder supported by a strap on her back keeps the calf from drinking all the milk. A camel is usually milked twice a day until it begins to give less milk after a year or more, when it is milked only once a day. Before the mother is milked, the calf is allowed to nurse, but is only allowed to drink as much as the owner thinks necessary. A good naga will give 2–3.5 liters of milk at each milking.
If a female camel loses her calf at birth and is the kind of mother who will dry up without a young camel to feed, the owner will try to buy a calf from someone who has a female camel that gives milk even without a baby at her side. To get the female to accept the new baby, the neck and head of the dead baby are cut off, mounted on a stick, and stuffed with straw. The mother is teased with this contraption while the new baby nurses the first few times. The smell of the dead baby’s head and neck encourages the mother to let the new baby nurse, and gradually she accepts the newcomer. Not all female camels, however, can be fooled in this way, and if their calf dies they may become useless as milk producers.
A few Bedouin keep a horse or two that are normally treated like members of the family. The horses are provided with winter blankets to protect against chill and lighter ones to ward off the summer sun. Always encouraged to walk into its master’s tent and lie down wherever it wishes to rest, a horse sometimes seems to enjoy more privileges than its owner’s wife or children.
Change
In 1968, the Beni Hasan, the Mi’dan, and the Bedouin lived on the countryside as they had for generations. For most of their needs they relied heavily on their individual and collective skills and on the resources of the area. Tribal, clan, village, and family organizations were strong enough to give life a meaning and purpose that were fully shared with other members of the community. From the archaeological point of view, the resources on which the villagers were dependent were often the same resources available to the Sumerians who lived on the same land thousands of years ago.
Changes, however, were beginning to take place as early as our first campaign. Inexpensive goods appearing in the markets of nearby towns were making inroads on the production of local households or craftspeople because of the strength, brilliant colors or decorative designs of the new items. Schools in the area were obligatory for the young. Although most would follow in the footsteps of their fathers, teachers were beginning to awaken the students’ curiosity about the cities and the outer world, to inspire some to try their hands at non-traditional endeavors, and even to challenge tradition. Battery-operated radios were ubiquitous, and news programs were listened to with great concentration. Interestingly, a program’s message was fairly well understood but often translated into the familiar local geographic setting and local technology with subtle changes. The election of a president in some distant country was thought to require some warfare between parties with guns, mugwars (clubs), and daggers as well as an appearance at the ballot box.
The disappearance of the sheikhs’ authority was beginning to be felt in inter-village and intragroup relations, but family and village life were still held together by a firm belief in the words of the Quran and the moral authority of village elders and craftspeople. Changes slowly occurred during the next few years, until by the middle of the 1970s some traditional crafts and practices had completely disappeared. With the onset of the war with Iran in the 1980s, the pace of change increased with electrifying speed. By 1990 the Mid’an and the Bedouin had completely disappeared from the area. Drying up the marshes had allowed the building of a road that gave direct access to al-Hiba from Shatra. New ways of growing vegetables, for instance tomatoes under plastic, led to new marketable resources. Most important was the devastating effect of the Iraq-Iran war, and the lives it had claimed from these communities. For those ethnoarchaeologists interested in problems of change and continuity this was a dramatic and intensely revealing time.
In 1968, at the beginning of this ethnoarchaeological study, the majority of the local inhabitants were isolated from mainstream Iraq. Few of them visited any place other than the local market town of Shatra, and they clearly resisted outside influences in their daily lives. By 1990 when the expedition’s work concluded, only a few men over the age of 16 had not visited Nasiriya, the provincial capital, as well as Shatra, and no small few had been to Baghdad in the north (a 6-8 hour trip by bus from Shatra) and Basra in the south (a 4-5 hour trip by bus from nearby Nasiriya).
* For the reality behind this story see Pournelle, “Marshland of Cities,” 235-36.
† See also Gavin Young and N. Wheeler, “Water Dwellers in a Desert World,” National Geographic 149, 4 (1976): 502–23; “The Folk that Live in the Marshes,” Observer Magazine May 22 (1977): 30–43; and Return to the Marshes (London: William Collins, 1977).
3
WAYS AND MEANS
The research plan for this study had to be simple and flexible, for no set time period could be allotted to these studies, and the excavations at al-Hiba had to be the first concern. Holidays, days when rain or mud made the site unworkable, and evenings were available. At other times I participated in the daily digging and dealt with the ancient pottery recovered from the excavations. From time to time two or three consecutive days could be arranged, especially when staff members made group visits to other sites. It was also possible to set aside a few days before the excavations began and after they were finished.
I wanted to know how local craftspeople gathered their raw materials, how they modified or prepared these raw materials for use, what kinds of artifacts were then made and the details of their construction, their function or functions, their longevity, and how they were disposed of when they were abandoned or no longer usable. Two other elements were important: one was the variation in an artifact’s form or function based on tribal or village contexts; the other was the change that took place in any aspect of an artifact’s life cycle and the reason or reasons for that change. I focused on major, locally obtainable, raw material resources that had been available to ancient people who lived in this area: mud or clay, reeds, wood, and bitumen. I added sheep, cattle, and water buffalo to our study. In order to avoid confusion, I investigated each resource separately. For instance, only when I had completely finished collecting information about mud would I begin asking questions about reeds. As a result, a number of procedures, for example the use of reeds in mud construction, were documented twice: once when studying reeds and again when studying mud construction.
I will introduce each subject with a description of what I learned about these materials and their usage in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Then I will present a short section on the changes I noticed in individual artifacts or groups of artifacts during the 22 years of our investigation and why these changes occurred. Finally I will try to indicate the impact this information can have on our knowledge of the past.
Good Manners