The "AH" quarter, located to the south of the Nanna sanctuary, is still the largest urban complex ever excavated in Mesopotamia, covering an area of around 8,000m2 and containing some 50 houses. From a social point of view, it seems to have been more mixed than the EH and EM quarters.
Woolley's excavation of this district was carried out in a single campaign (which seems incredible today), his IXth, from November1, 1930 to March 20, 1931. Beneath the poorly preserved remains of the Neo-Babylonian level, Woolley uncovered older houses dating back to the second half of the 2nd millennium (Kassite period). It was only below these that the first fully preserved level, dating from the first half of the 2nd millennium, was discovered and excavated. When E. Stone resumed excavation of the site in 2015, his aim was twofold: to try to find, beneath the Paleo-Babylonian level, the layer from the Ur III period that is assumed to have been present. The idea was to compare the two periods, so as to see whether the very marked differences currently observed are not due to a comparison distorted by the randomness of excavations, which focused more on domestic quarters for the Paleo-Babylonian period and more on public buildings for the Ur III period. The second objective was to excavate new houses on the edge of the area cleared by Woolley, so as to benefit from all the technical advances of modern archaeology: in the early 1930s, there was no analysis of the macro-plant remains, nor of the human or animal bones discovered. More detailed observations were also needed to better interpret the data collected by Woolley. Two areas in the AH district were chosen for further excavation. In the house "no 1 Baker's square" ("Area 1"), the surprise came from the fact that Woolley's excavation had been very incomplete. In particular, it was necessary to uncover the burial vault he had spotted but not excavated; like all the others, it had been looted when the area was abandoned in 1738 BC. Other burials, this time unconstructed, were discovered beneath the floors of rooms 6 and 7, which slowed work and meant that only a very small area could be reached on the lower level. At the reopened site in "Niche Lane" ("Area 2"), a deep borehole in the street allowed us to go deeper. There was no major Ur III level as expected, but the main surprise was the discovery of a batch of 18 Akkadian accounting texts. The main extension is located to the north-west of the AH quarter ("Area 3 "). The archives discovered - 45 tablets - show that the building's last occupant was a Babylonian general named Abisum, to whom we returned in lectureno. 10.
