Abstract
Meat supply and consumption are generally documented in texts dealing with " live meat " : herd management, contributions or expenditure of animals. The archives administrative archives found in Mari's palace provide a rare, small corpus of texts documenting the management of meat in pieces. The first text of this type was published as early as ARM VII, the first volume dealing with Mari's administrative documentation. They were approached in different ways, reflecting the methodologies and interests of the time. Some 66 years after this first publication, we propose to draw a first historiographical balance and to offer some perspectives showing how the renewal of research on administrative documentation and the study of a hundred or so as yet unpublished texts have enabled us to move from the analysis of the item to that of its integration into a reflection on the functioning of the palatial administration and to understand its raison d'être.
