Ballerina shoes. Knee-length woollen socks. Cloche hat. Back in the day, archaeologists certainly knew how to dress in the field. ‘The field’ here being the city of Ur in southern Iraq, known for summer temperatures of well over 45°C. You will be relieved to hear that the excavations at Ur always took place during winter.

Magnificent Ur, excavated by a team led by Leonard Woolley between 1922 and 1934, is the mother of all cities. Five thousand years of occupation has given us the famous mid-third-millennium BC Royal Cemetery, full of exquisite artwork, musical instruments, and sacrificed retainers. A ziggurat within an elaborate temple complex that kept its ritual significance for thousands of years. And, on a less dramatic scale, a second-millennium BC neighbourhood of residential houses set along winding streets, inhabited by ordinary citizens — merchants, schoolmasters, jewellers — according to the cuneiform tablets found inside.

How do you organize and run a city of this size and complexity? Well, for one thing, make sure you have efficient sewers. Drains under the floors of the courtyards, kitchens, and toilets of the houses at Ur kept rainwater from flooding homes and led away waste water, which was directed into much larger subterranean ring drains, like the ones pictured here. They were made from perforated pottery rings, arranged one on top of another in a column. Often a packing of potsherds, as seen by the drain on the left in the image, was used to help drain off the water. The ring drains worked as seepage pits and could have several underfloor channels or drains connected to them.

Leonard Woolley himself is pictured here measuring the dimensions of some impressive-looking ring drains, while Katharine Woolley, his able assistant and reluctant wife, takes notes. A gifted illustrator whose drawings brought ancient Ur to life in the public imagination, Katharine is nonetheless best known for having been so obnoxious that Agatha Christie, who first visited Ur on holiday in 1928, made Katharine the murder victim in her famous novel Murder in Mesopotamia.

By the fifth century BC, the city itself had also fallen victim — but on this occasion, to its environment. The River Euphrates, which had been Ur’s lifeline for millennia, had gradually set its meandering course at an increasing distance from the city, leaving its inhabitants thirsty and its ring drains dry. The city was deserted until, some three thousand years later, Mr and Mrs Woolley arrived on the scene, impeccably dressed for a day down the drain.

Mette Marie Hald

National Museum of Denmark