What can the present tell us about the past? From 1968 to 1990, Edward Ochsenschlager conducted ethnoarchaeological fieldwork near a mound called al-Hiba, in the marshes of southern Iraq. In examining the material culture of three tribes--their use of mud, reed, wood, and bitumen, and their husbandry of cattle, water buffalo, and sheep--he chronicles what is now a lost way of life. He helps us understand ancient manufacturing processes, an artifact's...