During the third season of excavation at Nippur an Early Dynastic temple was discovered in the northwestern part of the Religious Quarter which became the site of the major activity of the fourth season. This volume details the findings and results uncovered at this temple by the joint expedition of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago and the Baghdad School of the American Schools of Oriental Research. The first task on the resumption of excavations in the North Temple area (the designation given the region of the Early Dynastic temple) was to expand the area of excavations to be sure that it included all the territory of the temple or complex surrounding that building. This involved rapid digging of levels dating around the middle of the first millennium b.c. A second phase ensued with the excavation of levels from the third millennium around the North Temple proper.

The excavation of area WF in the eighteenth and nineteenth seasons at Nippur (1988/89, 1990) was aimed specifically at delineating the transition between the Early Dynastic and Akkadian periods, and this goal has been realised. Augusta McMahon took on this task through two seasons, working tirelessly. Stratigraphic exposure of floor after floor of artefacts was slowed drastically by a complex stack of burials that took up almost half of the space in the pit. The pit was taken down until it reached Early Dynastic IIIa, and thus had the material to assess the passage from Early Dynastic to Akkadian in artifactual terms.