The most important evidence for art of the Early Dynastic period comes from the vast Royal Cemetery at Ur (circa 2600 - circa 2500 B.C.E.). Among the hundreds of graves excavated there by Sir Leonard Woolley in the 1920s, sixteen were extremely rich graves and contained multiple sacrificial victims, an extremely rare practice in Mesopotamia. The owners of the majority of the graves are unknown, but the wealth buried with them, together with the presence of human victims—seventy-three in one grave—suggest that they were "priest-kings" and queens. Evidence of virtually every type of metallurgical technique known in antiquity, except the working of iron, was found in the graves. Among the grave goods were weapons and vessels in copper, gold, and silver, and a large amount of elaborate jewelry. Sumerian jewelers exploited organic forms, such as flower-head rosettes...