Early Urbanism in Northern Mesopotamia

Abstract: Cities generate challenges as well as confer advantages on their inhabitants. Recent excavations and surveys in northern Mesopotamia have revealed extensive settlements with diverse populations, institutions, extended hinterlands, and mass production by the early fourth millennium BC, comparable to well-known evidence for cities in their traditional homeland of southern Iraq. However, early northern Mesopotamian cities incorporated low-density zones and flexible uses of space not yet identified in southern Mesopotamia. Evidence for violent conflict in northern Mesopotamian cities also raises questions about urban sustainability; cities succeeded despite new sources of social stress

Early Urbanism in Northern Mesopotamia

Abstract: Cities generate challenges as well as confer advantages on their inhabitants. Recent excavations and surveys in northern Mesopotamia have revealed extensive settlements with diverse populations, institutions, extended hinterlands, and mass production by the early fourth millennium BC, comparable to well-known evidence for cities in their traditional homeland of southern Iraq. However, early northern Mesopotamian cities incorporated low-density zones and flexible uses of space not yet identified in southern Mesopotamia. Evidence for violent conflict in northern Mesopotamian cities also raises questions about urban sustainability; cities succeeded despite new sources of social stress

Early Mesopotamian Urbanism: A New View from the North

For many years, the southern Mesopotamia of Ur and Uruk, ancient Sumer, has been seen as the origin centre of civilisation and cities: ‘The urban implosion of late-fourth- and early-third-millennium Mesopotamia resulted in a massive population shift into large sites’ said Nissen in 1988. ‘These new city-states set the pattern for Mesopotamia as the heartland of cities’ (Adams 1981; Yoffee 1998). And for Stone & Zimansky (2005) ‘Remains of the world's first cities are the most noteworthy feature of the landscape in southern Iraq’. But at Tell Brak Joan Oates and her team are turning this model upside down. A long campaign of study, culminating in the new discoveries from 2006 reported here, show that northern Mesopotamia was far along the road to urbanism, as seen in monumentality, industrialisation and prestige goods, by the late fifth millennium BC. The ‘world's earliest cities’ are as likely to have been in north-eastern Syria as southern Iraq, and the model of a core from the south developing a periphery in the north is now ripe for revision.Anthropolog

Uruk Colonies and Anatolian Communities: An Interim Report on the 1992-1993 Excavations at Hacinebi, Turkey

The first Mesopotamian city-states in the Uruk period (ca. 3800-3100 B. C.) pursued a strategy of commercial expansion into neighboring areas of the Zagros Mountains, Syria, and southeastern Anatolia. Recent research in these areas has located several Uruk outposts, in what is apparently the world\u27s earliest-known colonial system. Although some Uruk colonies have been excavated, virtually nothing is known about either the operation of this system or its role in the development of local polities in Anatolia. Excavations at the site of Hacinebi, on the Euphrates River trade route, investigate the effects of the Uruk Expansion on the social, economic, and political organization of southeastern Anatolia during the fourth millennium B. C. Hacinebi has two main Late Chalcolithic occupations - a pre-contact phase A and a later contact phase B with high concentrations of Uruk ceramics, administrative artifacts, and other Mesopotamian forms of material culture. The Hacinebi excavations thus provide a rare opportunity to investigate the relationship between the Uruk colonies and the local populations with whom they traded, while clarifying the role of long-distance exchange in the development of complex societies in Anatolia. Several lines of evidence suggest that the period of contact with Mesopotamia began in the Middle Uruk period, earlier than the larger colonies at sites such as Habuba Kabira-South and Jebel Aruda in Syria. The concentrations of Uruk material culture and the patterns of food consumption in the northeastern corner of the Local Late Chalcolithic settlement are consistent with the interpretation that a small group of Mesopotamian colonists lived as a socially distinct enclave among the local inhabitants of Hacinebi. There is no evidence for either Uruk colonial domination or warfare between the colonists and the native inhabitants of Hacinebi. Instead, the presence of both Anatolian and Mesopotamian seal impressions at the site best fits a pattern of peaceful exchange between the two groups. The evidence for an essential parity in long-term social and economic relations between the Mesopotamian merchants and local inhabitants of Hacinebi suggests that the organization of prehistoric Mesopotamian colonies differed markedly from that of the better-known 16th-20th century European colonial systems in Africa, Asia, and the Americas

Early Urbanism in Northern Mesopotamia

Abstract: Cities generate challenges as well as confer advantages on their inhabitants. Recent excavations and surveys in northern Mesopotamia have revealed extensive settlements with diverse populations, institutions, extended hinterlands, and mass production by the early fourth millennium BC, comparable to well-known evidence for cities in their traditional homeland of southern Iraq. However, early northern Mesopotamian cities incorporated low-density zones and flexible uses of space not yet identified in southern Mesopotamia. Evidence for violent conflict in northern Mesopotamian cities also raises questions about urban sustainability; cities succeeded despite new sources of social stress

The Encultured Vulture: Late Chalcolithic sealing images and the challenges of urbanism in 4th millennium Northern Mesopotamia

The early 4th millennium BC in Northern Mesopotamia witnessed the first urbanism in the region, during the Late Chalcolithic (LC) 2-3 Periods (ca 4200-3600 BC). This major demographic, social and economic change was accompanied by an explosion of artistic creativity, expressed as greater diversity and complexity of glyptic arts. LC 2-3 container sealings recently excavated from Tell Brak in Northeast Syria include a significant number of images incorporating vultures. This article explores the use of the vulture motif in the region during the 4th millennium urban expansion and asks why a bird with such strong potential for negative perceptions was presented as an elegant and widely embraced symbol. Within the context of early urban growth and its challenges to sanitation and rubbish disposal, the vulture’s carrion-and waste-eating habits may have been viewed positively.Le début du 4e millénaire av. J.-C. dans le nord de la Mésopotamie voit les débuts de l’urbanisme dans la région, au cours du Chalcolithique récent (LC) 2-3 (ca 4200-3600 av. J.-C.). Ce changement démographique et socio-économique a été accompagné d’une explosion de la créativité artistique, exprimée par une plus grande diversité et complexité des arts glyptiques. Les empreintes de sceaux récemment découverts à Tell Brak (nord-est de la Syrie), qui remontent au LC 2-3, comprennent un nombre significatif d’images où sont représentés des vautours. Cet article examine l’utilisation du motif de vautour dans la région au cours de l’expansion urbaine du 4e millénaire av. J.-C. ; nous nous interrogeons sur les raisons pour lesquelles un oiseau dont la population pouvait avoir une perception négative a été présenté comme un symbole élégant et largement adopté. Dans le contexte de cette expansion et de l’attention portée à l’assainissement et au traitement des ordures, la consommation des charognes et des déchets par les vautours a peut-être été considérée de façon positive par la population.McMahon Augusta. The Encultured Vulture: Late Chalcolithic sealing images and the challenges of urbanism in 4th millennium Northern Mesopotamia. In: Paléorient, 2016, vol. 42, n°1. pp. 169-183