'Cropping the margins': new evidence for urban agriculture at mid-3rd millennium BCE Tell Brak, Syria

Abstract The excavation of a large administrative building at the city of Tell Brak in northern Syria saw the recovery of a considerable quantity of charred cereals dated to the mid-3rd millennium BCE. This remarkable discovery provides a rare snapshot into the nature of agriculture in Upper Mesopotamia during the Early Bronze Age. The material has been studied using a combination of primary archaeobotanical analysis, crop stable isotope determinations and functional weed ecology to deliver new insights into cultivation strategies at Tell Brak, as well as contributing to the wider debate regarding trade and crop importation in this region. Specific crop regime choices also reveal how the farmers of Tell Brak were able to reduce the overall risk of crop failure by careful water management, a vitally important factor in this semi-arid region with potential implications for the analysis of other large-scale urban agro-economies in the Middle East and beyond. خلاصة أدت أعمال التنقيب في مبنى إداري كبير في مدينة تل براك في شمال سوريا إلى استخلاص كمية كبيرة من الحبوب المتفحمة التي يعود تاريخها إلى منتصف الألفية الثالثة قبل الميلاد. يقدم هذا الاكتشاف الرائع لمحة نادرة عن طبيعة الزراعة في بلاد ما بين النهرين العليا خلال العصر البرونزي المبكر. وقد تمت دراسة المواد المستخلصة باستخدام مزيج من التحليل النباتي الأولي (دراسة التفاعلات السابقة بين الإنسان والنبات من خلال استعادة وتحليل بقايا النباتات القديمة)، وتحديد النظائر المستقرة للمحاصيل، وبيئة الأعشاب الوظيفية لتقديم رؤى جديدة حول استراتيجيات الزراعة في تل براك وكذلك للمساهمة في النقاش الأوسع بشأن التجارة واستيراد المحاصيل في هذه المنطقة. تكشف اختيارات نظام المحاصيل المحددة أيضًا كيف تمكن مزارعو تل براك من تقليل المخاطر الإجمالية لفشل المحاصيل من خلال الإدارة الدقيقة للمياه، وهو عامل مهم للغاية في هذه المنطقة شبه القاحلة، مع ما يترتب على ذلك من آثار محتملة على الدراسة التحليلية للمناطق الحضرية الأخرى الواسعة النطاق للاقتصادات الزراعية في الشرق الأوسط وخارجه

Ethnicity and the state in early third millennium Mesopotamia.

This dissertation examines the development of ethnicity as a social identity during and after the rise of the state. It explores the relationship among newly developing ethnic groups--whether within states or between states and their peripheries--as well as their relations with the state. Ethnicity is a strategic identity that can be emphasized or suppressed in alliance, or resistance, to states. Because states continue to develop after the rise of centralized government, and because struggles among competing ethnic groups are common in early states, understanding ethnicity is essential to understanding the later development of these societies. More specifically, the dissertation examines the evidence for the existence of ethnic groups in and around the early states of Mesopotamia, ca. 3300-2700 BC. Textual sources, given problems in our understanding of them and their own bias, are insufficient to identify and locate ethnic groups in Mesopotamia. Thus, to study this issue we must identify the distinguishing features of ethnic groups in the historical and archaeological record. I begin by briefly discussing the evidence for language distribution during the third millennium BC, and consider in considerably more detail the evidence of contemporary ceramic styles. Analyzing the mechanisms of production, distribution, and use of these styles, as well as the distribution of specific design elements within them, I suggest that styles of painted pottery usually termed Jemdet Nasr, Scarlet Ware, and Proto-Elamite marked the social boundaries of an ethnic group. Finally, I discuss the political causes and effects of the rise of such an ethnic group in early Mesopotamia.Ph.D.ArchaeologyEthnic studiesMiddle Eastern historySocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/129685/2/9610114.pd

A Nogales family (image)

Summer Issuehttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/61068/1/3502.pd