Travel and the Making of North Mesopotamian Polities

The emergence of political complexity in northern Mesopotamia ca. 2600 b.c. constituted an important cultural revolution which transformed how people within nascent states understood their communities. This study explores the relationship between inclusive and exclusive political strategies and free and limited access to a range of political and ritual spaces in cities and the countryside. First, it considers how the spatial organization of new cities constructed a particular type of political authority. Second, it reanalyzes several cultic monuments in light of the Ebla texts and Syrian ritual scenes and suggests that they formed pilgrimage networks that were interconnected with the economic and political systems of emerging states. Movement through newly created political landscapes was thus critical to the development of a cognitive schema that made sense of these polities

On the Edge of Empire: 2008 and 2009 Excavations at Oğlanqala, Azerbaijan

The nature of political complexity in the Caucasus has emerged as a significant research question in Near Eastern archaeology. Until recently, archaeological developments in Azerbaijan have been left out of this discussion. Two seasons of survey and excavation undertaken by the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences and the University of Pennsylvania at the Iron Age site of Oğlanqala in the Naxçıvan Autonomous Republic of Azerbaijan have begun to clarify the local origins of an Iron Age polity and its relationship to major Near Eastern empires, including Urartu, Achaemenid Persia, and Parthia. Situated in the northern half of the fertile Şərur Plain, Oğlanqala was in a position to control a pass through the Dərələyəz Mountains as well as the agricultural land of the plain. Indeed, in the Iron Age, the Şərur Plain was a complex landscape dominated by Oğlanqala but including at least six other fortresses and many cemeteries. The 2008 survey revealed that Oğlanqala was founded in the Early Iron Age and has extensive Middle and Late Iron Age material. Excavations in 2008 and 2009 in the citadel and domestic buildings uncovered architectural and ceramic differences from contemporaneous Urartian, Achaemenid, and classical sites, while also revealing evidence for interaction among them

Revising the Contours of History at Tell Leilan

Northern Mesopotamia’s low grain yield costs and high land transport costs were fundamental forces behind early state growth in the fifth-fourth millennia BC (Weiss1983, 1986, 1997). That development, as well as the southern Mesopotamian Uruk colonization in northern Mesopotamia, was terminated by the 5.2 ka BP abrupt climate change that persisted for two centuries (Weiss 2001). In its wake, northern Mesopotamia underwent the Ninevite 5 experience: four hundred years of reduced settlement size,limited political consolidation, and abridged contact with southern Mesopotamia (Weiss and Rova eds. 2002). In the Leilan IIId period, ca. 2600-2400 BC, at the end of the Ninevite 5 period, Leilan suddenly grew from village to city size, 90 hectares, and its politico-economic organization was transformed into a state apparatus (Weiss 1990). The reasons for this secondary state development are still unclear, but seems to have occurred synchronously across northern Mesopotamia and induced, briefly, the emulation of southern Mesopotamian administrative iconography (Weiss 1990)

Pastoralism and Emergent Complex Settlement in the Middle Bronze Age, Azerbaijan: Isotopic analyses of mobility strategies in transformation

Objectives. This article explores the scale and seasonal patterns of mobility at the complex settlement site of Qızqala during the Middle Bronze Age (2400–1,500 BCE). By integrating human bone, teeth, and environmental samples this research tests the hypothesis of the persistent importance of community-wide seasonal pastoral transhumance during the early formation of complex settlement systems of the South Caucasus. Methods. This research applies stable oxygen and radiogenic strontium isotope analyses on incremental samples of human tooth enamel, bulk tooth enamel, and bone to resolve mobility patterns. Sequential and bulk sampling techniques elucidate seasonal and residential mobility behaviors. Extensive environmental isotope samples of plant and water were collected through regional survey and establish local and regional isotopic baselines, which are compared to human isotope analysis results. Results. Qızqala individuals exhibit low isotopic variability compared to regional contemporaries. 87Sr/86Sr ratios from human remains indicate seasonal and residential isotopic variability within the baseline ranges of local landscapes. δ18O values display erratic patterns, but correspond to seasonal variability with fluctuations between highland and lowland altitudinal zone baseline values. Conclusions. Results suggest that isotopic analysis of multiple elements and sequential enamel samples offers finer resolution on the complexities of human mobility strategies and elucidate the daily lives of often overlooked mobile populations. Higher resolution of individual mobility reveals shared routine behaviors that underscore the importance of diverse social collaborations in forming complex polities in the South Caucasus

Urban and Transport Scaling: Northern Mesopotamia in the Late Chalcolithic and Bronze Age

Scaling methods have been applied to study modern urban areas and how they create accelerated, feedback growth in some systems while efficient use in others. For ancient cities, results have shown that cities act as social reactors that lead to positive feedback growth in socioeconomic measures. In this paper, we assess the relationship between settlement area expressed through mound area from Late Chalcolithic and Bronze Age sites and mean hollow way widths, which are remains of roadways, from the Khabur Triangle in northern Mesopotamia. The intent is to demonstrate the type of scaling and relationship present between sites and hollow ways, where both feature types are relatively well preserved. For modern roadway systems, efficiency in growth relative to population growth suggests roads should show sublinear scaling in relation to site size. In fact, similar to modern systems, such sublinear scaling results are demonstrated for the Khabur Triangle using available data, suggesting ancient efficiency in intensive transport growth relative to population levels. Comparable results are also achieved in other ancient Near East regions. Furthermore, results suggest that there could be a general pattern relevant for some small sites (0–2 ha) and those that have fewer hollow ways, where β, a measure of scaling, is on average low (≈ < 0.2). On the other hand, a second type of result for sites with many hollow ways (11 or more) and that are often larger suggests that β is greater (0.23–0.72), but still sublinear. This result could reflect the scale in which larger settlements acted as greater social attractors or had more intensive economic activity relative to smaller sites. The provided models also allow estimations of past roadway widths in regions where hollow ways are missing

In The Beginning: world History from Human Evolution to the First States

This engaging and accessible volume draws on the most recent historical archeological scholarship to tell the stories of human evolution, gathering and hunting societies, and the distinct breakthroughs that led to the emergence of the earliest cities, states, and civilizations. Highlighting both the separate paths and the intersecting journeys of diverse human communities, In the Beginning provides the essential but often neglected foundation on which all subsequent historical development was constructed.https://scholar.dominican.edu/cynthia-stokes-brown-books-personal-research/1076/thumbnail.jp

Reverse Weathering Reactions within Recent Nearshore Marine Sediments, Kaneohe Bay, Oahu

Bibliography: leaves 258-281.The purpose of this study is to present the results of mineralogical and petrochemical analyses of the solid phase components and the inorganic chemistry of the interstitial waters of the Recent anoxic sediments of Kaneohe Bay, Oahu. Nineteen shallow 1-4 meter gravity cores of the lagoonal sediments of Kaneohe Bay were analyzed for pore water chemistry and seven were subjected to detailed mineralogical and petrochemical analyses. The pore waters of the sediment column show depletions in dissolved SO =4, Ca++, Mg++ and Sr++ accompanied by increases in titration alkalinity, NH4 + , PO 4 -3 and Si02 with respect to the overlying seawater with increasing subbottom depth. Na+, Cl-, K+ and Fetot exhibit minor departures from overlying bay waters assuming that depletions of Na+ and Cl- are the result of an influx of meteoric ground water from beneath the bay's floor. The bay may be divided into two parts on the basis of the rates of pore water diagenesis: in the southern part of the bay, S0 =4 is completely depleted within 80cm subbottom depth, whereas in the northern part, complete S0 =4 reduction does not occur at depths to 350cm. The southern sediments are contaminated by raw, high C/N sewage, resulting in an increased metabolic reduction rate of S0 =4 by anerobic bacteria over that observed in the unpolluted northern bay. Calculation of S0 =4 consumed versus alkalinity plus NH=4 produced indicates a relationship in which roughly one-half of the "produced alkalinity" has been consumed in the formation of authigenic minerals, primarily nontronite and aragonite. Quantitative mineralogical and petrochemical analyses of the solid phase components reveal the loss of amorphous iron-oxyhydroxides, biogenic opaline silica, and amorphous aluminosilicate with increasing subbottom depth. Pyrite formation occurs immediately below the sedimentwater interface. Scanning Electron Microscope observations show a hierarchy of morphologies with depth: single l-micron crystals to 30- micron diameter framboids. Pyrite formation accounts for the lack of detectable S= within the pore waters and is dependent on the availability of pore water iron derived from the dissolution of amorphous iron-oxyhydroxides. The amount of pyrite present below 40cm subbottom depth exceeds the amount which could be formed by the complete reduction of buried pore water S0=4 suggesting the importance of bioturbation in the mixing of pore and overlying seawaters. Authigenic nontronite and mixed-layer smectite-illite are being formed as the result of the reaction of amorphous aluminosilicate with pore water Si02 from opal dissolution and pore water Fe and/or other cations. In those cores where sufficent dissolved iron exists in the pore water, nontronite forms, whereas when dissolved iron is not present as evidenced by the presence of dissolved S= in the pore water, a mixed-layer smectite-illite is formed. The amount of smectite formed is limited by the amount of opal which dissolves. For Kaneohe Bay sediments an average of 0.12 weight percent authigenic smectite is added annually to the sediment column. Minor amounts of authigenic plagioclase, phillipsite, clinoptilolite, analcime, sepiolite, siderite and apatite are also being formed within the sediments. The relationship between reduced pore water Fe and smectite formation suggests that reverse weathering reactions resulting in either authigenic nontronite or mixed-layer smectite-illite may occur in all anoxic marine sediments rich in terrigeneously-derived, poorly-crystalline "kaolinite" and containing enriched pore water Si02. Assuming that 10 percent of the total flux of the world river sediments delivered to the ocean is deposited in Kaneohe Bay-type environments and that rates of reaction are similar to those observed in Kaneohe Bay, then approximately 6 percent of the CO2 consumed by rock weathering may be returned annually to the atmosphere by these reactions.Submitted as a dissertation to The Graduate School, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosphy in the field of geology, August, 197