Cycles of Civilization in Northern Mesopotamia, 4400–2000 BC

Jason A Ur

doi:10.1007/s10814-010-9041-y

Abstract

The intensification of fieldwork in northern Mesopotamia, the upper region of the Tigris-Euphrates basin, has revealed two cycles of expansion and reduction in social complexity between 4400 and 2000 BC. These cycles include developments in social inequality, political centralization, craft production and economic specialization, agropastoral land use, and urbanization. Contrary to earlier assessments, many of these developments proceeded independently from the polities in southern Mesopotamia, although not in isolation. This review considers recent data from excavations and surveys in northern Iraq, northeastern Syria, and southeastern Turkey with particular attention to how they are used to construct models of early urban polities.

Highlights

Over a span of more than two millennia, northern Mesopotamia witnessed the emergence of urban complex society, its collapse and rebirth, and a further episode of collapse
In many ways we have a superior understanding of major social developments in the north than we do for the south, and improvements in chronology have revealed that many aspects of social complexity that were once assumed to have been imported from southern Mesopotamia have earlier and entirely indigenous origins
This review describes the development of social complexity from 4400 BC to the collapse of urban society at the end of the 3rd millennium BC in northern Mesopotamia, defined here as the Tigris and Euphrates River valleys and the plains and steppe between them that fall today in northern Iraq, northern Syria, and southeastern Turkey (Fig. 1)

Summary

Introduction

Over a span of more than two millennia, northern Mesopotamia witnessed the emergence of urban complex society, its collapse and rebirth, and a further episode of collapse. A likely manufacturing center was found from surface remains on the edge of the Tigris River in northern Iraq (Ball 1997), and chemical analysis has been used to identify centers of manufacture and distribution (Rothman and Blackman 2003) These new indicators of social complexity appeared simultaneously with dramatic settlement expansion at Brak and Khirbat al-Fakhar, not in the form known from later periods of northern Mesopotamian history. Age Near East (Schloen 2001) and is being used in models for the later 3rd millennium as well (discussed below) These new findings demonstrate the indigenous nature of urbanism at Tell Brak, which appeared well in advance of any presently identifiable influence from Uruk or its southern Mesopotamian neighbors; the emergence of the Mesopotamian city must be considered a multicentric phenomenon, if not a process that occurred independently in multiple loci. These new data show that the timing of the urban collapse varied throughout northern Mesopotamia, and that some areas may not have been abandoned at all (Akkermans and Schwartz 2003, pp. 284-287; Marro and Kuzucuoğlu 2007; Peltenburg 2007b Table 1.1; Schwartz 2007)

Conclusions and future directions

References cited