Abstract
A hypothesis on the total collapse of the settlement in Northern Syria at the end of the third millennium BC, put forward in 1993 by Harvey Weiss and his team, is one of the most disputed issues in the protohistoric archaeology of North Mesopotamia. Today it is obvious that the crisis has not been as general as Weiss believed. Also his original explanation of the cause of this event (volcano eruption in the Near East) is generally doubted. The author discusses the present state of knowledge of the archaeology of this period as well as proxy data used for environmental reconstructions, because an environmental crisis is considered to be the most likely cause of the decline in settlement. One of the aims of the paper is to propose new sources for environmental proxies, which may help in the formulation of a more accurate reconstruction of environmental trends in the Near East in general.
Highlights
A hypothesis on the total collapse of the settlement in Northern Syria at the end of the third millennium BC, put forward in 1993 by Harvey Weiss and his team, is one of the most disputed issues in the protohistoric archaeology of North Mesopotamia
The archaeological mission of the Yale University directed by Harvey Weiss, working at Tell Leilan in north-eastern Syria, observed a continuous settlement covering the first half of the 3rd millennium BC and about three centuries of the second (Weiss 1990a, 1990b, 1990c; Weiss et al 1993: 996–1002)
An interpretation of the causes of this abandonment was proposed for the first time in 1993 (Weiss et al 1993), and elaborated further in subsequent years by Harvey Weiss
Summary
A hypothesis on the total collapse of the settlement in Northern Syria at the end of the third millennium BC, put forward in 1993 by Harvey Weiss and his team, is one of the most disputed issues in the protohistoric archaeology of North Mesopotamia. This point of view is corroborated by the interpretation of wood samples from Tell Mozan, suggesting that towards the end of the 3rd millennium BC in the area around Mozan an open woodland steppe was present, with a relatively high number of species interpreted as moisture indicators (Deckers 2010: 176–179, Fig. 25, Tab. 1).
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