Societal segmentation and early urbanism in Mesopotamia: Biological distance analysis from Tell Brak using dental morphology

Abstract

The urbanization of Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium BCE led to unprecedented social, economic, and political changes. Tell Brak, located in the Syrian Khabur basin, is one of the best-known early urban sites from this period. Surveys suggest that urban growth at Tell Brak resulted from peripheral expansion driven by the migration of several distinct groups; however, it is not known whether these groups remained recognizably distinct within the newly formed urban center.In the current study, the impact of early urbanization on social organization was explored using non-metric dental data from skeletons excavated from the main site at Tell Brak (n = 111) and its satellite mound Tell Majnuna (n = 179). The Arizona State University Dental Anthropology System (ASUDAS) was employed to examine biodistance between population subsets from the period of early urbanization in the Late Chalcolithic (LC) and the Early Bronze Age (EBA).The results demonstrate differences in dental morphology among the LC groups indicating segmentation within the early urban population at Tell Brak. Patterns of social organization associated with urbanization have thus framed the socio-cultural landscape of even the earliest cities, and bioarchaeological data can be a useful tool for understanding both ancient and modern urbanization.