Hans H. Curvers

The Structure and Dynamics of Dry-Farming States in Upper Mesopotamia [and Comments and Reply]

A model describing the layout of Early Bronze Age Mesopotamian states is synthesized using a range of off-site and on-site data from Syria, Iraq, and Turkey. These allow the description of the basic settlement patterns, land use, and exchange systems of an early state system. The hypothesis is tested that Bronze Age settlements in this zone of rain-fed farming tended not to exceed IOO hectares, an area which was capable of accommodating between io,ooo and 2o,ooo people. Detailed off-site surveys and landscape archaeology suggest that these settlements were provisioned by intensively farmed zones of cultivation that surrounded the central settlement and by tributary secondary or satellite communities. This main production zone was just capable of supporting the population of the prime site, but the constraint of labour and the frictional effect of distance meant that food produced farther away than some io-is km made only a minor contribution to the main settlement. As a result, settlements tended not to expand beyond a certain size. Even then, the maximizing effect of intensive crop production in such areas of highly variable rainfall and episodic major droughts made these communities very vulnerable to collapse.

A survey in the Jabbul Plain

The 1996 and 1997 seasons of the Hopkins-Amsterdam project in the Jabbul plain, western Syria, have generated new results on Bronze Age urbanism at Tell Umm el Marra and elucidated longer-term settlement patterns in the Jabbul region. Excavation results have documented the foundation of Umm el-Marra as a regional center in the Early Bronze Age, provided new data on a period of decentralization in Middle Bronze I, and supplied evidence of the regeneration of urbanism in MB II. Faunal and archaeobotanical analysis broaden our understanding of these developments, attesting to an economy overwhelmingly dependent on the steppe environment, with an emphasis on large-scale onager hunting in MB II, Finally, a regional survey provides data on long-term demographic and socioeconomic trends, furnishing an expansive time range and spatial context for our understanding of developmental patterns in the region. The survey results supply new information on the limits of the Uruk expansion, cycles of Bronze Age urbanization, changing patterns of steppe exploitation, and demographic and agricultural extensification in the Byzantine and Early Islamic periods.The 1996 and 1997 seasons of the Hopkins-Amsterdam project in the Jabbul plain, western Syria, have generated new results on Bronze Age urbanism at Tell Umm elMarra and elucidated longer-term settlement patterns in theJabbul region. Excavation results have documented the foundation of Umm el-Marra as a regional center in the Early Bronze Age, provided new data on a period of decentralization in Middle Bronze I, and supplied evidence of the regeneration of urbanism in MB II. Faunal and archaeobotanical analysis broaden our understanding of these developments, attesting to an economy overwhelmingly dependent on the steppe environment, with an emphasis on large-scale onager hunting in MB II. Finally, a regional survey provides data on long-term demographic and socioeconomic trends, furnishing an expansive time range and spatial context for our understanding of developmental patterns in the region. The survey results supply new information on the limits of the Uruk expansion, cycles of Bronze Age urbanization, changing patterns of steppe exploitation, and demographic and agricultural extensification in the Byzantine and Early Islamic periods.*

Umm el-Marra, a Bronze Age Urban Center in the Jabbul Plain, Western Syria

A team from the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Amsterdam has initiated a multistage program of excavation and regional analysis based at Tell Umm el-Marra in the Jabbul plain east of Aleppo. Archaeological and textual evidence from Ebla and elsewhere has demonstrated that the Aleppo region was an important center of early complex society in western Syria, and the joint project will focus on tracing its developmental trajectory. As the first stage of this project, excavations at Umm el-Marra, a major Bronze Age center of the Jabbul, were conducted in 1994 and 1995. Deposits from Roman and Hellenistic occupations were identified above an extensive Late Bronze Age settlement with evidence of a site-wide destruction in the early Late Bronze Age, while Middle Bronze Age remains indicated the apparent importance of the town in the period of the Yamhad state.