Excavations at Tell Brak 4: Exploring an Upper Mesopotamian Regional Centre, 1994-1996.

Tell Brak in Syria is one of the largest and most important multi-period sites in northern Mesopotamia. Excavations in 1994-1996 cast new light on everyday life at the settlement through several phases of occupation from the early 4th millennium BC to the 2nd millennium BC. Volume 4 in the Tell Brak Monograph series provides an account of the architecture, artefacts, and environmental evidence, supported by a program of radiocarbon dating. The results emphasize the indigenous nature of cultural development in Upper Mesopotamia during these millennia. Among the highlights are a small temple dating to the Ninevite 5 period (earlier 3rd millennium BC), which provides new insights into a phenomenon that has hitherto been little explored; and an exceptional hoard of precious materials and artefacts that underlines the importance of Tell Brak in the later 3rd millennium BC. The report is completed by studies of subsistence, diet, economy, use of space, and craft activities, which focus on the variabilities and continuities in daily life that underlay the shifting political and cultural forces. These studies highlight the unique position of Tell Brak in the long-term ebb and flow of regional interactions across Mesopotamia.

Issues and Approaches (Roger Matthews); Surface Investigations (Roger Matthews); Traces of Early Complexity. Late Fifth to Early Fourth-millennia Investigations: the Early Northern Uruk Period (Roger Matthews); Developing Complexity. Mid to Late Fourth-millennium Investigations: the Northern Middle Uruk Period (Candida Felli); A Chiefdom on the Northern Plains. Early Third-millennium Investigations: the Ninevite 5 Period (Roger Matthews); Impact of Empire. Later Third-millennium Investigations: the Late Early Dynastic and Akkadian Periods (Caroline Steele, Helen McDonald, Roger Matthews and Jeremy Black); A House on the Hill. Second-millennium Investigations: the Middle Bronze Age (Helen McDonald and Nicholas Jackson); Ceramics and Society (Murray Eiland); Tools and Debitage of Obsidian and Flint (James Conolly); Microstratigraphic Sequences: Indications of Uses and Concepts of Space (Wendy Matthews); Plants and People (Sue Colledge); Diet, Economy and Status: Evidence from the Animal Bones (Keith Dobney, Deborah Jaques and Wim Van Neer).