This study sheds light on the agricultural economy that underpinned the emergence of the first urban centres in northern Mesopotamia. Using δC and δN values of crop remains from the sites of Tell Sabi Abyad, Tell Zeidan, Hamoukar, Tell Brak and Tell Leilan (6500-2000 cal bc), we reveal that labour-intensive practices such as manuring/middening and water management formed an integral part of the agricultural strategy from the seventh millennium bc. Increased agricultural production to support growing urban populations was achieved by cultivation of larger areas of land, entailing lower manure/midden inputs per unit area-extensification. Our findings paint a nuanced picture of the role of agricultural production in new forms of political centralization. The shift towards lower-input farming most plausibly developed gradually at a household level, but the increased importance of land-based wealth constituted a key potential source of political power, providing the possibility for greater bureaucratic control and contributing to the wider societal changes that accompanied urbanization.
Scholars have recently investigated the efficacy of applying globalisation models to ancient cultures such as the fourth-millennium BC Mesopotamian Uruk system. Embedded within globalisation models is the ‘complex connectivity‘ that brings disparate regions together into a singular world. In the fourth millennium BC, the site of Çadır Höyük on the north-central Anatolian plateau experienced dramatic changes in its material culture and architectural assemblages, which in turn reflect new socio-economic, sociopolitical and ritual patterns at this rural agro-pastoral settlement. This study examines the complex connectivities of the ancient Uruk system, encompassing settlements in more consistent contact with the Uruk system such as Arslantepe in southeastern Anatolia, and how these may have fostered exchange networks that reached far beyond the Uruk ‘global world‘ and onto the Anatolian plateau.
Excavations at the 109 hectare site of Kurd Qaburstan on the Erbil plain in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq were conducted by the Johns Hopkins University in 2013 and 2014. The Middle Bronze Age (Old Babylonian period) is the main period of occupation evident on the site, and the project therefore aims to study the character of a north Mesopotamian urban centre of the early second millennium b.c. On the high mound, excavations revealed three phases of Mittani (Late Bronze) period occupation, including evidence of elite residential architecture. On the low mound and the south slope of the high mound, Middle Bronze evidence included domestic remains with numerous ceramic vessels left in situ. Also dating to the Middle Bronze period is evidence of a city wall on the site edges. Later occupations include a cemetery, perhaps of Achaemenid date, on the south slope of the high mound and a Middle Islamic settlement on the southern lower town. Faunal and archaeobotanical analysis provide information on the plant and animal economy of the second millennium b.c. occupations, and geophysical results have documented a thirty-one hectare expanse of dense Middle Bronze Age architecture in the northern lower town.
Since Naomi Miller's first discussion of dung fuel within macro-botanical samples from Malyan, Iran, considerations of dung fuel across Southwest Asia have become commonplace, yet archaeobotanists remain divided on: (1) the extent to which dung fuel contributed to archaeobotanical assemblages relative to remnants of repeated crop processing and household activities; and (2) the plant-based, middle-range theories that should be used to infer the presence of dung within macro-botanical assemblages. Here we present a case-study integrating a simple, well-established geo-archaeological approach to assess the presence and relative abundance of dung spherulites within paired sediment and flotation samples from Ubaid period Tell Zeidan, Syria (5300-5100 bc). Spherulite data generated from "sediment smears" are integrated with macro-botanical and phytolith data to assess elevated concentrations of dung within samples. Our analyses demonstrate that plant-based depositional processes across a site are complex, reflecting the rich nature of plant use in antiquity. By using a multi-proxy approach, it is possible to differentiate between predominantly fuel-based deposits and those resulting from predominantly crop-processing processes with greater resolution. This study documents the use of wood fuels in hearths and dung fuel within pyrotechnic features and an oven during the Ubaid period, thereby contributing to discussions of fuel selection and the Secondary Products Revolution. When spherulites are preserved within sediment in abundance, they are also present in floated material, so it is possible to use this approach to consider the presence of dung within archived macro-botanical samples and resolve decade-old debates.
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