Metal pins are among the most common metal artefacts from early-3rd-millennium sites in the Upper Euphrates Valley, with these objects demonstrating a widespread typological continuity with other areas of the Near East. What distinguishes the use of pins in this region, however, is the quantity and the contexts in which they were deposited. Metal pins were most frequently and abundantly deposited in mortuary contexts in the Upper Euphrates Valley, a trend that is not replicated anywhere else in the Near East at this time. A comparative study suggests that the greater availability of agro-pastoral and metal resources in the post-Uruk, decentralized socioeconomic systems of the Upper Euphrates Valley contributed to this uniquely localized pattern of metal pin consumption.
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