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.

High-resolution insight into parasitic infections and diet of past populations in Northern Europe and the Middle East (500 BC- 1700 AD) was obtained by pre-concentration of parasite eggs from ancient latrines and deposits followed by shotgun sequencing of DNA. Complementary profiling of parasite, vertebrate and plant DNA proved highly informative in the study of ancient health, human-animal interactions as well as animal and plant dietary components. Most prominent were finding of soil-borne parasites transmitted directly between humans, but also meat-borne parasites that require consumption of raw or undercooked fish and pork. The detection of parasites for which sheep, horse, dog, pig, and rodents serves as definitive hosts are clear markers of domestic and synanthropic animals living in closer proximity of the respective sites. Finally, the reconstruction of full mitochondrial parasite genomes from whipworm (Ascaris lumbricoides) and roundworm species (Trichuris trichiura and Trichuris muris) and estimates of haplotype frequencies elucidates the genetic diversity and provides insights into epidemiology and parasite biology.

Abstract

Excavations at Tell Brak in 2006–7 explored two key episodes in Mesopotamian political and social history, developing early social complexity in the fifth to fourth millennia BC and the shift from territorial state to early empire in the second millennium BC. Late Chalcolithic complexity is represented in Area TW on the main mound and at the outlying sub-mound of Tell Majnuna, while investigation of the Old Babylonian to Mitanni state-to-empire transition involved excavation in Areas HH and HN (Fig. 1). Both sets of excavations tie into our exploration of larger issues of the creation and maturation of past urban landscapes, for which Tell Brak provides a great depth of data.We would like once again to express our warmest gratitude to Dr Bassam Jamous, Director General of Antiquities and Museums, to Dr Michel Al-Maqdissi, Director of Excavations, to all their staff in Damascus, and to Sd Abdul Messih Baghdo, Director of the Antiquities Office in Hasseke, for their constant and friendly support. Financial support for the excavations was generously provided by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge, the National Geographic Committee for Research and Exploration (2006), the Society of Antiquaries of London (2007), Newnham College, Cambridge and the University of Cambridge. We are extremely grateful to all those who have made this research possible.

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