Contextualizing Early Urbanization: Settlement Cores, Early States and Agro-pastoral Strategies in the Fertile Crescent During the Fourth and Third Millennia BC

Abstract

This paper employs data from selected sample survey areas in the northern Fertile Crescent to demonstrate how initial urbanization developed along several pathways. The first, during the Late Chalcolithic period, was within a dense pattern of rural settlement. There followed a profound shift in settlement pattern that resulted in the formation of large walled or ramparted sites ('citadel cities') associated with a more dynamic phase of urbanization exemplified by short cycles of growth and collapse. By the later third millennium BC, the distribution of larger centres had expanded to include the drier agropastoral zone of northern and central Syria, termed here the 'zone of uncertainty'. This configuration, in turn, formed the context for Middle Bronze Age settlement, and the pattern of political rivalries and alliances that typified the second millennium BC. Evidence is marshalled from archaeological surveys and landscape analyses to examine these multiple paths to urbanization from the perspectives of (a) staple production within major 123J World Prehist (2014) 27:43-109 DOI 10.1007/s10963-014-9072-2 agricultural lowlands; (b) the shift towards higher risk animal husbandry within climatically marginal regions; (c) changes in local and inter-regional networks (connectivity); and (d) ties and rights to the land. Textile production forms the core of the proposed model, which emphasizes how the demand for wool and associated pasture lands opened up new landscapes for agro-pastoral production and settlement. The resultant landscapes of settlement are then compared with the picture in the southern Levant where a more restricted zone of uncertainty may have limited the opportunities for agro-pastoral production.

Drought stress variability in ancient Near Eastern agricultural systems evidenced by δ 13 C in barley grain

“…These relationships are relevant to the interpretation of Δ 13 C data sets from archaeological sites with unknown agricultural strategies: i.e., where the archaeological evidence for irrigation is pending. These patterns also support the suggestion that high environmental diversity, combined with regionally differing human strategies, are responsible for the heterogeneity of the Near Eastern archaeological and geoarchaeological record (4,46). (Fig.…”

“…The interpolation of Δ 13 C ranges emphasizes shifting isohyets throughout time, with the strongest drought-stress signals occurring between the modern 300-to 200-mm isohyets during the Middle Bronze Age, the second half of the Early Bronze Age, and the Late Bronze Age, in decreasing order. Particularly significant are the changes in drought-stress signals of the Early Bronze Age to Middle Bronze Age sequence, which are in agreement with the changing archaeological settlement record (46,48) and the paleoclimate proxy records describing the 4200 B.P. event (15).…”

“…appears to show a continuation of this process, which is particularly visible in the minima values indicating extremes of drought stress in the Khabur area, but also at the sites of Emar and Qatna, whereas only slight changes toward higher aridity occurred along the coast, at Kinet Höyük and Tell Tweini. This increased inland aridity correlates with archaeologically observed demographic patterns in northern Mesopotamia, the Khabur-Balikh steppe, the middle Euphrates (46), and the Aleppo and Hama districts (48). There was a reduction in the number of sites between the end of the Early Bronze Age and the Middle Bronze Age.…”

Settlement in the Upper Orontes Valley from the Neolithic to the Islamic Period: an Instance of Punctuated Equilibrium

“…1), the study area ought to provide a guide to diachronic trends in settlement in an area that is relatively 'low-risk' in terms of rainfall, and in which we might therefore expect settlement stability to have been the norm. The data from a settlement 'core' such as the Orontes Valley will provide an important point of comparison for the distinct phases of settlement contraction and expansion that have been revealed by work further to the east (Geyer 2007;Geyer and Calvet 2001), in what Wilkinson et al (2014) term the 'Zone of Uncertainty'. (For further discussion of the concepts of settlement 'cores' and the 'Zone of Uncertainty' see Wilkinson et al [2014]).…”

Tony Wilkinson and the water history of the Near East

“…This NSF-funded project ultimately involved more than a dozen collaborators from many disciplines and institutions (Wilkinson et al 2013). Most recently, he began to write the settlement history of the entire ancient Near East in the Fragile Crescent Project (Wilkinson et al 2014). This collaborative effort had already begun to produce the latest generation of students, who will continue his intellectual legacy.…”