Katkleen Deckers, Monika Doll, Peter Pfälzner and Simone Riehl 2010

Ausgrabungen 1998-2001 in der Zentralen Oberstadt von Tall Mozan/Urkeš.
Development of the Environment, Subsistence and Settlement of the City of Urkeš and Its Region.
Studien zur Urbanisierung Nordmesopotamiens Serie A, Band 3.,
Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

This publication explains the development of the environment, the subsistence and the settlement of Tell-Mozan/Urkesh and its region, after the 1998-2001 excavation seasons.
     Chapter 1 presents and introduction to the topic of the urban development and ecology at Urkesh, explaining the aims and the methodology of the research. After a summary of Urkesh’s stratigraphy and chronology (from early Jazirah III to Old Jazirah II), including a presentation of its ecological conditions, it is sketched a general model for the development of urbanism in the Jazirah region, identifying a ‘first turn’ and a ‘second turn’.

Chapter 2 explains the changing environment involving different strategies in plant production, displaying the results of archaeobotanical analysis on vegetal remains from Urkesh (crops, pulses, oil crops, fruit trees, gathered plants, weeds and wild plants). In the end, a precise pattern of plant production is established on the base of archaeobotanical assemblages, comparing this system with other North-Syrian sites and including in the analysis both environmental and political factors determining changes in the production.

Chapter 3 deals with anthracological researches on trees planted at Urkesh, from the Early to the Middle Bronze Age period, describing the taxa and their distribution, defining diachronic trends in the plantation of trees.

Chapter 4 debates faunal remains from Urkesh, determining species and presenting all the data divided into two section: the first is about domestic species, while the second focuses on wild animals. Skeletal element distribution, mortality patterns (and investigation on pathologies), body size and sexual distribution of the animals are considered. A paragraph is also devoted to the study of bones used as row material.

Chapter 5 concludes the volume with the study of archaeological sites of the Upper Khabur basin considering their fluvial geomorphological context. After a history of previous geomorphological fieldworks in the area, the author states a dating methodology based on thermoluminescence screening of sherds (mostly from fluvial depots), on ‘Optically Stimulated luminescence-dating’ and, of course, radiocarbon dating. A final paragraph, before the conclusion, reconstructs the mid-fourth to mid-third millennium BC fluvial environment of the Jaghjagh near Tell Hamidi.