Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati 1990

“Trade in Metals in the Third Millennium: Northeastern Syria and Eastern Anatolia,”
in P. Matthiae, M. Van Loon, and H. Weiss (eds.), Resurrecting the Past: A Joint Tribute to Adnan Bounni, Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut, pp. 117-130.

Metals have always been an important item in the ancient world and the quest for row material was indeed a first need. This paper explores trades in metals in the third millennium BC, focusing on the North-Eastern Syria and, of course, explaining the key-role of Urkesh within this framework.

A first point, underlined at the very beginning, is that “the ability of Syro-Mesopotamia to manufacture chemically complicated metal alloys into high-quality objects, […] presupposes the ability to obtain the raw materials through trade, since none of the ores is available locally” (p. 117).

After the introduction (paragraph 1), paragraph 2 investigates sources and routes, describing the most important Anatolian ores, including Ergani mining area and the Black Sea coast, stressing the importance of the Mardin pass (nearby Urkesh) in connecting Syria to Eastern Anatolia.

Paragraph 3 underlines the role played by Urkesh in the metals trade, presenting the main contexts for metals (graves of the earlier third-millennium BC, in the Outer City [see here for a map]) and describing a peculiar scraper (from tomb Ob1, see MZV3126N1) whose asymmetrical, incurving, spiral decoration resembles that of Transcaucasian objects from Georgia and Armenia.

Paragraph 4 reconstructs the trade patterns in the third millennium BC, from the Halaf period, throughout the Ubaid, the Uruk and the ED periods, stressing the Southern connections of Urkesh (attested by the use of door sealings and by its iconographical elements, anyway adapted in a local fashion and style); moreover trade “most likely is the result of the action of the strong third-millennium cities such as Mozan, […] which prohibited direct trade along the traditional trade routes to the south. These cities [i.e., those in the Khabur region] then were the gateway cities to the south and controlled the trade in metals, and presumably other goods, southward to the thriving, but materials-poor Sumerian cities” (p. 123). Of course, as attested by influences from abroad receipted at Mozan, “trade in this region was […] not only a one-way affair” (p. 124), as attested by the ceramic evidence.

Paragraph 5 traces the conclusions, stressing how “in Syro-Mesopotamia interregional exchange networks developed early” (p. 125), already in the fifth millennium BC with obsidian trade.