After the Uruk

This book presents and analyses data from Tilbes Höyük, a Bronze Age site on the middle Upper Euphrates. This is the first full publication of this site, retrieved as part of salvage excavations at the Birecik Dam in southeastern Turkey. The chapters include comprehensive comparative analyses of floral and faunal remains, metallurgy, lithics, and pottery. It also includes analysis of the Middle Early Bronze Age shrine, investigating the ideology it represents and changing mortuary practices. This work helps to test the current theory that Greater Mesopotamia was a World System in the 4th millennium (LC2-5), which collapsed before the 3rd millennium Early Bronze Age. That theory suggests that a dominant Southern heartland of cities dominated the peripheral North and East. Reviewing new data and theory, this volume suggests that the ancient reality was much more complex than this theory proposes. No universal collapse occurred, and viewed from the perspective of a Darwinian analogy, the organization, ideology, and behaviors/adaptations/practices of different sub-regions of the North were selected for by changing interaction spheres, sources of raw materials, natural environments, and political and cultural structures. The volume also questions whether the urban focus of research to date paints an accurate picture of settlement systems in the North during this timeframe.