In Old and New World archaeology, the Mesopotamian case has long stood as the model for the evolution of complex societies, providing the conceptual and organizational standard for understanding city and state origins. But new data on Mesopotamia in the late 5th and 4th millennia BC have been accruing with astonishing speed over the last 20 years, opening fresh areas of exploration and debate. In Uruk Mesopotamia and Its Neighbours , ten of the foremost field archaeologists working in the area today provide an overview and analysis of these data. The authors radically reassess the chronological framework for the greater Mesopotamian region, assemble basic data sets on both local and regional levels, and interpret and synthesize these data to put localpatterns and dynamics into their widest regional context. With lavish illustration and thorough documentation, this volume is destined to become a standard reference work on the state of Mesopotamian archaeology at the beginning of the 21st century. Its significance extends beyond the archaeology of the ancient Near East to the wider fields of anthropology and political science.

The fourth millennium BC was a critical period of socio-economic and political transformation in the Iranian Plateau and its surrounding zones. This period witnessed the appearance of the world’s earliest urban centres, hierarchical administrative structures, and writing systems. These developments are indicative of significant changes in socio-political structures that have been interpreted as evidence for the rise of early states and the development of inter-regional trade, embedded in longer-term processes that began in the later fifth millennium BC. Iran was an important player in western Asia especially in the medium- to long-range trade in raw materials and finished items throughout this period. The 20 papers presented here illustrate forcefully how the re-evaluation of old excavation results, combined with much new research, has dramatically expanded our knowledge and understanding of local developments on the Iranian Plateau and of long-range interactions during the critical period of the fourth millennium BC.

The use of world-systems theory to explain the spread of social complexity has become accepted practice by both historians and archaeologists. Gil Stein now offers the first rigorous test of world systems as a model in archaeology, arguing that the application of world-systems theory to noncapitalist, pre-fifteenth-century societies distorts our understanding of developmental change by overemphasizing the role of external over internal dynamics. In this new study, Stein proposes two complementary theoretical frameworks for the study of interregional interaction: a "distance-parity" model, which views world-systems as simply one factor in a broader range of intersocietal relations, and a "trade-diaspora" model, which explains variation in exchange systems from the perspective of participant groups. He tests his models against the archaeological record of Mesopotamian expansion into the Anatolian highlands during the fourth millennium B.C. Whereas some scholars have considered this "Uruk expansion" to be one of the earliest documented world-systems, Stein uses data from the site of Hacinebi in southeastern Turkey to support his alternate perspective. Comparing economic data from pre- and postcontact phases, Stein shows that the Mesopotamians did not dominate the people of this distant periphery. Such evidence, argues Stein, shows that we must look more closely at the local cultures of peripheries to develop realistic cross-cultural models of variation in colonialism, exchange, and secondary state formation in ancient societies. By demonstrating that a multitude of factors affect the nature and consequences of intersocietal contacts, his book advocates a much-needed balance between recognizing that no society can be understood in complete isolation from its neighbors and assuming the primacy of outside contact in a society's development.

THIS ISSUE CONTAINS “FIFTY YEARS OF EXCAVATIONS AND RESEARCHES AT ARSLANTEPE-MALATYA (TURKEY). A CONTRIBUTION TO THE STUDY OF THE EARLIEST CENTRALISED SOCIETIES” Proceedings of the International Conference held in Rome on 5-7 December, 2011 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Sapienza University expedition at Arslantepe.The volume is organised in five thematic sections, each referring to a topic on which the excavations at Arslantepe have obtained results, and presenting contributions by both members of the Arslantepe team and other scholars working on the same topic in other sites or regions of the Near East. The objective was to relate the Arslantepe achievements with other outcomes, in the framework of the current debate. Thematic sections in the volume: THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL COMPLEXITY IN THE LATE CHALCOLITHIC (5TH AND 4TH MILLENNIA BC) Arslantepe in the 5th and 4th millennia M. Frangipane, F. Balossi Restelli, M.B. D'Anna and P. Guarino, H. Pittman, H. Çaliskan Akgül, G. Siracusano and L. Bartosiewicz Late Chalcolithic developments in other regions of the Near East G. Stein, S. Pollock, J. Oates, P. Butterlin, B. Helwing, S. Gülçür. ARSLANTEPE IN THE EARLY BRONZE AGE: FAR-REACHING CHANGES AND THE RISE OF NEW SOCIETIES M. Frangipane, G. Palumbi, P. Piccione and C. Lemorini, Y.S. Erdal, R. Laurito. ON THE MARGINS OF EMPIRES: MALATYA AND THE HITTITEWORLD M. Liverani, C. Alvaro, F. Manuelli, S. de Martino, C. Mora and L. d'Alfonso, S. Mazzoni, A. Archi. ENVIRONMENT AND SOCIETY. ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS, AGRICULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY IN THE MALATYA PLAIN S. Dreibrodt, C. Lubos, J. Lomax, T. Schroedter and O. Nelle, L. Sadori and A. Masi, G. Liberotti and R. Quaresima. CONSERVATION AND EXHIBITION OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES M. Özdögan and Z. Eres, D. Mangano.

In European prehistory population agglomerations of more than 10,000 inhabitants per site are a seldom phenomenon. A big surprise to the archaeological community was the discovery of Trypillia mega-sites of more than 250 hectares and with remains of more than 2000 houses by a multidisciplinary approach of Soviet and Ukrainian archaeology, including aerial photography, geophysical prospection and excavations nearly 50 years ago. The extraordinary development took place at the border of the North Pontic Forest Steppe and Steppe zone ca. 4100–3400 BCE. Since then many questions arose which are of main relevance: Why, how and under which environmental conditions did Trypillia mega-sites develop? How long did they last? Were social and/or ecological reasons responsible for this social experiment? Are Trypillia and the similar sized settlement of Uruk two different concepts of social behaviour? Paradigm change in fieldwork and excavation strategies enabled research teams during the last decade to analyse the mega-sites in their spatial and social complexity. High precision geophysics, target excavations and a new design of systematic field strategies deliver empirical data representative for the large sites. Archaeological research contributed immensely to aspects of anthropogenic induced steppe development and subsistence concepts that did not reach the carrying capacities. Probabilistic models based on 14C-dates made the contemporaneity of the mega-site house structures most probable. In consequence, Trypillia mega-sites are an independent European phenomenon that contrasts both concepts of urbanism and social stratification that is seen with similar demographic figures in Mesopotamia. The new Trypillia research can be read as the methodological progress in European archaeology.

This volume presents recent research on the relationship between the material format of text-bearing artefacts, the texts they carry, and their genre. The essays cover a vast period, from the counting stones of the late 4th millennium BCE to the time of the Great Hittite Kingdom in the 2nd millennium BCE. The breadth of substantive focus allows new insights of relevance to scholars in both Ancient Middle Eastern studies and the humanities.

This book explores the roles of mobile and sedentary members of the ancient world in ancient Mesopotamia.