News: Tell Brak

Tell Brak Featured in Science and Antiquity

Recent work at Tell Brak in NE Syria has revealed unique evidence for ‘urban’ growth together with a surprising degree of ‘industrial’ and ‘administrative’ activity in the late 5th/ early 4th millennia BC. Also unusual is the evidence for some catastrophic event at this time, found in a small mounded area in Brak’s outer town, some 600 m from the main tell. Here a very large pit was identified containing many human bodies, overlaid by a thick layer of pottery and cattle bones. The bodies had been left in the open for some time and had then been carried to the pit and somewhat carelessly thrown in. The age profile is unusual — largely able-bodied men and adolescents — not that of an epidemic or secondary burial but suggestive of a massacre, though whether of enemies or locals cannot as yet be determined. This secondary burial seems to have been accompanied by feasting (attested by the associated pottery and cattle bones), though whether in celebration of victory or in mourning defeated casualties remains unclear.

On the tell itself an unusual monumental building and associated ‘industrial’ buildings, dating to the late 5th millennium, were excavated. These lay adjacent to a sherd-paved street leading from the north entrance to the city, through which raw materials from Anatolia and the West would have been acquired. Such raw materials were found in large quantity in the ‘industrial’ buildings, together with many large ovens, seal impressions, spindle whorls and other evidence of large-scale manufacturing activities, evidence suggesting an economic and/or administrative function for the associated but empty monumental building. These unique buildings date to the time when the outer city at Brak began to be settled, and by the early 4th millennium there is evidence for extensive occupation not only of the whole of the main tell (over 40 ha) but also over extensive areas in the outer town (creating a minimum total settled area of c.130 ha. We cannot tell how much of the outer occupation is precisely contemporary but it is clear that by the early 4th millennium BC Brak was a larger settlement than any other as yet identified, anywhere, and that the early growth of truly urban settlement is thus to be found in Northern as well as Southern Mesopotamia where the earliest cities have always been thought, exclusively, to be located.

The recent excavations were carried out under the Field Direction of Dr Augusta McMahon, while the intensive survey of the outer town was carried out by Dr Jason Ur and Philip Karsgaard. Dr Joan Oates is the overall Project Director. Long-term support has come from the McDonald Institute, the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, the British Academy and the National Geographic Society.

Joan Oates

Discover more:

McMahon & Oates 2007. Excavations at Tell Brak 2006-2007, Iraq 69, 1-27. Oates, J., A. McMahon, P. Karsgaard, S. Al Quntar & J. Ur 2007. Early Mesopotamian urbanism: a new view from the north, Antiquity 81, 585-600. Ur, J., P. Karsgaard & J. Oates 2007. Early Urban Development in the Near East, Science 317, 1188. A. Lawler 2007. Murder in Mesopotamia, Science 317, 1164-5.