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The Genesis and Collapse of Third Millennium North Mesopotamian Civilization Author(S): H The Genesis and Collapse of Third Millennium North Mesopotamian Civilization Author(s): H. Weiss, M.-A. Courty, W. Wetterstrom, F. Guichard, L. Senior, R. Meadow and A. Curnow Source: Science, New Series, Vol. 261, No. 5124 (Aug. 20, 1993), pp. 995-1004 Published by: American Association for the Advancement of Science Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2881847 Accessed: 19-03-2016 21:45 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. American Association for the Advancement of Science is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Science. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.148.252.35 on Sat, 19 Mar 2016 21:45:31 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions N A R T IC L E ,_ _-----rS e evwe05e*^*v"evwwww_ _____ __ _ .... ... ....................................................._ ________. The Genesis and Collapse of Third Millennium North Mesopotamian Civilization H. Weiss, M.-A. Courty, W. Wetterstrom, F. Guichard, L. Senior, R. Meadow, A. Curnow Archaeological and soil-stratigraphic data define the origin, growth, and collapse of Subir, Akkadian empire. Much of the data are the third millennium rain-fed agriculture civilization of northern Mesopotamia on the Habur derived from Tell Leilan, one of the three Plains of Syria. At 2200 B.C., a marked increase in aridity and wind circulation, subsequent large third millennium cities on the Habur to a volcanic eruption, induced a considerable degradation of land-use conditions. After Plains (Fig. 3). This site occupied 75 to 100 four centuries of urban life, this abrupt climatic change evidently caused abandonment of hectares at maximum size and was dominat- Tell Leilan, regional desertion, and collapse of the Akkadian empire based in southern ed by a 15-hectare Acropolis that today Mesopotamia. Synchronous collapse in adjacent regions suggests that the impact of the rises 20 m above plain level. Occupied from abrupt climatic change was extensive. the mid-sixth millennium B.C., Tell Lei- lan became a major center in the mid-third The origins and early history of southern 360 400 440 480 Mesopotamian civilization, the third mil- A. lennium B.C. irrigation-based cities and states of Sumer and Akkad, have been a GUTIUM Pir Hussein major archaeological research enterprise for the past century (1, 2). Recently, archaeo- KjrkemlO SUBI Ra -Hawa N-nu Karkemis ~MozaniA Leilan logical inquiry has returned to two poorly Til Barsib ChueraS Br k ,.M / al~~~~~~~o-Hawat Ninua understood questions that first attracted Eb Iutu ) A Ur bilum attention 50 years ago. The first is the ' / kS dYiTuqan t { T Taya Alhumrn /g A A 5sur?ULU 360 problem of secondary state formation, or when, how, and why the prestate societies m. A\ur. \ Guourw Tequa T of regions adjacent to pristine civilizations were transformed into state-level societies (3-6). The developmental history of Sum- SKh ul-Umbushi '~~~~~4S Siudar 'Z IMASKI er's northern neighbor, Subir, or Subartu, i~Uh. al-Umbashi Budigihursogc snun the rain-fed cereal agriculture Habur Plains Tutub 6e of northeastern Syria (Figs. 1 and 2) (7, 8), iAJUWO TTr 48? ari~ ~ ~ u.a0 0,Fi?S/ provides a means to examine these ques- tions. The second problem is state collapse, or when, how, and why stable or expanding -o ON_'2 320B SUMER- early civilizations suddenly disintegrated Urk6 'irsu - and, after a period of instability, were re- Ur e placed by new state organizations, often controlled by new ethnic groups (9, 10). B 40,? 44," -' - Fig. 1. (A) Syro-M soptma260o _________________________________________ Durumj. The sudden collapse of the Akkadian em- o 500 km ~ pire at -2200 B.C. (11) is the earliest historical example of this problem. 400 440 480 In this article we present archaeological and climatic data that define four stages for B 40 ~ 44\ Fig. 1. (A) Syro-Mesopotamia, 2600 to state formation, consolidation, imperializa- - ~~~~2000 B.C. Major urban centers of southern tion and collapse of Subir, and its dynamic TURKEY A < + ' t Mesopotamia (Sumer and Akkad) and interaction with southern Mesopotamia Habur Plains (Subir), and adjacent ancient that resulted in the disintegration of the ( -. _ _ _, (, u toponyms Arrows indicate tribal pastoral- ist Amorite (Sumerian MARDU) seasonal H. Weiss and A. Curnow are with the Tell Leilan A < RA ', 9 ''360 north-south transhumance inferred before Project, Department of Near Eastern Languages and I V / < - IRAN Habur hiatus 1 and subsequent move- Civilizations, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520- SYRIA / ment down the Euphrates and Tigris flood- 7425. M.-A. Courty is with Unite de Recherche associ6 plains. The Repeller of the Amorites wall of 723, Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, Lab- oratoire d'Hydrologie et de G6ochimie isotopique, fortresses was constructed -2054 to 2030 Universit6 de Paris-Sud, F-91405 Orsay. W. Wetter- > ,' ' IRAQ %< i>\<> B.C. from Badigihursaga to Simudar to strom is with the Harvard Botanical Museum, Cam- JORDAN>\- N _ control Amorite infiltration. (B) Modern po- bridge, MA 02138. F. Guichard is with the Centre de ._ - 32 litical units of southwest Asia and location Faibles Radioactivit6s, Laboratoire Mixte Centre Na- '. ". 7 / of Tell Leilan in Syria. tional de Recherche Scientifique-Centre d'Energie atomique, Avenue de la Terrase, F-91190 Gif-sur- Yvette. L. Senior is in the Department of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85716. R. Meadow 0 400 km - is with the Zooarchaeology Laboratory, Peabody Mu- seum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138. SCIENCE * VOL. 261 * 20 AUGUST 1993 995 This content downloaded from 128.148.252.35 on Sat, 19 Mar 2016 21:45:31 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions millennium B.C. and the political capital the major effects of an abrupt climatic Excavations in the Lower Town South of the region in the early second millenni- change at -2200 B.C., namely imperial (Operation 5) indicate that this new Tell um B.C. (12, 13). collapse, regional desertion, and large-scale Leilan settlement was carefully planned on We conducted excavations in eight Tell population dislocation. previously unoccupied virgin soil. The set- Leilan horizontal exposures and soundings tlement included a straight sherd-paved through stratified deposits, which yielded street that was 4.75 m wide. On each side Stage 1 Secondary State architectural, ceramic, faunal, and floral of the street was a mudbrick wall, behind Formation data. A series of 26 conventional and ac- which stood domestic structures that celerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon From the first settlement in the sixth mil- opened only onto alleyways; a long wall dates were derived from seed and wood lennium B.C. until the 26th century B.C., perpendicular to the street probably delim- samples from the Tell Leilan Acropolis and Tell Leilan was a small agricultural commu- ited residence or property lines. A limited Lower Town South residential area (Table nity typical of disperse settlements in the sample of faunal remains (total of 73) from 1 and Fig. 4). In addition we conducted two rain-fed north Mesopotamian plains (14). the lowest strata of the Lower Town indi- regional surveys that illuminate regional During the Tell Leilan IlId period (-2600 cates that the inhabitants exploited almost settlement patterns for the genesis and col- to 2400 B.C.), settlement patterns on the equally pig (33%), sheep and goat (32%), lapse of Subir's third millennium urban Habur Plains and the adjacent Assyrian and cattle (29%) during this period. settlement. steppe were radically altered with the sud- Excavations on the Tell Leilan Acropo- lis reveal that the simple village economy of Additionally, we studied datable, soil- den emergence of indigenous state-level the 29th to 27th centuries B.C. was re- stratigraphic units sealed below third mil- society, as seen in the large planned city at lennium occupations within 6-m-deep Tell Leilan and the reorganization of settle- placed by a structured economy based on trenches at six loci at the perimeter of Tell ments across the region. Settlement at Tell central collection and storage-and-redistri- Leilan. The micromorphological and phys- Leilan expanded more than sixfold within bution. In an area previously occupied by small-scale domestic architecture, a block icochemical properties of these units define 200 years; the city grew from a 15-hectare alterations in hydrologic regime and soil Acropolis-based settlement, to -100 hect- of rectangular storerooms (larger than 200 m2) was constructed. The receipt and dis- conditions diagnostic of significant climatic ares comprising the Tell Leilan Lower tribution of stores was in the hands of a changes. To correlate geological events and Town (excavation operations 2, 3, 5, 7, central administration, as reflected in 188 social responses within the archaeological and 8) and extended settlements to the broken door and jar sealings of clay re- record, we present dated regional socioeco- west (excavation trench D3) and east (ex- trieved within the storerooms. The cylinder nomic and climatic data. These data define cavation trench E) (Fig. 3). 420 400 370 T U R ' I N 3 7 0 f 0-- -40 r Nasran J HfIanu Moh. Diyab~ RAS _ ) Chagar Bazar .okAbit U EL-'AIN ) Germayir o Garassa Hamoukar a j BardL - Beidar Bati Bi Kashkash l\ B Abu Hgelra2 0 As wad o50 Atij Raqal B'derl 0 10 20 30 40 50 km 36osh9@ 3601 I' 420 400 Fig.
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