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The Umm el-Marra Project is investigating the genesis and early history of societal complexity at a “second-tier” center of western Syria, focusing on the Early, Middle, and Late Bronze Age occupations. In 2006 and 2008, important results were achieved for all three periods. Excavation of the Early Bronze Age elite mortuary complex on the acropolis supplies new data supporting the interpretation that the complex served to inscribe elite ideologies on the landscape in its invocation of social memory and ancestral figures. Evidence of a hiatus of several centuries after the Early Bronze occupation provides new information on the urban “collapse” of the era. Monumental and defensive architecture and the remains of ritual behavior reveal the character of urban regeneration in the period of Amorite dynasties in the Middle Bronze Age. Finally, the Late Bronze Age Mittani occupation furnishes data on the site’s incorporation into a large international empire. Additional figures can be found under this article’s abstract onAJA Online.

Excavations at Tell Umm el-Marra, Syria, in 2002 and 2004 revealed that the elite Tomb 1 discovered on the site acropolis in 2000 was part of a mid to late third-millennium B.C. mortuary complex devoted to individuals of high rank. The complex included a sequence of at least six tombs as well as installations with evidence of the ritual sacrifice of equids and perhaps human infants. Mortuary data allow for the consideration of the role of social status, gender, ideology, and other variables in the development of local complex society. It is hypothesized that elite ancestor veneration served to reinforce and legitimize local authority, and tomb disturbances are interpreted as desecrations intended to sever the connection between the interred ancestors and the living community. Following the period of the mortuary complex, a large, circular stone platform designated Monument 1 was constructed above it, indicating the continued special character of the Umm el-Marra acropolis in the early second millennium B.C. and the uses of social memory by the authorities of that period.

The 1999-2000 excavations by the Dutch-American team at Tell Umm el-Marra, western Syria, achieved significant new results on the history and character of Bronze Age and later occupation at the site. Of particular note was the discovery of an intact high status (royal?) tomb of the Early Bronze Age (ca. 2300 B.C.) in the site center, providing data for testing hypotheses on the character and ideology of Syrian elites in this period. Important new information was also obtained on the earliest occupation of Umm el-Marra in the early third millennium B.C., the transition from the Early to the Middle Bronze periods, and the urban revitalization of Middle Bronze II. Results from subsequent eras included the discovery of a Late Bronze period Mitannian legal tablet from the reign of Shuttarna II (early 14th century B.C.) and new data on the Achaemenid, Hellenistic, and Roman period occupations.

The 1996 and 1997 seasons of the Hopkins-Amsterdam project in the Jabbul plain, western Syria, have generated new results on Bronze Age urbanism at Tell Umm el-Marra and elucidated longer-term settlement patterns in the Jabbul region. Excavation results have documented the foundation of Umm el-Marra as a regional center in the Early Bronze Age, provided new data on a period of decentralization in Middle Bronze I, and supplied evidence of the regeneration of urbanism in MB II. Faunal and archaeobotanical analysis broaden our understanding of these developments, attesting to an economy over-whelmingly dependent on the steppe environment, with an emphasis on large-scale onager hunting in MB II. Finally, a regional survey provides data on long-term demographic and socioeconomic trends, furnishing an expansive time range and spatial context for our understanding of developmental patterns in the region. The survey results supply new information on the limits of the Uruk expansion, cycles of Bronze Age urbanization, changing patterns of steppe exploitation, and demographic and agricultural extensification in the Byzantine and Early Islamic periods.

An intact wealthy tomb dating to the later 3rd millennium BC was discovered in the 2000 spring-summer season of the Dutch-American expedition to Tell Umm el-Marra Syria. This structure provides further evidence of the trend towards conspicuous and wealthy mortuary monuments in Syria's earliest urban civilization.

A team from the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Amsterdam has initiated a multistage program of excavation and regional analysis based at Tell Umm el-Marra in the Jabbul plain east of Aleppo. Archaeological and textual evidence from Ebla and elsewhere has demonstrated that the Aleppo region was an important center of early complex society in western Syria, and the joint project will focus on tracing its developmental trajectory. As the first stage of this project, excavations at Umm el-Marra, a major Bronze Age center of the Jabbul, were conducted in 1994 and 1995. Deposits from Roman and Hellenistic occupations were identified above an extensive Late Bronze Age settlement with evidence of a site-wide destruction in the early Late Bronze Age, while Middle Bronze Age remains indicated the apparent importance of the town in the period of the Yamḫad state.

Two final seasons of excavation at Tell al-Raqā'i in northeastern Syria have provided new information on the nature of a rural community in the early to middle third millennium B. C. and its involvement in the development of urbanization and sociopolitical complexity in the region. The large Rounded Building, which dominated the site, was found to contain well-preserved vaulted storage facilities and can be interpreted, along with other structures outside it, as a locus for large-scale grain storage and processing. Similar activities were also associated with the earliest levels at the site, prior to the construction of the Rounded Building. These results corroborate and expand our understanding of Raqā'i as an economically specialized rural community concerned with bulk storage and processing of grain, part of a system of specialized sites established along the Khabur River in probable association with developing complex polities elsewhere.

The site of Tell al-Raqā'i in the middle Ḫabur valley is the focal point of an excavation project investigating the social and economic organization of a small rural community during the emergence of urban systems in northern Mesopotamia in the mid-third-millennium B. C. Three seasons of excavation, exposing the majority of the two latest third-millennium occupation levels, have supplied evidence of an architecturally diverse community engaged in specialized production activities; these results, together with the discovery of large-scale grain storage complexes near Raqā'i, indicate the presence of centers of collection, storage, processing, and distribution of agricultural products in the middle Ḫabur. The probable association of the middle Ḫabur specialized sites with newly emergent large centers outside the valley suggests a close integration of urban and rural economies in the region in the mid-third millennium.