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Kazane Höyük and urban life histories in third millennium Upper Mesopotamia
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Kazane Höyük and urban life histories in third millennium Upper Mesopotamia
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Dissertation
Kazane Höyük and urban life histories in third millennium Upper Mesopotamia
2008
Overview
This dissertation addresses the problem of the development of cities in Upper Mesopotamia in the third millennium B.C.E. I investigate these cities through their settlement patterns and urban plans. I argue that these cities were not planned or organic, but exhibited degrees of planning. I treat my reconstruction of the developmental pathways of these cities as urban life histories. This approach examines how socio-political and economic processes are expressed in the social production and construction of urban space. At the core of this dissertation is a case study of the 100 hectare city of Kazane Höyük, located in southeastern Turkey, which was the capital of a regional polity. My study of regional settlement patterns identifies the shape of Kazane's polity, its growth and decline, and its relation to other nearby polities. I study the organization of space within Kazane through magnetometry analysis of several large areas. I study the use of space through excavations and analysis of artifacts and ecofacts. The results reveal a roughly 2 hectare area in the outer city that is characterized by elite and institutional architecture, including houses, storage facilities, and temple-related contexts, adjacent to a main street. My analysis of storage capacity indicates that this part of the city engaged in specialized administration and distribution of cereals and other products. Faunal remains show that this area also participated in a highly specialized system of animal management. Finally, I compare Kazane's urban plan and life history with that of several other third millennium cities in Upper Mesopotamia. I find that their plans are most in keeping with the theoretical perspective that these polities were heterogeneous societies in which even the most powerful ruling families were rarely able to control all socio-political or economic aspects of the polity. Instead, different factions in society concentrated on the specific socio-economic goals that best suited their needs. These strategies, and the tension between them, are expressed in the urban plan and the life history of the city.
