Tell Brak (Syria)

Tell Brak is the largest ancient site in north-eastern Syria and one of the most important early urban centres of northern Mesopotamia. Today the remains cover an area of over forty hectares. Tell Brak was first excavated by Max Mallowan in 1937-8 when he found the remains of early religious practices represented by hundreds of votive objects, including so-called 'eye' idols (small figurines with pronounced eyes) of the fourth millennium BC. Mallowan also revealed a massive building of the Agade and Ur III periods, which may have been a palace or garrison.

Work has been conducted at the site since 1976 by David and Joan Oates. Their most important discoveries at Tell Brak include one of the earliest cylinder seals and evidence of contact with south Mesopotamia during the fourth millennium and monumental architecture of the Akkadian period. During this early period the entire site was occupied but by the second millennium the size of the settlement had shrunk. Nonetheless a huge palace complex, dating to the time of the Mitannian empire (about 1500-1360 BC), shows that Tell Brak was still an important site. Increasingly, occupation was restricted to the highest portion of the tell. There is some limited evidence of Hellenistic occupation but in Roman times there is no evidence from the tell itself. It has been suggested that Tell Brak was known as Nagar in antiquity.
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Archaeologists have long believed that the world's oldest cities lay along the fertile riverbanks of southern Mesopotamia, in what is now Iraq. There, in a land of plenty, went the idea, powerful kings began coercing their subjects to live together some 6,000 years ago. Their great invention--the city--later spread throughout the Near East. But last August, Harvard University archaeologist Jason Ur and two British colleagues turned that idea on its head. Their intensive field survey and surface collection of potsherds at the site of Tell Brak in northern Syria revealed that an ancient city rose there at exactly the same time as urban centers first sprouted up in southern Mesopotamia, but followed a very different model of development. "Urbanism," says Ur, "is not one brilliant idea that occurred one place and then diffused."
Tell Brak first came to scientific attention in the 1930s when British archaeologist Max Mallowan and his wife Agatha Christie started excavations there. But recently, a team led by Cambridge University archaeologist Joan Oates has unearthed new clues to the city's early years. By 3900 B.C., the ancient metropolis sprawled across some 130 acres and boasted a flourishing bureaucracy and skilled artisans turning out fine marble chalices and other luxury goods for the ruling class.
Intriguingly, Tell Brak seems to have grown from the outside in. In the south, cities began as a central settlement--under a single authority--that grew outward. But Ur's field survey shows that Tell Brak started as a central community ringed by smaller satellite settlements that expanded inward. "There isn't a very tight control over these surrounding villages, at least at this beginning period," says Ur. "So the assumption that we're making is that people were coming in under their own volition."