Artifacts and Activities: Chronological and Spatial Variability in a 3rd Millennium B.C. Residential Quarter at Tell Leilan (NE Syria)

The present volume is the systematic analysis of the chronostratigraphic occupational sequence and spatial organization of the Lower Town South excavation sample of the third millennium BCE at Tell Leilan, northeastern Syria. Tell Leilan is located along the wadi Jarrah on the Khabur Plains where 440 mm annual precipitation can generate extensive cereal agricultural surpluses. The deployment of these surpluses assisted Leilan’s swift growth from a fifteen hectare town to a ninety hectare city at ca 2700 BCE, when the city was known as Shekhna, and its subsequent reorganization as the regional capital, Shubat Enlil, at the post-collapse Amorite resettlement of the region in the early 19th century BCE. Tell Leilan was investigated between 1978 and 2008 by the Yale University Tell Leilan Project with seven seasons of excavation designed to sample the topographically distinct Acropolis and Lower Town, and four seasons of the Leilan Region Survey across 1650 square kilometers, north to south from the Turkish to the Iraqi frontiers. The Tell Leilan occupational sequence spanned the mid-fifth millennium to the 19th century BCE, while the Leilan Region Survey quantified settlement from the early Neolithic to the Islamic periods. The Lower Town South excavation exposed six hundred square meters of third millennium residential occupation on each side of a planned street. The general stratigraphic sequence and organization of the area was published in Weiss 1990, with 15 radiocarbon dates in Weiss et al. 1993, and a schematic doctoral dissertation in Senior 1998. The present doctoral thesis refines and finalizes the chronostratigraphic history of the Leilan Lower Town South: 1) the analysis and description of the stratigraphy and architecture of the 600 m2 area based on the excavation field notes, stratigraphic sections, topographic plans, and the excavation’s photographic record; 2) the generation of 24 new cereal grain radiocarbon dates, flotation-retrieved during the 1989 excavations, with OxCal calibration and modelling, using a total of 38 Lower Town South radiocarbon dates; 3) the analysis of the stratigraphically retrieved ceramic assemblages, ca. 2100 diagnostic sherds and profiles, to produce a new typology and a quantified ceramic chronology. The resulting relative and absolute sequence spans 500 years, from ca. 2700 to 2200/2150 cal. BCE, and provides detailed correlations with the contemporary occupations on the Leilan Acropolis and the northern City Gate, with their ceramic assemblage sequences and their radiocarbon dates. The Tell Leilan Lower Town radiocarbon-dated occupations, LTS/domestic-workshop, Acropolis/public-official and City Gate/administrative, show that different ceramic types’ distributions are not always chronological but can also be functional/social. The chronology of occupational transformations at Tell Leilan during the 3rd millennium, from initial occupation to terminal abandonment, defined here in six stages, is reflected in Khabur Plains regional settlement history that is now enhanced in detail.

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