developmental sequence just outlined for southern Mesopotamia with contemporary developments elsewhere in the Near East.

Aborted Urbanism in Upper Mesopotamia

The long sequence of urban growth in the southern Mesopotamian alluvium that is evident throughout all phases of the Uruk period and the whole of the fourth millennium contrasts starkly with the developmental trajectory of contemporary northern Mesopotamian societies. To be sure, as Henry Wright (2001, 145) presciently noted, both sequences similarly start the fourth millennium with an burst of settlement growth and expansion of social complexity, but in the north this initial spurt came to an end approximately 3500–3400 BC or so (i.e., the end of the so-called “Northern Middle Uruk period”). Development differences between the two areas through the fourth millennium have come into sharper focus only recently as a result of new excavations and surveys centered at Tell Brak (Emberling et al. 1999; Emberling and McDonald 2001; Matthews 2003; Oates 2002; Oates and Oates 1997; Oates et al. 2007) along the Jagh Jagh branch of the Upper Khabur River in Syria, new excavations at Nineveh, near Mosul, which dominated a natural ford on the Upper Tigris River in Iraq (Stronach 1994), new surveys at Tell el-Hawa and its environs (Wilkinson and Tucker 1995), in the Jebel Sinjar Plains of northern Iraq, and older surveys in the vicinity of Samsat (summarized in Algaze 1999), which controlled a natural ford on the Upper Euphrates area of southeastern Turkey.

This new body of work shows that the scale of individual sites situated in disparate areas of the northern Mesopotamian plains during the first half of the fourth millennium was roughly comparable to that of contemporary sites in the southern Mesopotamian alluvium. Nowhere is this clearer than at Tell Brak (fig. 20), a site situated at the juncture of a historical east-west overland route across Upper Mesopotamia and the north-to-south waterborne route formed by the Jagh Jagh River, a tributary of the Khabur River. At this position, Brak functioned in effect as a natural gravity-fed collection and bulk-breaking point for metals and other commodities procured from the Anatolian highlands and brought into the Upper Mesopotamian plains, first through overland routes cutting across the Karaca Da˘g and the Mazi Da˘g mountains of southeastern Turkey and then shipped downstream the Jagh Jagh using boats or rafts.

From Brak, in turn, resources could be shipped to markets in southern Iraq via the Khabur and Euphrates rivers or, alternately, be transferred onto porters or donkeys and distributed laterally across northern Mesopotamia.

Almost certainly on account of its privileged position, Brak grew to a minimum of 65 hectares (Emberling et al. 1999) in the Northern Middle Uruk period (ca. 3800–3400 BC), and a new detailed surface survey of the immediate environs of the mound suggests that the site may have been as large as 130 hectares at this time, if one takes into account contemporary but not contiguous occupations in suburbs surrounding the main mound (Oates et al. 2007). In terms of total occupied area, though not necessarily in density or compactness (Ur, Karsgaard, and Oates 2007), Brak was thus broadly similar in scale to Warka during Adams’s (1981) “Early/Middle Uruk” phase and was at least twice as large as the second-largest center in the southern alluvium at this time, site 1306. Moreover, the recent excavations in the main mound of Brak (area TW) show that substantial buildings existed at the site at this time and that elite inhabitants of the settlement had access to a variety of exotic imported resources (Oates et al. 2007).

Brak may have been exceptional but was not unique. Though less well documented, Nineveh is also likely to have been a sizeable settlement in the first half of the fourth millennium. Its most recent excavator, David Stronach (1994), gives a preliminary estimate in the 40-hectare range for the Late Chalcolithic period. Hawa is reported to have been at this time in the range of 30-plus hectares (Wilkinson and Tucker 1995), and Samsat (Algaze 1999) and Hamoukar (Ur 2002b) were about half that size.

Similarities in the scale of individual sites in northern and southern Mesopotamia, however, mask important differences in the overall complexity of the settlement systems of both areas as a whole throughout the fourth millennium. Outside of the areas and sites noted, large portions of the extensive northern Mesopotamian plains were characterized by largely undeveloped rural landscapes and lacked any evidence for indigenous hierarchies approaching urban scope at the time. Such was the case, for instance, for all of the Tigris Basin in southeastern Turkey (Algaze et al. 1991; Algaze 1999; Wilkinson 1990a, 1994), and much of Upper Euphrates both in Turkey and Syria (Algaze et al. 1994; Algaze 1999) away from selected Uruk enclaves near natural fords. A similar situation obtained in the Aleppo plains of Syria west of the Euphrates (Matthers 1981; Schwartz et al. 2000), and even in branches of the Upper

fiGURE 20. The High Mound at Tell Brak, as seen from the surrounding plain.

Khabur in Syria other than the Jagh Jagh (Wilkinson 2000b; Stein and Wattenmaker 1990).

Even where substantial Late Chalcolithic polities did exist in northern Mesopotamia, those polities hardly equaled their southern counterparts in complexity (but see Frangipane 1997 and Lamberg-Karlovsky 1999 for a contrary view). This conclusion can be inferred from comparisons of available survey data bearing on the density and hierarchical structure of settlement grids surrounding large settlements in both areas throughout the fourth millennium. Pending the full publication of the results of the Brak regional survey, the best data we have for the north are derived from systematically conducted and published surveys conducted by Tony Wilkinson in the environs of Tell al-Hawa in the Jezirah of Iraq, Tell Beydar in the Balikh Basin of northern Syria, and Samsat on the Upper Euphrates in southeastern Turkey. His results show that during the first half of the fourth millennium each of those sites was surrounded by a corona of uniformly small village or hamlet-sized sites (Algaze 1999; Wilkinson 1990a, 2000a; Wilkinson and Tucker 1995, fig. 35, top). This compares unfavorably with the more complex settlement grids of variously sized dependent settlements that surrounded contemporary (Early/Middle Uruk) urban centers in the south (Adams 1981; Johnson 1980; Pollock

2001). Further, surveys of the Hawa and Samsat environs show that while a more complex three-tiered settlement pattern structure did eventually appear in the vicinity of both mounds in the second half of the fourth millennium, in both cases it did so only after the onset of contacts with the Uruk world and not before (Algaze 1999; Wilkinson and Tucker 1995, fig. 35, bottom).

More important still is a further difference between northern and southern Mesopotamia. Substantial Late Chalcolithic settlements in the Upper Mesopotamian plains such as Nineveh, Hawa, Hamoukar, Brak, and Samsat had no peers within their own immediate regions, were situated in different drainages, and were separated from each other by hundreds of kilometers that could only be traversed overland. Thus, they were largely isolated from one another in terms of day-to-day contacts. This was not the case in the south, where multiple competing peer cities connected by waterways existed within relatively short distances and easy communication (via water) of each other.

In light of the above, it should not be surprising to find sharp differences in the overall developmental trajectories of both areas through the fourth millennium. Most salient among these is that in the north, unlike the south, the initial burst of growth and development was not sustained for long. Because of chronological problems and inadequate exposures, data from Nineveh, Hawa, and Samsat are unreliable on this point, but new research at Brak and Hamoukar shows that both settlements contracted substantially in the second half of the fourth millennium (Emberling et al. 1999, 25–26; Emberling 2002; Oates et al. 2007, 597; and Gibson et al. 2002; Ur 2002a, 2002b, respectively), just as the expansion of southern sites such as Warka reached their Late Uruk peak. This was likely not an isolated phenomenon limited to these two sites, as a similar demographic retrenchment is reflected at a regional scale in the recalibrated north Jazirah survey data noted above (fig. 19).

Available data are not precise enough to discern whether the reversal of long-standing demographic trends in Upper Mesopotamia and the contraction of the remarkable protourban settlement at Brak were caused by the intrusion of Late Uruk elements into the area and the site, as Emberling (2002) suggests, or whether the intrusion took advantage of a broader and unrelated endogenous process of decline. Either way, the contraction of the previously quite substantial settlement at Brak in the second half of the fourth millennium meant that urban centers in the alluvium of Late Uruk date were now significantly larger than all con-

temporary Late Chalcolithic polities in the Mesopotamian periphery. In fact, at 250 hectares, Late Uruk Warka was many times larger than any contemporary peripheral competitor. The fact that this huge differential developed at precisely the time of the maximum expansion of the Uruk colonial network is unlikely to be a mere coincidence.

Developments at Brak, Hamoukar, and the north Jazirah region during the second half of the fourth millennium appear representative of Upper Mesopotamia as a whole and clearly indicate the start of a centrifugal process that would culminate in the widespread ruralization of the northern plains by the end of the fourth and the transition to the third millennium. Surveys of portions of the Upper Mesopotamian plains within modern-day Iraq, Syria, and southeastern Turkey consistently show that sites across the area dating to the end of the fourth and beginning of the third millennia (“Kurban V” and “EBI” along the Euphrates and “Painted Ninevite V” along the Khabur and Tigris basins) were uniformly small villages or hamlets (data summarized in Algaze 1999, table 3). By this time, the few indigenous protourban centers that had existed in the preceding period had shriveled in size, and they would not recover their importance until the final phases of the Ninevite V period, sometime in the second quarter of the third millennium (Matthews 2003; G. Schwartz 1994; Weiss 1990; Wilkinson 1994).

In sharp contrast to the aborted protourban experiment of the north, urbanism in the south continued to flourish and expand not only though the Uruk period but throughout the fourthand third-millennium transition (Jemdet Nasr/Early Dynastic I) as well (Adams 1981; Postgate 1986). In fact, by the first quarter of the third millennium, at a time when no urban centers are positively documented in the north, the urban spiral of the south continued unabated (Early Dynastic I): older sites such as Ur, Kish Nippur, Abu Salabikh, Warka, and possibly, Umma grew further, and new cities were founded across the alluvium, including most notably Lagash (al-Hiba) and Shuruppak (Fara; Adams 1981; H. Wright 1981b; Gibson 1972). Warka reached 600 hectares in extent at this point (Finkbeiner 1991) but this was no longer exceptional; al-Hiba situated at the edge of the easternmost marshes in the alluvium was almost as large (Carter 1985).

These differences matter considerably. As Hawley (1986, 18) has noted, the greater the number of individuals that comprise a coherent unit of social interaction, the greater the capacity of that society for collective action, and the greater the size discrepancy between two societies,

the greater the difference in their overall capabilities. Larger societies are not mere aggregates of preexisting social units, unchanged except for scale, but rather are qualitatively different because increasing social size is multiplicative rather than additive in its consequences. The reasons for this will be outlined in the chapter that follows, which examines the contributions of increasing social scale and propinquity to the Sumerian takeoff as well as the new technologies of labor control and communication that ultimately made the takeoff possible.