Uruk Mesopotamia and its neighbors

In Old and New World archaeology, the Mesopotamian case has long stood as "the" model for the evolution of complex societies, providing the conceptual and organizational standard for understanding city and state origins. But new data on Mesopotamia in the late 5th and 4th millennia BC have been accruing with astonishing speed over the last 20 years, opening fresh areas of exploration and debate. In "Uruk Mesopotamia and Its Neighbours", ten of the foremost field archaeologists working in the area today provide an overview and analysis of these data. The authors radically reassess the chronological framework for the greater Mesopotamian region, assemble basic data sets on both local and regional levels, and interpret and synthesize these data to put local patterns and dynamics into their widest regional context. With lavish illustration and thorough documentation, this volume is destined to become a standard reference work on the state of Mesopotamian archaeology at the beginning of the 21st century. Its significance extends beyond the archaeology of the ancient Near East to the wider fields of anthropology and political science. Contents: The local and the regional - introduction, Mitchell Rothman; the prehistory of imperialism - the case Uruk period Mesopotamia, Guillermo Algaze; calibrated radiocarbon age determinations of Uruk-related assemblies, Henry T. Wright and E.S.A. Rupley; cultural actions in the Uruk world, Henry T. Wright; cultural and political networks in the ancient and near east during the 4th and 3rd millennia BC, Hans Nissen; the Uruk period in southern Mesopotamia, Susan Pollock; Syria and the Uruk expansion, Glenn M. Schwartz; indigenous social complexity at Hacinebi (Turkey) and the organization of colonial contact in the Uruk "expansion" as the culmination of an early system of intra-regional relations, Marcella Frangipane; the Tigris Piedmont, eastern Jazira and highland western Iran in the 4th millennium BC, Mitchell S. Rothman; intra-regional relations reflected through glyptic evidence, Holly Pittman; a view of the plains from the mountains - comments on the Uruk by an Andeanist, Terence N. D´Altroy.