Associated Regional Chronologies for the Ancient Near East and the Eastern Mediterranean

The Middle Euphrates region extends between Jezirah and Northern Levant; it follows the course of the Euphrates from the south flanks of the Taurus mountains in Turkey almost to the modern border with Iraq. The settlement area drawn out between steppes in the east and in the west owes its particular character to just that life line with its rich soil but also to the trade routes meeting at the Euphrates Bend and connecting Anatolia to Mesopotamia, and the Syrian east to the Levant. Especially for the 3^rd millennium, finds and findings from the area under consideration show great cultural variety and demonstrate the different influences by the neighbouring regions that meet here at the Euphrates river.

The international rescue excavations in the wake of dam projects in Turkey as well as in Syria yielded abundant material. The present study takes into account the results of more than forty sites. In agreement with the principles of ARCANE the richly illustrated account is divided along find groups and written by experts who supplemented their specific chronological findings thus arriving at a new periodization and terminology for the 3^rd millennium.

Uwe Finkbeiner teaches at the Institute for Ancient Near Eastern Studies (IANES), Department of Near Eastern Archaeology at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen. His research focuses on questions of chronology and on the possibilities of pottery analysis to pinpoint periods and their boundaries.

Mirko Novák teaches at the Institute for Archaeological Sciences at the University of Bern. Main topics are architecture and semiotic approach in archaeology.

Ferhan Sakal is the head of archaeological operations at the Qatar Museums Authority (QMA). His research interests cover the art and archaeology of the Bronze Age Near East.

Paola Sconzo is researcher at the Institute for Ancient Near Eastern Studies (IANES), Department of Near Eastern Archaeology at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen. Her research mainly focuses on pottery technology of the Bronze Age in the Near East.

Foreword (U. Finkbeiner, M. Novák, F. Sakal, P. Sconzo),

Introduction (U. Finkbeiner, M. Novák, M. Lebeau),

Stratigraphy (U. Finkbeiner),

Urbanism and Architecture (M. Novák),

Ceramics (P. Sconzo),

Glyptic and Art (C. Felli),

Anthropomorphic Terracotta Figurines (F. Sakal),

Animal Terracotta Figurines and Model Vehicles (A. Pruß),

Metal (F. F. Squadrone),

Lithics (J. Thomalsky),

Bone Objects (H. Genz),

Burials and Funerary Practices (M. Bouso),

Radiocarbon Chronology (K. Deckers, P. Drechsler, P. Sconzo),

History and Philology (G. Marchesi),

Conclusion (U. Finkbeiner, M. Novák, F. Sakal, P. Sconzo)