The Umm el-Marra Project is investigating the genesis and early history of societal
complexity at a “second-tier” center of western Syria, focusing on the Early, Middle, and Late …

In the study of early Near Eastern complex societies, Syria has functioned as a complement
to Mesopotamia, the “cradle of civilization,” providing evidence of alternate trajectories to …

The 1999-2000 excavations by the Dutch-American team at Tell Umm el-Marra, western
Syria, achieved significant new results on the history and character of Bronze Age and later …

A team from the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Amsterdam has initiated a
multistage program of excavation and regional analysis based at Tell Umm el-Marra in the …

It is generally accepted that pastoral tribes with their emphasis on mobility, kin-based
descent groups and reference to ancestors underpin many of the features that broadly …

At Umm el-Marra in western Syria, a sequence of Bronze Age ritual installations facilitates
the investigation of how Syrian elites employed memory, ancestor veneration, and animal …

Increasing excavation work in Syria during the last decades has modified our understanding
of the functioning of Near Eastern complex societies. Instead of considering the palace …

Sensational discoveries made at sites of large cities of the third and second millennia BCE
have drawn much attention to Syrian archaeology in recent years. But civilization is not …

In the Near East, the end of the third millennium bc was a tumultuous time characterized in
many regions by the demise of state society or, at the very least, the increased fragmentation …

The 1996 and 1997 seasons of the Hopkins-Amsterdam project in the Jabbul plain, western
Syria, have generated new results on Bronze Age urbanism at Tell Umm el-Marra and …