Tell al-Raqa'i levels 7--4: The origins and growth of a Ninevite V village (Syria)

This dissertation addresses issues relating to the development of rural economic systems in the context of urbanization and state formation. Traditional models of core-periphery interaction invariably stress a one sided perspective of exchange that often neglects local process and agency. In this thesis, the proliferation and transformation of villages in the Middle Khabur Valley of northeastern Syria are examined in the context of political economic regionalization during the early third millennium BC. This period witnessed sweeping changes in the political and economic frontier that were in large part associated with urbanization and state formation in the Upper Khabur plains. Earlier arguments that a burgeoning class of bureaucratic, urban based elite expanded into the Middle Khabur Valley and garnered control of agricultural resources there is called into question here as well. This one dimensional perspective is discarded in favor of a model that stresses exchange over domination between the rural periphery and growing states. Ultimately, this approach provides a better foundation for examining the relationships between these two spheres.; The formation of corporate group structure is one indication of changing social and economic relationships between populations. I propose in this thesis that local populations in the Middle Khabur Valley responded to expanding economic opportunities by coalescing into corporate groups. Corporate groups are more able to weather the vagaries of high-risk environments in regard to managing and ensuring agricultural resources. In addition, corporate groups are capable of amassing greater control of essential and non-essential resources, which afford them greater power locally as well as more leverage in dealing with other external sociopolitical entities.; The architectural and spatial attributes at Tell al-Raqa'i in the Middle Khabur Valley contribute enormous insight into the changing use of space associated with the formation of corporate groups. This is observed at Tell al-Raqa'i in the transition from single family households to extended households represented by multi-roomed building groups that reflect the consolidation of labor and resources. Another key indicator of central social and economic management is the advent of specialized structures, primarily for storage and defense. At Tell al-Raqa'i, the Rounded Building, located at the core of the village, was the focus of production and storage. The consolidation of production and storage, a chief economic protocol of corporate groups, in this relatively massive structure provides more compelling evidence for a corporately managed system. Changes in subsistence practices, most notably the extensification of agricultural production, and the growing stress on pastoral production toward the middle of the third millennium BC, are associated with these structural and spatial changes.; These data lend further weight to the argument that local social and economic practices had been significantly transformed in the valley around the time urbanization was coming into full swing in the north. The impetus for these changes can be correlated with potentially more amenable climate and rainfall regimes, expanding and strengthening exchange contacts within the valley and with outside polities, and, I suggest, the exhaustion of local sources of wood for fuel.