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Legal and archaeological territories of the second millennium BC in northern Mesopotamia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Lauren Ristvet
Lauren Ristvet*
Affiliation:
*Department of History, Georgia State University, Atlanta GA 30302, USA (Email: lristvet@gsu.edu)
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Extract

Defining territories and settlement hierarchies is a primary goal of archaeological survey, involving the mapping of different-sized settlements on the ground. However it may not always work, owing to the particular land use or political strategies anciently employed. With the aid of cuneiform documents from Tell Leilan, Syria, the author shows how the settlements found by archaeological survey in northern Mesopotamia actually relate to a number of intersecting authorities, with a hold on major tracts of pasture as well as on arable land and cities. These insights from the Near East have important implications for the interpretation of surveyed settlement patterns everywhere.

Keywords

Mesopotamiasecond millennium BCsettlement rankingsurvey
Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 82 , Issue 317 , September 2008 , pp. 585 - 599
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2008

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