This volume is the result of a workshop that was organised by Salam
Al-Quntar and the editor of the present proceedings on June 11, 2014 during
the 9th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East
(ICAANE) in Basel, Switzerland. The workshop’s aim was to stimulate colleagues
studying the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods in Mesopotamia to
present papers investigating the development of human societies during the
6th - 4th millennia BC in Upper Mesopotamia. Of specific interest was the
analysis of the “socio-economic complexity” phenomenon, seen as part of
dynamics that cross the usual chronological boundaries (and thus not only
as the result of typical 5th and 4th millennium BC processes). The ten contributions
that compose the volume propose conclusions that go beyond
such rigid subdivisions; moreover, many of them present the most recent
data from key research projects currently ongoing in Upper Mesopotamia
(north-eastern Syria, south-eastern Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan). Therefore
this volume offers an updated – and to some extent alternative – view of the
crucial changes (such as different types of settlement pattern, variations in
ceramic traditions, the use of new production technologies and emergence of
early forms of urbanism) that characterised the region throughout the Neolithic
and Chalcolithic periods.
