The excavations at Kilise Tepe in the 1990s inevitably left a range of research questions unanswered, and our second spell of work at the site from 2007 to 2011 sought to address some of these, relating to the later second and early first millennia. This article gathers the architectural and stratigraphic results of the renewed excavations, presenting the fresh information about the layout and character of the Late Bronze Age North-West Building and the initial phases of the Stele Building which succeeded it, including probable symbolic practices, and describing the complex stratigraphic sequence in the Central Strip sounding which covers the lapse of time from the 12th down to the seventh century. There follow short reports on the analyses of the botanical and faunal materials recovered, a summary of the results from the relevant radiocarbon dating samples and separate studies addressing issues resulting from the continuing study of the ceramics from the different contexts. Taken together, a complex picture emerges of changes in settlement layout, architectural traditions, use of external space, artefact production and subsistence strategies during the centuries which separate the Level III Late Bronze Age settlement from the latest Iron Age occupation around 700 BC.

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In the 4th millennium BC, Mesopotamia witnessed the world's first urban settlements and associated economic and political complexities. However, the burial practices of this period are poorly known, leaving a gap in our reconstruction of the social implications of this important transition. The funerary traditions of the preceding and succeeding 5th and 3rd millennium BC in Mesopotamia are well-known, but there does not appear to be a continuum of practice across the intervening millennium. This paper explores the current state of knowledge of burial practices in 4th millennium BC Mesopotamia, including an under-examined adult-infant dichotomy. Based on recently-excavated data from Tell Brak in northeast Syria, we propose a model of site-edge burial during the urban transition in northern Mesopotamia.

This chapter describes the IIa/b and IIc phases of the Stele Building as a shrine, and treats these symbolic features as attributes of a Luwian religious structure. The central space, called Room 3, hosted two elements of the building, the central hearth and the altar in the north corner, which persisted throughout both IIa/b and IIc phases. The Stele Building at Kilise Tepe, while clearly serving as a storehouse and very likely as the base for local administrators in the 13th and early 12th centuries, displays certain elements, principally the altar and the stele itself, which point to a cultic role as well. Animal bones under the floors of Rooms 2 and 4 probably represent deposits of food offerings, while astragali behind the altar and concealed beneath the floor of Room 7 may reflect divinatory practices pursued within the building. Keywords: altar; astragali; Kilise Tepe; Luwian religious structure; Stele Building

Excavations at Tell Brak in 2006–7 explored two key episodes in Mesopotamian political and social history, developing early social complexity in the fifth to fourth millennia BC and the shift from territorial state to early empire in the second millennium BC. Late Chalcolithic complexity is represented in Area TW on the main mound and at the outlying sub-mound of Tell Majnuna, while investigation of the Old Babylonian to Mitanni state-to-empire transition involved excavation in Areas HH and HN (Fig. 1). Both sets of excavations tie into our exploration of larger issues of the creation and maturation of past urban landscapes, for which Tell Brak provides a great depth of data.We would like once again to express our warmest gratitude to Dr Bassam Jamous, Director General of Antiquities and Museums, to Dr Michel Al-Maqdissi, Director of Excavations, to all their staff in Damascus, and to Sd Abdul Messih Baghdo, Director of the Antiquities Office in Hasseke, for their constant and friendly support. Financial support for the excavations was generously provided by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge, the National Geographic Committee for Research and Exploration (2006), the Society of Antiquaries of London (2007), Newnham College, Cambridge and the University of Cambridge. We are extremely grateful to all those who have made this research possible.