Development of the Environment, Subsistence and Settlement of the City of Urkes and Its Region

The third part of the final report on the excavations of the central upper city of Tall Mozan/Urkes in Syria is dedicated to some aspects of the scientific analyses. Animal bones, botanical samples and charcoal were collected among other materials during the excavations from 1998 to 2001. The material was analysed and identified by three scientists of the University of Tubingen: Kathleen Deckers, Monika Doll and Simone Riehl. Their findings are being presented in detail in four contributions giving information about vegetation, climate and livestock farming in the Central City. Deckers, Doll and Riehl do not only give the results of individual analyses, but also give a detailed contribution to the reconstruction of the environment of Tall Mozan during the third and second millennium BC. Peter Pfalzner's synthesis, which precedes the other contributions, combines those current results of the scientific analyses and puts them into their archaeological context. The resulting overall picture leads to a discussion of existing theories on the environmental and climatic reconstruction of the region. By these means it gives a new and exciting analysis of the conditions of that time on Tall Mozan and its surroundings.