Edgar Peltenberg - Euphrates River Valley Settlement: The Carchemish Sector in the Third Millennium BC

Chronological table of main Early Bronze Age sites in the Carchemish and Banat sectors of the Middle Euprhates valley, together with Tilbeshar and Tell es-Sewyhat. Shaded areas: no evidence of occupation

In disregarding the existing political boundary, this work consciously attempts a contrast with important analyses of valley data which stop abruptly at the modern border. They include the indispensable reports of rescue excavations in the Tishrin, Carchemish and Birecik Dam areas referred to in the List of Abbreviations, such general works as Akkermans and Schwartz 2003 and Cooper 2006 which deal with the Syrian Euphrates, and Algazes seminal survey of the Birecik and Carchemish dam areas (Algaze et al. 1994), which perforce stops at the border.

But if our aim is to treat the new evidence in regional terms, and to identify distinctive traits of the Carchemish region in the 3rd millennium BC, then we should be the first to acknowledge that we have created another artificial boundary. As emphasized in papers by Kepinski and especially Wilkinson, our focus on rescue operations in the valley diminishes the significance of likely eastwest communication routes linking it to distant resources and other economically and politically important areas, as well as to the adjacent plateaus such as the Suru which were important grazing and hunting zones for the pastoralists who must have been intimately integrated into life in the valley. Nor should we think of these plateau niches at Carchemish latitudes as solely the preserve of pastoralists. To the east of the Euphrates, in the Syrian Suru, Einwag has demonstrated the existence of many EBA settlements, without kranzhgel but including larger sites such as Tell Matin with its temple in antis (Einwag 1993, pl. 3d). An extension of the 250 mm isohyet here allowed dry farming further south, especially in patches along wadis and other catchment islands ( cf. Herveux 2004), but in general there is a greater scarcity of EBA sites south of the AleppoHassake road. This means that different kinds of valleyupland interactions existed in the Carchemish and in the Tabqa sectors of the Euphrates ( cf. Einwag 1993; Danti 1997; 2000, 272).

Some sites were ideally positioned for extra-valley communication routes. Jerablus Tahtani faces contemporary Shiukh Fawqani (both were founded in the 4th millennium BC: see Wilkinson for the significance of such pairings), Carchemish lies at the mouth of the Ctluk Su (Sachau 1883), Amarna at the confluence of the Nahr Amarna and Euphrates, and Tell Ahmar is situated opposite the mouth of the Sajur River where there are newly discovered EBA stations (Wilkinson et al . in press). Many EBA sites occur along these tributaries and their adjacent plateaus to the west of the Euphrates. They include Tilbeshar (see paper by Kepinski) and rich tombs (Sertok, Squadrone) which are treated here to highlight a major conclusion of the workshop, namely the strong western affinities of Carchemish sector material culture for most of the 3rd millennium BC (see also zgen and Helwing 2003, 74). McCarthys exploration of seals points to the existence of eastwest routes, perhaps similar to Classical ones that linked the valley with Aleppo and Ashur (Algaze 1993, 4245). But it cannot be emphasized too strongly that Euphrates investigations are largely driven by rescue not research designs, and that there is a current mismatch between geographically constrained investigations and paucity of evidence outside the valley to support large scale inferences ( cf . Rothman and Fuensanta 2003, 593594). With such an informational imbalance, it is evident that the demarcation of boundaries of a Carchemish region in the EBA, however that is defined (see paper by Wilkinson), and our narratives of its past are currently heavily biased by rescue agendas. It should be equally obvious that, having divided the landscape by our modern concerns, we are still far from being able to address such boundary issues as how different ancient communities inhabited the region but perceived it as different landscapes which intersescted in different ways, and the role of such boundaries in constructing identities ( cf . Thomas 2001, 181).