Upper Mesopotamian cIties have two general shapes defined by their city walls and the location of the pre-urban settlement tell (Figure 2.2). The first shape is oblong cities - such as Sweyhat, Leilan, Titris, and Kazane - in which the tell (mound of earlier period ruins) is located off-center and its elevated terrain, sometimes greater than twenty meters high, formed a convenient citadel for the city. In some cases, this location may have a practical purpose in providing a quick exit for officials or soldiers leaving the city to escape or confront an enemy. This location may also make it easier to transport valuable goods to the citadel. Stone (1995:243) notes that very taLl temple platforms in Lower Mesopotamian cities are located outside the center of the city, perhaps setting a precedent or at least a parallel for the high versus low spatial division in Upper Mesopotamian cities between the upper city on the citadel and expansive lower towns. Although this high versus low division may serve an ideological purpose, it may just as well result from convenience or land tenure (see "Land Tenure" section later in this chapter), and the many stratigraphic layers within citadels testify to the long life history of these places (see Nishimura, Chapter 3 In this volume, for another perspective on citadel mounds, lower towns, and city shapes).
The seconD Upper Mesopotamian city shape is round - such as Chuera, Beydar, Bati, and Al Rawda - in which the pre-urban tell, if present, is located in the center of the site and is generally larger, forming a full-fledged upper city rather than a steep-sided citadel with limited flat space. Dubbed Kranzhugeln by early German archaeologists,6 many of these cities are found in the relatively marginal (low rainfall) steppe between the Balikh and Khabur Rivers, and in the vicinity of the low mountain Jebel 'Abd al-'Aziz in northeastern Syria (Meyer 2006; Moortgat-Correns 1972). In some cases, the lower city was walled but not inhabited (as at Beydar) or does not exist (as at Al-Rawda, which has some extramural settlement, but not a striking high-low difference in elevation or a walled settlement beyond the core). Because these cities are located in a dry environment, some scholars suggest that they were built and inhabited by people with a shared culture, such as pastoral nomads who thrived through
ANDREW T. CREEKMORE III
Figure 2.2 Outlines of selected cities. Scale is approximate. Al-Rawda after Gondet and Castel 2004; Beydar after Lebeau 2006a; Sweyhat after Danti and Zettler 2007; Chuera after Meyer 2006:Abb. 2; Kazane after Creekmore 2008:figure 9.3; Leilan after Weiss i990:Abb. 1. For plan of Titri§, see Nishimura, Chapter 3 In this volume, Figure 3.2.
Trade with other states in the region (Kouchoukos 1998; Lyonnet 1998; McClellan and Porter 1995:63). The excavators of Chuera and Al-Rawda claim that these cities were intentionally established in a round shape, rather than developing from the gradual expansion of a pre-existing village (Castel and Peltenburg 2007:604; Pruss 2000:1432). The variation in the life history of these cities calls into question the usefulness of the Kranzhugeln category; I will return to this question later in this chapter.
World History
