DISCUSSION

The combination of the analyses of the excavation and geophysical survey data demonstrate that the two extensively excavated areas at the opposite ends of the community contain houses that are representative in size and floor plan of the much larger, mostly homogeneous communities of which they are a part. Because of the close architectural similarities and overlaps, the spatial and architectural patterns seen within the excavated areas can safely be taken as representative of the rest of the residential quarters. By extension, I consider that the recurring patterns of domestic activities and use of space observed in the excavated houses would also have been repeated within the similar architectural structures reconstructed through the magnetometry data. The majority of the structures visible on the magnetometry map must therefore have been similar in nature to the excavated houses and were in all probability houses of ordinary city inhabitants with little socioeconomic differentiation.

The overall view of the vast habitation quarters revealed on the two separate magnetometry maps raises some intriguing questions regarding the planned nature of the settlement at Titri§. The city planning at this site did not integrate a rigid standardized land unit at the community level in either the lower or the outer town. There were a number of very long, straight streets, many leading straight

To the high mound from different quarters of the community, which could not have developed without central planning. But the surveyed architectural compounds defined by the main streets do not exhibit clear regularity in shape and size. At the household level, however, many of the individual houses in the lower town seem to have maintained relatively standard house plans and sizes, like those of the excavated houses. Delougaz, Hill, and Lloyd (1967:143) observed a tendency in the living areas at the contemporary urban center of Tell Asmar in the Diyala region for poorer and smaller houses to be located toward the deeper areas of the architectural blocks without direct access from the roads. To the extent that house plans and room shapes could be reconstructed on the magnetom-etry map, this tendency does not seem to apply to Titris. At Titri§, each house seems to have had direct access to the street, and when irregularly shaped structures occurred in the habitation areas, it was primarily as a result of the inhabitants' efforts to maximize use of the available land unit in an environment that was packed with dwelling structures. Matney (2002:27) suspected that two uniform plot sizes - one in a rectangular shape (12 m x 7 m) and the other in a square form (11 m x 11 m) - were used as basic land units for some of the excavated houses in the outer town. It is not clear if these basic units were used for other excavated and surveyed houses in the outer and lower towns, but this could well be the reason of why many of the individual houses show relatively standard plans and sizes at the household level.

The large-scale investigations of the use of city space at Titris clearly show the residential areas packed with commoners' houses. The crowded environment was made more extreme by the restrictions on occupation space imposed by the fortification wall in the eastern end of the habitation section, the long street that skimmed the northern peripheries of the outer town, and ancient rivers that flowed along the northern, western, and southern sides of the mound. As a result, domestic space was created even inside the for-Tiflcation wall, as well as within irregular and narrow land units between main streets, indicating that the value of land within the city proper was high. The relative economic homogeneity is consistently seen even within such irregular housing units because these house occupants also performed everyday activities that were similar in type and intensity, producing the same kinds and amounts of material remains within the houses.

Access to the urban community was probably limited to the gateways, located at the eastern edge and northwestern end of the settlement. The most obvious example of an entrance point to the community is located at the midpoint of the eastern limit of the site where the flow of people and goods was concentrated in the large open space in front of the eastern gate. As one of the major public spaces, this area mosT likely acted as the heart of exchange activities or more general face-to-face social interactions among the inhabitants and with populations from outside the outer wall. Because this open space was located immediately behind the gate, the out-of-the-city visitors could conduct their business and affairs without proceeding to the central areas of the settlement. Oficials may have been based in the nearby administrative buildings and controlled human trafic and economic transactions in this section of the city. The use of such a large open space in a densely populated community, however, may have been constantly negotiated at various levels of authority and prone to rapid alteration (M. L. Smith 2008:220). Thus, while many of the primary public buildings probably dominated the areas within the high mound, other public structures seem to have also been built at separate strategic points within the larger lower town, such as in the immediate vicinity of the high mound, near gateways, and at other elevated points wIthin the community (see also Creekmore 2010).

Besides the public plaza aT the eastern gate, because of the general scarcity of open space within the crowded residential areas at Titri§, daily face-to-face interactions were most frequently carried out among neighbors whose houses faced mutual streets (cf. a 'face-block' in Smith 2010:139-40; also see Fisher, Chapter 6 in this volume). Other than these streets as a way to enter individual houses, there was, as a rule, no space between the houses, and these houses were adjoined by sharing walls within architectural blocks demarcated by the often orthogonal streets. Vacant land units were rare, although small open spaces serving as garbage dumps or side alleys may have been sporadically interspersed between dwelling structures, as was seen in the excavated area in the outer town. Even though the dwelling structures shared a house wall, the inhabitants of these houses did not necessarily have daily interactions, unless these houses shared a mutual street. This idea is supported by the multiple thresholds of the excavated houses, many of which faced each other between separate houses across the streets. Although these thresholds may

Not have been used simultaneously, this 'openness' corroborates the idea that the mutual streets were the axes of daily face-to-face interactions among residents. Moreover, because the doorway is aligned with other openings between internal rooms in a straight line, there was an easy accessIbility and movement between the rooms, as well as a high visibility of the inside of the house from the street. This relative 'openness' also suggests that the spacious intramural courtyards within the ordinary houses were the loci where the occupants not only carried out household-related activities, but also conducted daily social interactions wIth their neighbors and relatives.