The site of Tell Leilan, located in Northeastern Syria, has yielded a settlement history which covers the period from ca. 5,000 to 1,700 B.C. This sequence documents the rise of empires in the Mesopotamian region and the transformation of small scale chiefdoms into this larger scale, more centralized form of social organization. Ms. Laura Calderone, under the supervision of her dissertation advisor Dr. Harvey Weiss, will excavate two squares through stratum 17, 18, and 19. These layers encompass the Ninevite 5 period which, excavators believe, marks the crucial transition period. Both architectural and artifactual data will be collected. With these materials, Ms. Calderone will be able to examine such issues as changes in production and the development of social hierarchies. It will also be possible to determine the importance of inter-regional trade through analysis of imported items. Finally, the presence or absence of defensive walls, weaponry, and burning will provide insight into the extent of warfare through the Ninevite period. Northern Syria lies on the periphery of the Mesopotamian region and is not in the heartland of early state and empire development. Given the unpredictable rainfall and marginal agricultural conditions, it strikes many archaeologists as strange that empires developed there at all. There is little agreement on why this process occurred. Ms. Calderone believes that sites such at Tell Leilan mark secondary states which arose in response to competition with Early Dynastic Southern Mesopotamia for control of trade and communication routes. This competition, she argues, caused a need for increased security and social cohesion, and this necessitated a major reorganization in social structures. Excavation of the Ninevite layers will allow her to test this hypothesis. This research is important because it will increase our understanding of how complex societies such as our own developed. It will also assist in the training of an extremely promising scientist.
