M. Frangipane

Accademia dei Lincei and Fondazione Roma Sapienza University of Rome

Abstract: The paper presents the main results obtained in the recent excavation of the early 3rd millennium levels at Arslantepe- Malatya, which reveal substantial changes following the collapse of the Late Chalcolithic centralised system in connection with the establishment of new groups linked to the Kura-Araxes culture. The new data show that th...

Long-term excavations at Arslantepe, Malatya (Turkey), have revealed the development, in the fourth millennium BC, of a precocious palatial system with a monumental building complex, sophisticated bureaucracy, and a strong centralization of economic and political power in a nonurban site. This paper reconsiders, in comparative terms, the main featu...

The encounter of the communities of the Anatolian Upper Euphrates with the Kura-Araxes cultural traditions was a long and complex process that cannot be reduced to the abrupt ‘arrival’ of migrant communities from East Anatolia or South Caucasus. The historical, political and cultural ‘complexities’ embedded in this encounter are best exemplified by...

This chapter analyses the economic policies of governing elites in the most ancient proto-urban and proto-state societies of the ancient Near East between IV and III millennium B.C. with a focus on Greater Mesopotamia (including south-eastern Anatolia) and western Anatolia. Based on archaeological evidence diverse economic strategies emerge between...

We explore the Late Chalcolithic 3–4 to Early Bronze Age I pottery from Arslantepe by combining compositional, technological and morpho-typological analyses. The paper investigates to what extent economic and political changes affected the organisation of production in terms of natural resources, human labour, and practices. The wheel-finished vess...

Uniparentally-inherited markers on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and the non-recombining regions of the Y chromosome (NRY), have been used for the past 30 years to investigate the history of humans from a maternal and paternal perspective. Researchers have preferred mtDNA due to its abundance in the cells, and comparatively high substitution rate. Conv...

Uniparentally-inherited markers on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and the non-recombining regions of the Y chromosome (NRY), have been used for the past 30 years to investigate the history of humans from a maternal and paternal perspective. Researchers have preferred mtDNA due to its abundance in the cells, and comparatively high substitution rate. Conv...

This paper offers some reflections on the use of the term ‘transition’ in archaeology and its theoretical implications. Since any historical development consists of continuous ‘transitions’, as normal processes of change, the application of the term only in some cases raises the question of what is meant to be highlighted by using it. This leads to...

The volume comprises the collected papers of a workshop titled ‘Changing Clusters and Migration in the Near Eastern Bronze Age’ (Vienna, December 2019), organised by the ERC Advanced Grant ‘The Enigma of the Hyksos’. During the second half of the 12th Dynasty, Egypt confronted an influx of foreigners settling in the Eastern Nile Delta. Potentially...

Here, we report genome-wide data analyses from 110 ancient Near Eastern individuals spanning the Late Neolithic to Late Bronze Age, a period characterized by intense interregional interactions for the Near East. We find that 6 th millennium BCE populations of North/Central Anatolia and the Southern Caucasus shared mixed ancestry on a genetic cline...

Excavations of the 2nd and 1st millennia BC remains have characterized the early history of researches at Arslantepe, shedding light on the monumentality and historical importance of the site in the Hittite and especially Neo-Hittite periods. After a long interruption, investigations on the Iron Age levels have been recently resumed, in order to bo...

In this paper a novel approach for quantifying matter fluxes into archaeological sites is presented. Using the case studies of two multilayered sites with occupations before, during, and after the Bronze Age (Arslantepe and Niederröblingen), one Bronze Age multilayered site (Fidvár by Vráble), and a trash deposit from a fourth (Bresto), the potenti...

In recent years the chronological framework provided by the AMS ¹⁴ C dating has had a great impact on archaeological studies in the Near East, also affecting the previous synchronization of cultural events across the Mediterranean region. Here we present a consistent set of ¹⁴ C dates from the site of Arslantepe (Turkey) between the 5 th and the 3...

Ongoing excavations at Arslantepe in south-eastern Turkey are revealing settlement continuity spanning two crucial phases at the transition from the second to the first millennium BC: the post-Hittite period and the development of Syro-Anatolian societies.

Arslantepe is a höyük (= tell) located within the fertile Malatya Plain, near the right bank of the Euphrates River. The site is excavated since more than 55 years by the Italian Sapienza University archaeologists and reveals periods from at least the sixth millennium BCE until the final destruction of the Neo-Hittite town. This long sequence recor...

RATIONALE Past climate has always influenced human adaptation to the environment. In order to reconstruct palaeoclimate fluctuations and their role in the evolution of Near Eastern societies during the mid‐Holocene, high‐resolution Δ¹³C records from fossil wood remains at the archaeological site of Arslantepe (eastern Turkey) have been developed....

In semi-arid environments of the Near East water availability and soil fertility are limiting factors for crop growing and land use is locally adjusted to environmental features. In the last decades stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses on archaeobotanical cereal remains have been developed in order to reconstruct water and nutrient sources f...

Abstract: At Arslantepe towards the end of the 4th millennium BC, after the destruction of the palatial complex of period VIA, the following period VIB1 witnesses the flimsy architectural remains of wattle and daub huts associated with a ceramic culture clearly recalling the contemporary Kura-Araxes traditions of Eastern Anatolia and of the Souther...

The archaeological mound of Arslantepe, in the outskirts of the city of Malatya, has been included in the UNESCO tentative list of world heritage sites in April 2014. The site is under regular archaeological excavation since 1961 and has yielded unprecedented data and finds concerning various periods of its history, but mostly that of primary state...

After briefly considering the various forms and degrees of social differentiation that may be included in a generic concept of »inequality«, the type of »unequal social relations« will be outlined. The paper focuses on the potential of certain social differences to evolve into real socio-economic disparities and forms of permanent political authori...

After briefly considering the various forms and degrees of social differentiation that may be included in a generic concept of »inequality«, the type of »unequal social relations« will be outlined. The paper focuses on the potential of certain social differences to evolve into real socioeconomic disparities and forms of permanent political authorit...

After briefly examining the forms of cultural contact in pre- and protohistoric societies in relation to the problem of the varying perception of territories and their "borders" as well as of "membership" in those societies, and after a brief reconsideration of the concept of culture and ethnicity in such archaic contexts, this paper then examines...

Abstr act The paper attempts to interpret the widespread circulation of items, customs, and ideas among the Neolithic communities of the Jazirah and surrounding regions, with particular reference to Late Neolithic groups bearing the Halaf culture, as a peculiar pattern of interaction among ‘open’ communities. This circulation, in the author’s opini...

The distribution of archaeomagnetic data in eastern Europe and the Near and Middle East shows a remarkable gap in Turkey. This study presents the first archaeomagnetic results from five different mounds in southeast Turkey, the northern part of Mesopotamia. The rock magnetic experiments indicate that in the majority of the samples the dominant magn...

This paper summarises the main achievements obtained in the course of 50 years of excavations at Arslantepe (and particularly in the past three decades) relating to the extraordinary development of the site in the fourth millennium BC, parallel to growth of centralised and urban societies in the related regions of Mesopotamia. The author succinctly...

This article discusses findings from excavations at Arslantepe-Malatya. Arslantepe is a tell about 4.5 hectares in extension and 30 meters high, at the heart of the fertile Malatya Plain, some 12 kilometers from the right bank of the Euphrates, and surrounded by mountains, which, in the past, were covered by forests. In the earliest phases of its h...

Textile production is one of the oldest crafts and has played a crucial role in societies. Yet, very few archaeological textiles are preserved and we must therefore rely on the remains of textile tools. In this paper, a group of scholars reviews two millennia of textile tools from Bronze Age Arslantepe. The size and weight of the tools inform about...

Textile production is one of the oldest crafts and has played a crucial role in societies. Yet, very few archaeological textiles are preserved and we must therefore rely on the remains of textile tools. In this paper, a group of scholars reviews two millennia textile tools from Bronze Age Arslantepe. The size and weight of the tools inform about th...

Arslantepe is located in the Malatya plain(Eastern Anatolia), an oasis in the Anti-Taurus Mountains, 15 km south-west of the River Euphrates. The site is an artificial mound (tell), approximately 30 m high and covering a surface of 4 ha, formed by the overlapping deposits of manyoccupations, built for millennia in the same place. Arslantepe has bee...

There is no single form that equality takes in past societies. Some societies, horizontal egalitarian systems, manifest absence of hierarchy, but in other societies (vertical egalitarian systems) privileged status coexists with substantial equality. A detailed comparison of the Halaf culture of northern Mesopotamia and eastern Anatolia with the Sam...

The paper presents the extraordinary discovery at Arslantepe, on the borderline of the large period VI A public area, of an isolated burial from the very beginning of the 3rd millennium (period VI В) with imposing size and construction features , complex ritual, and very rich funerary gifts, which seems to be ascribable to a high-status person. The...

In his article, “The Cultural Evolution of Civilization” (1972), Flannery proposed a timeless model for analyzing the processes of social change, which he claimed was able to provide instruments for a general interpretation of “universal evolutionary mechanisms and processes” leading to the rise of state societies. Flannery’s proposal, like most of...

This article reconsiders the nature of the development of a highly centralised political and economic structure at Arslantepe at the end of the fourth millennium BC (period VI A) in the light of a recent discovery of a huge ceremonial building from the middle of the 4th millennium (period VII), which stresses the importance of local components. Thi...

Nouvelle etude de la nature des rapports entretenus entre les communautes du Nord, et du Sud de la, « Greater Mesopotamia » au cours de l'Uruk recent, plus particulierement de l'influence que l'expansion de groupes venant du Sud a pu avoir, dans les regions septentrionales de la Syrie et de l'Anatolie orientale, sur la naissance et l'evolution des...

The mound of Arslantepe, located in the plain of Malatya, Eastern Turkey, not far from the right bank of the Euphrates river, occupied continuously from the Chalcolithic to the Neo-Hittite age, proved to be a key site for the study of both the development of Early State organization in the regions surrounding Mesopotamia, and the formation of compl...

This project was established through a collaboration between the Missione Archeologica Italiana in Turchia (Università di Roma “La Sapienza”) and the Istituto per le Tecnologie applicate ai Beni Culturali of the CNR. For this project we selected over 700 ceramic samples found at Arslantepe, coming from structures and layers of IV and III millennium...

This is a partial list of archaeological samples processed between May 1990 and December 1992 at the Department of Earth Sciences Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory of the University of Rome. Most of the samples in the list, both from Italy and other countries, were related to excavations carried out by researchers at the University of Rome, Department...

Recent research in the easternmost area of the Maadi village-site near Cairo has yielded new data concerning both the nature of the occupation and the economy of the predynastic communities in Lower Egypt. Imported objects and raw materials, together with specialized crafts, have already suggested the existence of well organized village life, enric...