Le tombe intramurali: una tadizione funeraria della fase finale del III millenio a.C. lungo la vallata dell’eufrate siro-anatolico

Abstract

During the III millennium BC almost all the Near and Middle East areas (from the Aegean Sea to the Indus Valley), after the collapse of the Mesopotamian hegemony during the so-called Late Uruk period (second half of the IV millennium BC), experienced an increase in social stratification and complexity and a growing consolidation of the interaction between distant social and economical environments. The regional fragmentation of the economical power, through the emergence of city-states, such as Kish, Ur, Mari, Ebla, Carchemish, Kazane, allowed local culture and societies to a better use of their environments and natural resources, distinguishing this period from the preceding one (Late Uruk), when Mesopotamian cities (Uruk and Susa) settled colonial outposts in the whole Near East for a better control on the peripheral resources, and from the following one as well. Several factors contribute to the significant transformation in the complexity of burial methods, and especially in the extraordinary richness of grave assemblages and in the practice of burial in cist graves, built within private or public buildings. The practice to bury the dead in the houses is typical of this archaeological period; it has been found in almost each site of the Syro-Anatolian Euphrates valley and in some ancient settlements of Lower Mesopotamia.