In the Land of Nagar: a survey around Tell Brak

Abstract

During the campaign at Tell Brak in the spring of 1988 the present authors conducted a survey of tells in the vicinity of the site. Although comprehensive, the work was primarily intended to supplement the 1978 survey by K. Fielden, who investigated the sites surrounding the main tell at Brak itself and those on the lower Jaghjagh between the junction with the Wadi Radd and the modern town of Hassake, with a particular view to fourth and third millennium settlement (Fielden 1978/9).Within a rectangle of c. 170 km covered by the survey almost all the ancient settlements are found in a roughly triangular area half this size (its base being the lower Jaghjagh/Radd to the south and its apex immediately south of Tell Barri). Identifying this area as the “hinterland” of Brak is merely a locally suitable generalization, as Brak belongs to several systems, one being the macro-system of large urban centres scattered across the Habur Plains and adjacent areas, and another the micro-system of smaller settlements in the immediate vicinity of Brak itself. Brak was an important centre from prehistoric times until the late second millennium B.C., but its role necessarily changed through time, and the concomitant changes in the extent of the area economically and politically dependent upon it remain difficult to recognize. In this sense the area covered by our survey can be seen as partly arbitrary, partly reflecting some real limits. To the south, the French 1: 200,000 maps indicate further small sites on the southern fringe of the area visited, and further west on the lower Jaghjagh, beyond the area investigated by us, are numerous sites clustering along the banks of the wadi and its small affluents, many fairly large and with material of late fourth millennium and third millennium date. This area is relevant when studying the Brak hinterland, but it cannot be evaluated before the publication of the evidence collected by K. Fielden. The area to the north certainly overlaps, at least for certain periods, the hinterland of Tell Barri. Directly west and east of Brak, the cartographic gaps within and beyond the present survey are real or nearly so. To the west/northwest the modern village may obscure evidence, but apart from sites on the first affluent of the lower Jaghjagh there seems to be a fairly wide area here with little ancient occupation. Finally, to the east our area meets that surveyed by Meijer, and his map shows only two additional tells (Meijer 1986, Fig. 1, Nos. 269a and 269b), both Islamic. The two neighbouring sites (our Nos. 33 and 34) appear to be geomorphological features and not tells. The area covered should thus include most of the sites belonging to the micro-system of settlement around Tell Brak.