Tiptoeing Across the Threshold: Early Copper use and inter-regional interaction in Chalcolithic Greater Mesopotamia

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Archaeometallurgy, Eurasia and Beyond: Papers in Honor of Vince Pigott" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The earliest evidence for copper artifacts in Northern Mesopotamia (N Syria, SE Anatolia, and N Iraq) derives from the Ubaid period and the Uruk Period. These technological developments were contemporaneous with the operation of two major economic systems of inter-regional exchange: the “Ubaid interaction sphere” and the “Uruk Expansion”. This paper contrasts the beginnings of copper metallurgy geographically between the north and south, and chronologically between the Ubaid and the Uruk periods. Evidence for early copper use in Ubaid period is limited to north Mesopotamia, and was almost totally absent in the south. Variation in patterns of copper metallurgy adoption seems to have been related to broader organizational patterns of inter-regional interaction, and the related spread of other types of material culture – notably the administrative technology of stamp seals in the emerging complex societies of north Mesopotamia.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Archaeometallurgy, Eurasia and Beyond: Papers in Honor of Vince Pigott

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51275