its elevated position and monumentality, the temple at Tell Halawa B would no doubt
have played a significant role in the religious activities of the inhabitants that it was
built to serve (Cooper 2006 : 147 ).
Metal implements, used for agricultural activities, warfare, protection, personal
adornment and the production of other crafts, have been found in several early EB
middle and upper Euphrates contexts (Cooper 2006 : 167 – 168 ). Since copper was being
mined in Anatolia at this time, the abundance of copper and bronze objects in the
Euphrates can be explained by that region’s relative proximity to metal sources. In
addition, the discovery also of true tin–bronze alloys as opposed to the more accessible
and easily obtainable arsenical copper indicates participation in exchanges over long
distances, especially when one considers that tin may have come from as far away as
Afghanistan (Montero Fenollós 1999 : 456 ).
Excavations in western Syria have not penetrated extensively into levels of the EBI
and II periods, with the exception of a few sites such as Hama, so our understanding
of the size and complexity of settlements during this time is far from complete
(Mazzoni 2002 : 71 ). It is suspected, however, that most settlements consisted of small,
non-literate farming or pastoral communities with only a low degree of economic
differentiation and social stratification (Akkermans and Schwartz 2003 : 226 ). One
interesting development, as mentioned above, is the appearance in the early EB of a
distinctive pottery known as Red-Black Burnished Ware. The pottery is hand-made,
highly burnished and has a distinctive red/black colour that stands quite apart from the
remainder of the western Syrian ceramic assemblages in terms of its production
technology, surface treatment and vessel form. It first appears in small numbers at the
site of Tell Judaideh in Phase G of the Amuq Plains and then increases dramatically in
frequency in the subsequent Phase H (beginning as early as 2800 BC) (Braidwood and
Braidwood 1960 : 294 , 352 ). It also appears at several other Syrian sites further south,
such as Tell Afis and Qarqur in the early part of the third millennium or even earlier
(Mazzoni 2000 : 100 ; Dornemann 2003 : 105 ). Because of its similarities to pottery
found to the northeast in Anatolia, and even as far away as the Transcaucasian regions
of Georgia, Armenia and Eastern Turkey, RBBW is seen as an exotic element in the
local repertoire, and may indicate the presence of a foreign group whose origins may
be traced back to these regions to the northeast. Much continues to be written about
this distinctive pottery, which has now been found across a broad swathe of the Near
East, extending from Iran to the southern Levant, and it remains to be determined if
and why migrant populations settled in these regions. Moreover, one still needs to
account for the incredible longevity of the ware, which persisted for at least 300 years
and continued to be manufactured according to very specific techniques and styles that
made it a visible and separate ceramic group from the other local assemblages alongside
which it was found (Philip 1999 ; Philip and Millard 2000 ; Batiuk 2005 ; Greenberg and
Goren 2009 ).
EB III–IV PERIODS
Around 2700 – 2600 BC, the regions of the middle Euphrates and western Syrian
experienced increased socio-economic complexity and signs of urban growth. The
process of urbanisation, however, was less dramatic than that witnessed in the Khabur
Plains of northeastern Syria, where settlements such as Tell Brak, Tell Leilan, Tell–– Cultural developments in western Syria ––