CONCLUDING THOUGHTSFor the moment, it appears that nothing so linear as the MBA Assyrian trading net-
work existed during the third millennium. Evidence for direct Syrian or Mesopotamian
investment in trade (or tribute or warfare) with Anatolia is elusive at best, probably
because communication between the two regions was mediated by economies and
polities located at the interface between the low-elevation Arabian Plateau to the south,
and the high-elevation Anatolian Plateau to the north and west. This region, roughly
equated with the northern and western fringes of Subartu (Figure 26. 1 ), remains
relatively uninvestigated for the third millennium.
The next decade of archaeological research in southeastern Turkey holds con-
siderable potential. Current excavations at Tell Tayinat in the Amuq (University of
Toronto: Welton et al. 2011 ) and Zincirli in the I
.
slahiye Valley (University of Chicago;
see Figure 26. 1 ) have begun to focus on the EBA phases of these two well-known
Iron Age sites. My own work that has just begun on the EBA at Zincirli is guided by
the belief that this site flourished for a time in the latter half of the third millen-
nium. This was likely related to the pivotal or nodal position of Zincirli, which con-
trolled one of the few passes between the Arabian Plateau and the Anatolian Peninsula.
The Hasanbeyli Pass through the Amanus Mountains connects Cilicia and the
Mediterranean with the I
.
slahiye Valley, and drops right down on top of Zincirli. From
Zincirli, one can travel unobstructed south toward the Amuq Valley (in the direction
of Ebla) and east toward the Euphrates River (in the direction of Mari). Future
archaeological and philological research may begin to reveal how the societies in this
region mediated the flow of metal and information between the Arabian Plateau and
the Anatolian Peninsula during the third millennium.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSI wish to thank Harriet Crawford for the invitation to contribute to this volume. Many
thanks to Lorenz Rahmstorf for permission to use his images and maps, as well as for
his reading and comments of an early draft of this chapter. Thanks also to Jacob Dahl
and Elizabeth Frood for their review and comments.
NOTES1 Translation from Frayne 1993 : 28 – 29.
2 See the 1995 issue of the Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology, which is dedicated to debates on
lead isotope analysis in the Bronze Age Mediterranean.
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–– Sumer, Akkad, Ebla and Anatolia ––