Urban and Natural Landscapes of an Ancient Syrian Capital: Settlement and Environment at Tell Mishrifeh/Qatna and in Central-Western Syria.

• Author: Schwartz, Glenn M.
• Position: Studi Archeologici su Qatna, vol. 1 - Book review

Urban and Natural Landscapes of an Ancient Syrian Capital: Settlement and Environment at Tell Mishrifeh/Qatna and in Central-Western Syria. Edited by DANIELE MORANDI BONACOSSI. Studi Archeologici su Qatna, vol. 1. Udine: FORUM, EDITRICE UNIVERSITARI A UDINESE, 2007. Pp. 350, illus. [euro]70.

After a long period of relative neglect, archaeologists of Bronze Age Syria have turned their attention to the Orontes valley of inland central Syria. The jewel in the archaeological crown in this region is Tell Mishrifeh, ancient Qatna, one of the major urban centers of Syria in the second millennium B.C. and a rival to Mari and Aleppo. Important, if ambiguous, results had been obtained by the work of du Mesnil du Buisson in the 1920s, but the new excavations have gone further in revealing the archaeological riches of the site.

In 1994 Michel al-Maqdissi inaugurated excavations by a Syrian expedition, and the enterprise was enlarged by the addition of Syro-German and Syro-Italian teams in 1999. The volume under review presents some of the results achieved thus far, with a particular focus on the relationship between Qatna and its natural environment. Originally presented at a conference held at Udine, Italy, in 2004, the papers in the book offer a data-rich collection of new analyses, some in preliminary stages but nearly all containing information and ideas of interest.

Michel al-Maqdissi leads off with a discussion of Qatna's occupational history. Particularly striking is Qatna's expansion from a medium-sized urban center of twenty-five hectares in the third millennium B.C. to a metropolis of over one hundred hectares in the early second millennium, enclosed by massive earthen ramparts. This development coincides with changes in the Qatna hinterland, with a shift from circular fortified tells to rectangular ones. Urban intensification is also seen in early-second-millennium Ebla, and this phenomenon deserves further scrutiny with respect to such problems as the Early to Middle Bronze Age transition, the Amorite emergence, and arguments for and against collapse at the end of EB.

Peter Pfalzner, co-director of the Syro-German team, discusses the second-millennium Qatna Royal Palace, which was built on a decidedly monumental scale: each column base in the hypostyle Hall C had a five-meter deep foundation pit, and the palace wall foundations were set in trenches four to six meters deep. Pfalzner reviews the different sectors of the palace, proposing a...