{"id":1826,"date":"2023-10-01T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-01T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ajaonline.org\/2023\/10\/01\/4699\/"},"modified":"2024-08-13T03:45:47","modified_gmt":"2024-08-13T03:45:47","slug":"4699","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/article\/4699\/","title":{"rendered":"The Suburbs of the Early Mesopotamian City of Ur (Tell al-Muqayyar, Iraq)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Suburbs and other zones of urban sprawl are not recent phenomena; they are as old as cities themselves. However, archaeological investigation of them has been relatively scarce, biasing reconstructions of the scale and diversity of early urban populations, industries, and economies, as well as reconstructions of ancient cities&rsquo; size and form. Here, we use aerial and satellite imagery in combination with ground survey to identify and characterize the extramural areas of one of the world&rsquo;s earliest cities, Ur (Tell al-Muqayyar), in southern Iraq. The results suggest the need for some revisions of earlier impressionistic ideas about the extent, location, and dates of Ur&rsquo;s suburbs. The distributions of ceramics of periods spanning the fifth to first millennium BCE suggest that Ur may have been founded in the fifth to fourth millennium BCE as a pair of spatially separate settlements that grew at different rates, only one of which developed into the city&rsquo;s highly mounded core; that more distant suburbs formed by the third millennium BCE; and that intensity of occupation of various extramural zones covering hundreds of hectares shifted throughout the third to first millennium BCE. Overall, the data challenge characterizations of Ur as more compact and spatially continuous than other early Mesopotamian cities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Suburbs and other zones of urban sprawl are not recent phenomena; they are as old as cities themselves. However, archaeological investigation of them has been relatively scarce, biasing reconstructions of the scale and diversity of early urban populations, industries, and economies, as well as reconstructions of ancient cities&rsquo; size and form. Here, we use aerial [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1825,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[904],"tags":[6,17,18,43],"issues":[795],"region":[895],"class_list":["post-1826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article","tag-settlementpatterns","tag-landscapearchaeology","tag-survey","tag-mesopotamian","issues-795","region-near-east-mesopotamia"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Suburbs of the Early Mesopotamian City of Ur (Tell al-Muqayyar, Iraq) | October 2023 (127.4) | American Journal of Archaeology<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/article\/4699\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Suburbs of the Early Mesopotamian City of Ur (Tell al-Muqayyar, Iraq) | October 2023 (127.4) | American Journal of Archaeology\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Suburbs and other zones of urban sprawl are not recent phenomena; they are as old as cities themselves. However, archaeological investigation of them has been relatively scarce, biasing reconstructions of the scale and diversity of early urban populations, industries, and economies, as well as reconstructions of ancient cities&rsquo; size and form. Here, we use aerial [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/article\/4699\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"American Journal of Archaeology\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/aja.journal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-10-01T04:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-08-13T03:45:47+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Hammer.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1000\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"667\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"website\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"website\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/article\/4699\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/article\/4699\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"website\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/#\/schema\/person\/f93c211048ad920b94c1e8abdb2053f0\"},\"headline\":\"The Suburbs of the Early Mesopotamian City of Ur (Tell al-Muqayyar, Iraq)\",\"datePublished\":\"2023-10-01T04:00:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-08-13T03:45:47+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/article\/4699\/\"},\"wordCount\":222,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/article\/4699\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Hammer.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Settlement Patterns\",\"Landscape Archaeology\",\"Survey\",\"Mesopotamian\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Article\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/article\/4699\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/article\/4699\/\",\"name\":\"The Suburbs of the Early Mesopotamian City of Ur (Tell al-Muqayyar, Iraq) | October 2023 (127.4) | American Journal of Archaeology\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/article\/4699\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/article\/4699\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Hammer.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2023-10-01T04:00:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-08-13T03:45:47+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/article\/4699\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/article\/4699\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/article\/4699\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Hammer.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/ajaonline.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Hammer.jpg\",\"width\":1000,\"height\":667,\"caption\":\"View of the east mound surface, looking west, toward the ziggurat and urban core, February 2019. 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