Far from the river: Physical and metaphorical use of the territory and its water resources in Early and Middle Bronze Age Syria

The development of the so-called “secondary” urban civilizations is related to the capacity/necessity to exploit ecosystems different from those created by the presence of large rivers. In north inner Syria the different ecosystems and the possibilities they offered were exploited in a most effective way, leading to the birth and development of complex urban systems, which flourished during the second half of the third and the first half of the second millennium BC. In this contribution, also the ideological and ritual relation with water is taken into account, a relation which was quite different from that of Southern Mesopotamia and was closely related with the presence of underground water.