The external relations of Arslantepe in the first half of the 4th Millennium BCE

Aim of this paper is to investigate external relations of the site of Arslantepe during the first half of the 4th millennium BCE. This corresponds to what we call period VII at Arslantepe, or Late Chalcolithic 3 and 4 in the chronological sequence of Greater Mesopotamia (Rothman ed. 2001). The Arslantepe stratigraphy is dated by more than 130 radiocarbon analyses and period VII falls between 3900 and 3400 BCE (Di Nocera 2000; Vignola et al. 2017, 2018). It is not the first period of occupation of the site, nor is Arslantepe alone in the Malatya plain during this period (Frangipane and Di Nocera 2012; Di Nocera 2016). A little more than a dozen sites have been identified in the surroundings, suggesting a sizable presence and certain interaction between neighbors. Arslantepe is the only one excavated, reason for which we will leave the debate on intraregional relations to future investigations, even though some comments have already been made on the basis of the results of the surveys in the plain and site distribution (Di Nocera 2016).