FOURTH MILLENNIUM ARSLANTEPE: THE DEVELOPMENT OF A CENTRALISED SOCIETY WITHOUT URBANISATION

This paper summarises the main achievements obtained in the course of 50 years of excavations at Arslantepe (and particularly in the past three decades) relating to the extraordinary development of the site in the fourth millennium BC, parallel to growth of centralised and urban societies in the related regions of Mesopotamia. The author succinctly illustrates the features that most clearly show the development of a society with powerful central institutions exercising a very strong interference in the local staple economy and control over a substantial portion of the labour force. This developmental process is analysed in an attempt to identify similarities with and differences from the Mesopotamian world, stressing how far the centralisation phenomenon at Arslantepe had basically local roots, while certainly being parallel to and related with similar developments taking place in the neighbouring southernmost societies. KEYWORDS – Fourth millennium, Upper Euphrates, centralisation, secularisation.