Pulling together the final archaeological report on a long-term field project is a difficult task that requires patience to collate the contributions of the numerous collaborators, and then great skill and finesse to assemble the data into a coherent interpretation. This challenge has been admirably met by Edgar Peltenburg and his collaborators in this first of a two-volume final report dedicated to the result of 13 seasons of fieldwork (1992–2004) at Tell Jerablus Tahtani, a small site located along the right bank of the Euphrates, 5km south of the Turkish-Syrian border.
This first volume is dedicated principally to the analysis of the excavated mortuary contexts, with a particular focus on those from the Early Bronze Age (third millennium BC) and, especially, on the monumental tomb (T302) in which around 18–30 men, women and children were buried at the entrance of the small Early Bronze Age fortified settlement. In the introductory Chapter 1, Peltenburg briefly describes the site, the research issues, the excavation methodologies and the organisation of the volume. It is clear that, starting from 1994, the most important aspect of the project's research agenda was to understand the role played by small sites such as Tell Jerablus Tahtani in the “modest hierarchical” third-millennium settlement pattern of the Middle Euphrates Valley, “where it is argued that socio-political structures were heavily influenced by kin-based tribal groups with corporate decision-making processes” (p. 6). This research issue is the main subject of the volume reviewed here, and the extraordinary combination of a large, high-status tomb and a fortification wall supports the interpretation of the importance of ancestor cult at Tell Jerablus Tahtani, as well as at other sites in the region, during the third millennium BC.
Chapter 2 introduces the regional setting within which the site developed during the fourth and third millennia BC. Chapter 3 details the chronological sequence identified at the site, supported by 28 radiocarbon dates, from four different locations, including those on cereal grains (20) and the dentine from human teeth (3), ensuring high-quality analysis and accurate dates. The distribution of the modelled data is clearly presented (fig. 3.4), as are the relationships between the Bayesian modelling of the radiocarbon dates and the associated ceramics (pp. 33–36).
Chapter 4 focuses on a detailed presentation of the mortuary facilities and their contents, with an analysis of the different types of graves and their associated material culture for each period. This chapter is divided into two sections, the first dedicated to the description of grave typology, and the second providing a catalogue of grave goods and human remains found in each tomb. The objects described have site reference numbers linking to the drawings and photographs assembled at the end of the volume. The human remains are analysed in Chapter 5. The project's physical anthropologists detail the skeletal remains from each grave and provide an overarching investigation including estimates of the minimum number of individuals (MNI) for each funerary facility, a demographic profile of the site (high infant mortality, with many people living into their 20s and fewer people dying in old age during the Early Bronze Age), skeletal pathologies and, finally, stable isotope analysis of both human and animal remains.
Chapter 6 provides a brief overview of the pottery from the Period II mortuary domain and the re-use of earlier Uruk-period (i.e. fourth millennium BC) pottery in Tomb 302, possibly as part of ancestor veneration. Of great interest are the chapters that analyse the metalwork found in the mortuary contexts of Tell Jerablus Tahtani (Chapter 7) and in the mortuary contexts of neighbouring sites, collected between 1911 and 1920 by Hogarth, Woolley and Lawrence, and currently housed at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford (Chapter 8). These metal objects are considered “as part of symbolic expression centred around the consumption of materials deemed desirable because of their socially ascribed ‘value’” (p. 127). Chapter 9 presents an overview of the other small finds, while Chapters 10, 11 and 12 focus on the zooarchaeological and archaeobotanical analyses of the faunal and charred plant remains.
In the conclusion (Chapter 13), Peltenburg seamlessly assembles and interprets all of the data presented in the previous chapters into a clear discourse about the role of mortuary practices at Tell Jerablus Tahtani. In particular, he focuses his attention on the monumental tomb T302, which, in his opinion, due to its unique location (at the corridor/entrance to the fortified site), monumental size and wealth of grave goods and later commemorative deposits, represents “a materialization of an ideology to enhance the power of ascendant elites and ensure the reproduction of a dominant political order at a time of growing competition among polities” (p. 236). In so doing, Peltenburg brilliantly links the data available from this site to its broader regional setting, as well as the textual sources (such as those from the third-millennium BC city-state of Ebla), to suggest the cosmological value assigned to the cult of elite ancestors.
In conclusion, even though the catalogue might have been relocated to the end of the volume, before the plates, so as to simplify consultation, this monograph represents a stellar example of how archaeological reports should be constructed from the bottom up: the data are presented first, then scientifically analysed by members of the project team, and finally synthesised and interpreted to connect the data to a clear theoretical trajectory, in this case involving the definition of the social value of the cult of the ancestors in Early Bronze Age societies.
