Studies of ancient Mesopotamian cities have long focused on their institutions. Here, instead, the authors draw on recent investigations at the third-millennium BC site of Lagash (modern Tell al-Hiba, Iraq) to explore urban density, economy and sustainability at one of the largest ancient urban centres of the region. Drawing on excavation, environmental and remote-sensing data, the authors adopt a multi-scalar approach, revealing dense urban occupation, with subdivision into distinct walled quarters, as well as evidence for multiple foci of intensive industrial production and the exploitation of a rich mosaic of surrounding micro-environments. The study emphasises how a combination of new field data and alternative research directions offers novel insights into early urbanism.

Satellite imagery and UAV (drone) photos taken at Lagash (modern Tell al-Hiba) after rainstorms and at times of elevated soil moisture show dense near-surface architecture that dates mostly to the Early Dynastic III period (c. 2600–2350 BCE) and covers several hundred hectares. Archaeological knowledge of Mesopotamian urban structure has mostly been limited to isolated excavated neighbourhoods, such as at third millennium BCE Tutub (Khafajah) or Eshnunna (Tell Asmar), and early second millennium BCE Ur (Tell al-Muqayyar). The morphology of Tell al-Hiba and the quality of the imagery sets create a unique situation that enables the reconstruction and comparison of neighbourhoods across almost the whole of the city of Lagash. Mapping of near-surface architectural remains, streets, and water features reveals a discontinuous city located within a watery, possibly marshy environment.

Recent excavations at Tell Brak, Syria, have explored the site's early urban expansion, including excavation of Late Chalcolithic mass graves in a small mound at the site's outer edge. This mound built up rapidly and is primarily composed of industrial rubbish, particularly ceramics and flint debitage. The rubbish layers also contained nearly one thousand clay container sealings bearing stamp-seal impressions. The most important images represented are human figures in combat with lions, and caged single lions. These images date to ca 3800 BC and are evidence for the early development of the iconography and ideology of power and leadership.

For many years, the southern Mesopotamia of Ur and Uruk, ancient Sumer, has been seen as the origin centre of civilisation and cities: ‘The urban implosion of late-fourth- and early-third-millennium Mesopotamia resulted in a massive population shift into large sites’ said Nissen in 1988. ‘These new city-states set the pattern for Mesopotamia as the heartland of cities’ (Adams 1981; Yoffee 1998). And for Stone & Zimansky (2005) ‘Remains of the world's first cities are the most noteworthy feature of the landscape in southern Iraq’. But at Tell Brak Joan Oates and her team are turning this model upside down. A long campaign of study, culminating in the new discoveries from 2006 reported here, show that northern Mesopotamia was far along the road to urbanism, as seen in monumentality, industrialisation and prestige goods, by the late fifth millennium BC. The ‘world's earliest cities’ are as likely to have been in north-eastern Syria as southern Iraq, and the model of a core from the south developing a periphery in the north is now ripe for revision.

Excavations at Tell Brak in 2006–7 explored two key episodes in Mesopotamian political and social history, developing early social complexity in the fifth to fourth millennia BC and the shift from territorial state to early empire in the second millennium BC. Late Chalcolithic complexity is represented in Area TW on the main mound and at the outlying sub-mound of Tell Majnuna, while investigation of the Old Babylonian to Mitanni state-to-empire transition involved excavation in Areas HH and HN (Fig. 1). Both sets of excavations tie into our exploration of larger issues of the creation and maturation of past urban landscapes, for which Tell Brak provides a great depth of data.

We would like once again to express our warmest gratitude to Dr Bassam Jamous, Director General of Antiquities and Museums, to Dr Michel Al-Maqdissi, Director of Excavations, to all their staff in Damascus, and to Sd Abdul Messih Baghdo, Director of the Antiquities Office in Hasseke, for their constant and friendly support. Financial support for the excavations was generously provided by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge, the National Geographic Committee for Research and Exploration (2006), the Society of Antiquaries of London (2007), Newnham College, Cambridge and the University of Cambridge. We are extremely grateful to all those who have made this research possible.

Excavations at Chagar Bazar by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq team continued in 2001 and 2002 in Areas A and G (Fig. 1). In both areas, the final occupation of the site, datable to ca 1800–1650 BC, was investigated. Cuneiform tablets from Max Mallowan's 1930s excavations testify to the key position held by Chagar Bazar at the beginning of this period. His work had exposed large areas of domestic and administrative structures, but stratigraphic and relational uncertainties remained which merited further investigation. The archaeological situation at the fringes of Shamshi-Addu's Kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia are still somewhat enigmatic, and the aftermath of its collapse has not been intensively explored.

For three seasons, 1935 through 1937, Max Mallowan excavated at Chagar Bazar, after selecting it during a survey of the Upper Habur region in 1934. The Mallowan excavations are most notable for the “Prehistoric Pit”, with its deep sequence of Halaf and 3rd millennium BC levels, and for the horizontal exposure of early 2nd millennium BC buildings at the centre of the site. These excavations made a substantial contribution to the initial identification of the northern Mesopotamian archaeological assemblages and artifactual sequence. But there are questions remaining about the sequence and the nature of occupation at Chagar Bazar. In 1999, a new programme of excavations at the site was begun, a joint project involving the British School of Archaeology in Iraq (Dr Augusta McMahon), the University of Liège (Professor Önhan Tunca), and the Syrian Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums (Mr Abdul-Massih Bagdo of the Hasseke Department of Antiquities). Our first two seasons took place in March-May of 1999 and March–May of 2000.

The new research programme focuses on two related diachronic questions. The first is Chagar Bazar's internal cycle of occupation, abandonment, and re-occupation, and the internal diversity within the site. The second question is the changing role of the site within settlement trends in the Upper Habur, focusing on its status as a relatively small site in the Mesopotamian context.