Anne Wissing, Die Bestattungen in der Zentralen Oberstadt des Tall Mozan/ Urkes (Syrien) im dritten und zweiten Jahrtausend v. Chr. Studien zur Urbanisierung Nordmesopotamiens (SUN), Band A5

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Peter Pfälzner
• Subject Area: Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
• Term: from 2017 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 377538461

The volume at hand constitutes a further important contribution to part A of the series “Studien zur Urbanisierung Nordmesopotamiens” (SUN), which is edited by the applicant and dedicated to the publication of the results of the excavations in the upper central city of Tell Mozan/Urkesh. After the appearance of the volumes about the stratigraphy and architecture (vol. 1), about the finds (vol. 2), about environmental investigations (vol. 3), and about the Early and Middle Bronze Age ceramics, the herewith provided volume offers – in the way of a comprehensive final publication – an overall presentation of the burials of the Early and Middle Bronze Ages which were discovered during the German excavations at Tell Mozan. The volume SUN A5 by Anne Wissing deals with the burials of the third and second millennium B.C. found in the excavations of the university of Tübingen, and places them in the context of funerals of the Early and Middle Bronze Ages in the Upper Khabur region. The value of the burial features from Tell Mozan consists, above all, in the registration of a whole sequence of graves within the context of the settlement, which reaches from phase C 14 (Early Jezireh III period) to phase C 4 (Old Jezireh II period). The particular profit of this work lies, on the one hand, in the detailed and methodologically careful presentation of the burials from Tell Mozan and, on the other hand, in the achievement of a systematic processing and of a comparing compilation of the funerals of this whole region in north-eastern Syria, which has been lacking so far. This volume should become a benchmark for the archaeology of funerals in Syria.In this book all 69 burials of the third and second millennium B.C. from Tell Mozan are archaeologically described regarding to grave architecture, grave inventory and burial rite. Additionally, all graves are specified in a detailed catalogue and presented on plates with their ground plans, and drawings and photos of the objects of the grave inventories. As supplement the anthropological analyses of each grave by Katja Zipp and the results herefrom are published in Appendix III. By this means a complete submission of the features and finds of all graves from the German excavations at Tell Mozan is generated. The burials from the other excavation sites of the Upper Khabur region are equally systematically compiled. These published data enable the reader to review the following analyses of the graves and of the burial customs. The volume constitutes the PhD thesis by Anne Wissing, which was presented to the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Tübingen in 2013, and defended in 2014. It received the grade summa cum laude.

• DFG Programme: Publication Grants