Spatial narratives, commemorative practices and the building project: New urban foundations in upper syro-mesopotamia during the early iron age

This dissertation investigates the practice of founding new cities in the ancient Near East as a socio-cultural phenomenon. Among Upper Syro-Mesopotamian polities of the Early Iron Age (EIA, ca. 1200–850 BC), notably the regional states of the Syro-Hittite world and Assyria, the idea of establishing new urban settlements was a cross-culturally shared landscape strategy. In their commemorative monuments, EIA elites developed an eloquent rhetoric that prioritized the cultivation of landscapes and construction of cities. The phenomenon is, therefore, understood as a cross-cultural historical problem and explored on an interregional scale. Archaeological and epigraphic evidence suggests that these building projects were socially significant undertakings that transformed the urban sphere as well as their rural hinterlands. Through the analysis of material evidence from several case studies, new foundations are interpreted on three spatio-temporal scales: long-term processes of landscape change and settlement history, production of urban space through large-scale building activities, and the development of symbolically charged architectural technologies. The dissertation incorporates contemporary critical approaches to landscape history, urbanization, social practices, architectural space and material culture, and attempts to develop a discourse on how social memories are constructed through space-producing activities. In terms of long-term settlement history, new foundations were not confined to elite-initiated urban centers, but rather marked a hallmark of settlement trends across Upper Mesopotamia in the EIA, because they were attested in various scales including villages, farmsteads, frontier fortresses and regional centers. Foundations were festive events where performative spectacles of commemoration took place and where the society's relationship with history was redefined. The construction projects involved the narrativization of urban spaces through the making of a constellation of commemorative monuments. This was partly accomplished through the technique of raising stone orthostats with narrative relief programs in public contexts, a technique that became an interregional practice among EIA cities. As a technological style and architectonic aesthetics in the urban landscapes, orthostat programs acted as material manifestations of elite ideology, cultural representation and spatial practice. The three scales of analysis contribute to the interpretation of new urban foundations as a material as well as a representational practice of spatial production and signification.