Current Research

Excavations

A new excavation programme was begun in 2006 under the Field Direction of Dr Augusta McMahon. This research is currently suspended due to the political unrest in Syria. The first research aim was further exploration of early social complexity and urbanism in the late 5th-early 4th millennium BC. This aim was supplemented by a linked research theme from 2007, investigation of early warfare or violent conflict within the context of intensifying urbanism.

The project’s second research aim was investigation of the impact on Brak and its inhabitants of political change, from collapse of an expansive state through growth of a territorial state to imposition of a new ‘empire’, across the terminal 3rd through late 2nd millennia BC. These political changes took place within the larger context of abrupt and gradual climate changes and concurrent shifts in the region’s economic base.