Banat 2004 Overview

The Banat Publication Project Volume I. Funerals and Feasts:
Ritual Action and Social Structure in the Mortuary Material of Tell Banat
Anne Porter

This application requests support for the publication of the first volume of final site reports from Tell Banat, Syria. Excavated by Anne Porter and Thomas McClellan from 1988 until its inundation by the Tishreen dam in 1999, Banat is one of the most significant Early Bronze centers to emerge in northern Syro-Mesopotamia during the past decade. The Banat Publication Project, under the direction of Anne Porter, intends three volumes of reports detailing respectively the mortuary remains, the public sector, and the industrial and residential quarters. Tell Banat is located on the left bank of the Euphrates River, Syria (36"26' N 38"17' E), and is the center of a settlement grouping that includes extramural cemeteries and two satellite sites. One site, Tell Banat North, consists in its entirety of a mortuary mound. Another, Tell Kabir, houses a temple complex. Banat itself contains a series of public buildings, a large multichambered stone-built tomb (Tomb 7), and over 2 ha of pottery manufacturing areas.

It is the mortuary data in particular that has occasioned most immediate interest from the academic community and general public alike, and that will be presented in the first volume, Funerals and Feasts: Ritual Action and Social Structure in the Mortuary Material of Tell Banat. Of this material, two contemporaneous monumental burial structures stand out: Tell Banat North, the 20 meter high mound that consisted of at least three major phases of packed earth construction, each containing deposits of human bone and artifacts and each covered by a white terra pise surface; and the semi-subterranean, richly furnished Tomb 7, a highly elaborate building with dressed-stone interiors, baked brick and bitumen-coated floors.

These contrasting, yet equally significant, constructions contain detailed evidence of mortuary practices, including body treatments and grave goods, in which specific rituals are discernible and religious/cosmological systems apparent. Additionally, it is clear from the stratigraphy of the site that the genesis of initial settlement and subsequent development of city and state lay in a preceding mortuary center; the nature of that center is suggestive of a dynamic relationship between death, urbanism and state formation.

Volume I is committed to publication as Subartu 12, a monograph series by Brepols. It is anticipated that the project will take two years before the final manuscript is ready for publication, including the review process. A rough draft of the text is largely complete, including the theoretical background and literature survey, although this needs considerable polishing. Approximately one third of all pottery drawings and plans are complete. One year is required to finalize camera-ready illustrations of the architecture and pottery, prepare databases of inventories/catalogues for publication and revise the text sufficiently for submission for peer review. Some key objects accessioned in the Aleppo National Museum must be re-drawn and rephotographed.