Ricerc@Sapienza

The article presents a brief overview of the recent discoveries at the site of Arslantepe (Malatya, SE Turkey), from the archaeological campaigns carried out in the years 2017-2019. The fieldwork mainly concentrated in two excavation areas dated to the Late Chalcolithic and Iron Age. The architecture, pottery, sealings, archaeometallurgy and anthropologic remains retrieved are here presented.

Among the numerous legal tablets uncovered in sites from the middle Euphrates valley and dated to the Late
Bronze age, nine documents from the town of Ekalte (Tall Munbaqa) bear a seal impression which is defined as kunuk
aḫḫī, the seal of the “brothers”. The relevant role of collective civil bodies – assembly of elders and enlarged families or
clans - in the socio-economic life of the main towns in the land of Aštata (Emar, Ekalte, Azŭ, Baṣīru), has been extensively