Far from the river: Physical and metaphorical use of the territory and its water resources in Early and Middle Bronze Age Syria
The development of the so-called “secondary” urban civilizations is related to the capacity/necessity to exploit ecosystems different from those created by the presence of large rivers. In north inner Syria the different ecosystems and the possibilities they offered were exploited in a most effective way, leading to the birth and development of complex urban systems, which flourished during the second half of the third and the first half of the second millennium BC.