Umm el-Marra, a Bronze Age Urban Center in the Jabbul Plain, Western Syria

A team from the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Amsterdam has initiated a multistage program of excavation and regional analysis based at Tell Umm el-Marra in the Jabbul plain east of Aleppo. Archaeological and textual evidence from Ebla and elsewhere has demonstrated that the Aleppo region was an important center of early complex society in western Syria, and the joint project will focus on tracing its developmental trajectory. As the first stage of this project, excavations at Umm el-Marra, a major Bronze Age center of the Jabbul, were conducted in 1994 and 1995. Deposits from Roman and Hellenistic occupations were identified above an extensive Late Bronze Age settlement with evidence of a site-wide destruction in the early Late Bronze Age, while Middle Bronze Age remains indicated the apparent importance of the town in the period of the Yamḫad state.