A Thousand Years of Farming: Late Chalcolithic Agricultural Practices at Tell Brak in Northern Mesopotamia : BAR Publishing : 9781407303604 : 1407303600 : 15 Dec 2008 : The Late Chalcolithic is a period of far-reaching changes in many aspects of life in Mesopotamia. On the southern alluvial plain (present day Iraq) the first city states appear, among them the city of Uruk, which grows to become the largest of the cities in the south. The growth of cities coincides with evidence for elaborate ritual building complexes, an increasingly class-stratified society, industrial specialisation, and multi-tiered administration, which includes the invention of writing. The present volume focuses on the agricultural developments in Late Chalcolithic northern Mesopotamia from the perspective of a major settlement in the region, Tell Brak in modern northeast Syria. Agriculture formed the basis of the economy of ancient Near Eastern communities; a study of the crop husbandry practices of Tell Brak ca