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In Old and New World archaeology, the Mesopotamian case has long stood as the model for the evolution of complex societies, providing the conceptual and organizational standard for understanding city and state origins. But new data on Mesopotamia in the late 5th and 4th millennia BC have been accruing with astonishing speed over the last 20 years, opening fresh areas of exploration and debate. In Uruk Mesopotamia and Its Neighbours , ten of the foremostfield archaeologists working in the area today provide an overview and analysis of these data. The authors radically reassess the chronological framework for the greater Mesopotamian region, assemble basic data sets on both localand regional levels, and interpret and synthesize these data to put localpatterns and dynamics into their widest regional context. With lavish illustration and thorough documentation, this volume is destined to become a standardreference work on the state of Mesopotamian archaeology at the beginning of the 21st century. Its significance extends beyond the archaeology of the ancient Near East to the wider fields of anthropology and political science.