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Last Updated: Thursday, 30 August 2007, 18:50 GMT 19:50 UK
Burial clue to early urban strife
Bones from mass burial  Image: Science
Only a fraction of the burial pit has been excavated




There could be hundreds and potentially thousands
Dr Augusta McMahon, University of Cambridge


The surface of Tell Brak is covered with broken pottery and other debris  Image: Jason A Ur



Ancient forensics



Tell Brak appears to have developed from the outside inwards



Dr McMahon said she did not know whether the victors were defending or attacking Tell Brak.

"We need at least another season to understand what happened," said Joan Oates, an archaeologist at Cambridge and project director at Tell Brak.

She estimates that the Majnuna incident took place in about 3,800BC.

Tell Brak is a 40m-high, 1km-long archaeological mound in what would have been northern Mesopotamia.

Jason Ur, an anthropologist at Harvard University in Cambridge, US, and colleagues have carried out a study of the site's evolution by determining the placement and age of artefacts uncovered there.

Instead of growing from a populated urban centre in an outward direction, Tell Brak began as small settlements with space between them.

Eventually, the population grew more dense and moved towards the centre.

This, researchers say, supports the idea of a lack of centralised authority at Tell Brak.

It also suggests that more than one model of city development should be considered in studying Mesopotamian archaeology.

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