Ebla and its Landscape: Early State Formation in the Ancient Near East

The discovery of the 17,000 tablets at the late third millennium BC Syrian site of Ebla revolutionized the study of the ancient Near East. Popular treatments of the finds were quick to follow and volumes analyzing aspects of these texts have filtered out over the year. But until now, there has been no major English-language research volume describing the multidisciplinary archaeological research at Ebla. Using a regional landscape approach, the thirty contributions to this expansive volume examine Ebla in its regional context through lenses of archaeological, textual, biological, materials, and remote sensing analysis, among others. In doing so, they are able to construct a detailed picture of the constituent elements and trajectories of early state development, essential to those studying the ancient Near East and other archaeologists, historians, anthropologists, and linguists.