This book is the result of a workshop organized by the editors on April 5 2018 during the
11th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East (ICAANE) in Munich
Germany. The workshop's goal was to discuss the archaeological traces or lack thereof of the
so-called transitional periods in the long history of Northern Mesopotamia from the Bronze Age
to the Islamic period. What emerges from the contributions which differ in terms of chronology
spatial extent and research subject - from single sites to long term investigation from
material culture to historical approaches - goes beyond the traditional approach to the Dark
Ages emphasizing phenomena of resilience and evolution rather than drastic and abrupt
changes. From the expansion and contraction of settlement patterns to the spatial redefinition
of urban spaces and the persistence of certain ceramic horizons through time the authors put
back the material evidence on the agenda of the archaeological research on the Dark Ages. The
book offers a unique view although from different angles of some of the in-between periods of
Mesopotamian history: The Middle-Late Bronze transition the so-called post-Assyrian period
the evolution of late antiquity material culture into the Islamic period. Thus the authors aim
at redefining the concept of transition in the light of new or revised data from fundamental
projects in Syria Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan.
