On pins and needles: understanding the role of metal pins in the Upper Euphrates Valley during the Early Bronze I–II Leigh Stork Metal pins are among the most common metal artefacts from early-3rd-millennium sites in the Upper Euphrates Valley, with these objects demonstrating a widespread typological continuity with other areas of the Near East. What distinguishes the use of pins in this region, however, is the quantity and the contexts in which they were deposited. Metal pins were most frequently and abundantly deposited in mortuary contexts in the Upper Euphrates Valley, a trend that is not replicated anywhere else in the Near East at this time. A comparative study suggests that the greater availability of agro-pastoral and metal resources in the post-Uruk, decentralized socio- economic systems of the Upper Euphrates Valley contributed to this uniquely localized pattern of metal pin consumption. Keywords Early Bronze Age, Euphrates Valley, Syria, Turkey, metal pins, gravegoods Introduction The Euphrates River Valley has long been a focus of archaeological research in the Near East, though the recent dam building projects undertaken by the Turkish and Syrian governments have served as cata- lysts for a very rapid reassessment of what was known about the archaeology of its upper reaches. The resulting rescue and salvage excavations have greatly expanded our understanding of the settlement and developmental patterns of the region, particularly with regard to the impact that the episodic incursions of foreign populations and their material culture had on this environmentally and geographically diverse sub-region of the Near East. These periodic pulses in inter-regional trade and communication are frequently described as ‘expansions’, where one population infringes on the land and resources of its near neigh- bours, and tangibly affects the material culture reper- toire of the subsumed region. One such period of expansion, that left a significant and lasting impression on the Upper Euphrates Valley, was the Uruk Expansion (or the ‘Uruk achievement’, accord- ing to Oates, D. and Oates, J. (1976)) of the mid–late 4th millennium BC. In keeping with the commonly accepted terminology, this period of time is referred to here as the Late Chalcolithic 4–5 (hereafter LC 4–5) in order to distinguish it from the Uruk chronol- ogy used for southern Mesopotamia (see Table 1). Early interpretations of the Uruk Expansion suggested that the southern Mesopotamians were ben- evolent (or not, in some cases) colonizers, who spread civilization (or at least the Mesopotamian version of it) and mass production to the indigenous inhabitants of the hinterlands, in their quest for trade commodities (Algaze 1989; 1993; Oppenheim 1977). However, recent excavations in the hinterlands have revealed that the Uruk Expansion was both longer and more regionally diverse than the early world-systems model described (Stein, G. 1999a; Wright 2001). Evidence from sites such as Godin Tepe in western Iran (Gopnik and Rothman 2011; Young 1969; Young and Levine 1974), Tepe Gawra in north-west Iraq (Rothman 2002; Speiser 1935), Tell Brak in north-east Syria (Felli 2003; Oates, J. 1993; 2002; Oates, J. and Oates, D. 1997), and Arslantepe in south-eastern Turkey (Frangipane 1993; 1997a; 1997b; 2001; 2002; Leigh Stork, School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, William Robertson Wing, Edinburgh EH8 9AG, UK; email: leighstork@gmail.com © Council for British Research in the Levant 2014 Published by Maney DOI 10.1179/0075891414Z.00000000049 Levant 2014 VOL. 46 NO. 3 321