CEPAM (Cultures et environnements. Préhistoire, Antiquité, Moyen Âge), CNRS-UMR 7264

This study addresses what appear to be similar modes of
external interaction experienced by societies of the Anatolia n
Euphrates valley and the northwestern Levant on the one
hand, and on the other the southern Levant during the fourth
and third millennia BC. During the fourth millennium BC,
both regions were the target of expansion by neighboring
literate cultures, Uruk in the north and Egypt in the south.
Both regions were signii cantly af ected by the withdrawal of
colonizers associated with these expansions, and both saw the
arrival of a vastly dif erent third-millennium BC spread of
people and ideas derived from the Kura-Araks cultures of eastern
Anatolia and the southern Caucasus . In our discussion,
we introduce cultural and sociopolitical developments in each
region, and then compare them. To what extent are the Uruk
and Egyptian ventures colonial in intent and in impact? What
occurs in their aftermath? What brought ‘Kura-Araks people’
southward, and what cultural markers did they preserve in
the farthest reaches of their expansion? What links together
the various regions that they inhabited? This cross-regional
consideration summarizes the present state of inquiry and
initiates a dialogue on the signii cance of long-range interaction
at the periphery of the core civilization s at the dawn of
the Bronze Age.