THE “GREEN ZONE” AKKADIAN PALACE AT TELL LEILAN, EARLY BRONZE AGE COLLAPSE, AND TEPHROCHRONOSTRATIGRAPHY AT THE 4.2 KA BP ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE

The Akkadian imperialization of northern Mesopotamia, ca. 2300 B.C., required construction of a “green-zone” glacis-fortified palace, excavated at Tell Leilan, northeast Syria, in May-June 2006.

The Akkadian “green-zone” was built upon the razed administrative building of subjugated local rulers and extended across 1000 square meters, including the palace's cereal-processing and grain-accounting facilities around a central granary, with each facility occupied through repeated renovations of walls and floors. The terminal floors of each room of the Akkadian “green-zone” palace received a deposit of rhyolitic volcanic ash prior to their abandonment, and the Akkadian imperial collapse, at the 4.2 ka BP abrupt climate change.

This excavation restates unresolved explanations for the 4.2 kaBP abrupt climate change and its relationship to the Tell Leilan tephra fall. The excavation also provides a new and potentially powerful tephrochronostatigraphy tool for analyzing the Early Bronze Age collapse from the Aegean to the Indus.