The urbanization of Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium BCE led to unprecedented social, economic, and political changes. Tell Brak, located in the Syrian Khabur basin, is one of the best-known early urban sites from this period. Surveys suggest that urban growth at Tell Brak resulted from peripheral expansion driven by the migration of several distinct groups; however, it is not known whether these groups remained recognizably distinct within the newly formed urban center.

In the current study, the impact of early urbanization on social organization was explored using non-metric dental data from skeletons excavated from the main site at Tell Brak (n = 111) and its satellite mound Tell Majnuna (n = 179). The Arizona State University Dental Anthropology System (ASUDAS) was employed to examine biodistance between population subsets from the period of early urbanization in the Late Chalcolithic (LC) and the Early Bronze Age (EBA).

The results demonstrate differences in dental morphology among the LC groups indicating segmentation within the early urban population at Tell Brak. Patterns of social organization associated with urbanization have thus framed the socio-cultural landscape of even the earliest cities, and bioarchaeological data can be a useful tool for understanding both ancient and modern urbanization.

公元前 4 世纪美索不达米亚的城市化导致了前所未有的社会、经济和政治变革。位于叙利亚 Khabur 盆地的 Tell Brak 是这一时期最著名的早期城市遗址之一。调查表明，Tell Brak 的城市增长是由几个不同群体的迁移推动的外围扩张造成的；然而，尚不清楚这些群体在新成立的城市中心是否仍然明显不同。

在目前的研究中，利用从 Tell Brak 主要遗址 (n = 111) 及其卫星土墩 Tell Majnuna (n = 179) 挖掘的骨骼的非计量牙科数据，探索了早期城市化对社会组织的影响。亚利桑那州立大学牙科人类学系统 (ASUDAS) 被用来检查从铜石器时代晚期 (LC) 和青铜时代早期 (EBA) 早期城市化时期的人口子集之间的生物距离。

结果表明，LC 组之间牙齿形态的差异表明了 Tell Brak 早期城市人口的分割。因此，与城市化相关的社会组织模式甚至构成了最早城市的社会文化景观，生物考古数据可以成为理解古代和现代城市化的有用工具。