{
  "author": "ChronologiaOS editorial guides",
  "date": "2026-10-09",
  "department": "Kingdoms & Monuments",
  "department_id": "KINGDOMS",
  "epistemic_label": "Source guide",
  "epistemic_status": "SOURCE_GUIDE",
  "period": "2900\u20132350 BCE",
  "place": "Diyala region and southern Mesopotamia, Iraq",
  "public_sources": [
    {
      "publisher": "American Journal of Archaeology",
      "title": "The Square Temple at Tell Asmar and the Construction of Early Dynastic Mesopotamia, ca. 2900\u20132350 B.C.E.",
      "type": "Peer-reviewed article",
      "url": "https://ajaonline.org/article/209/"
    },
    {
      "publisher": "Cambridge University Press",
      "title": "Ancient Mesopotamia",
      "type": "Scholarly monograph",
      "url": "https://assets.cambridge.org/97805215/73344/sample/9780521573344wsc00.pdf"
    }
  ],
  "publication_state": "PUBLIC",
  "read_time": "3 min read",
  "sections": [
    {
      "body": "Evans's 2007 article in the American Journal of Archaeology examines the Square Temple at Tell Asmar and the construction of Early Dynastic Mesopotamia, framed at about 2900 to 2350 BCE. The article critically examines how the period's subdivisions were defined from this excavation.",
      "heading": "Start with a temple",
      "source": 0
    },
    {
      "body": "Van De Mieroop's chronological chart gives the Early Dynastic period as an approximate span of city-states before the Akkadian empire. The research record uses 2900 to 2350 BCE as period framing, not as proof that every subdivision within it is secure.",
      "heading": "A range for framing",
      "source": 1
    },
    {
      "body": "Periods are tools made by scholars from excavated sequences. When you meet a label like Early Dynastic I, II, or III, ask which site's stratigraphy defined it and whether later work has confirmed or questioned that division.",
      "heading": "Try the research habit"
    },
    {
      "body": "If one influential excavation shaped the whole period scheme, how would you test the scheme against a different site?",
      "heading": "A question to carry forward"
    }
  ],
  "short_title": "Who decided when a period begins?",
  "slug": "early-dynastic-sumer-how-a-period-gets-its-subdivisions",
  "summary": "Use the Square Temple at Tell Asmar to see how the Early Dynastic period of Mesopotamia was constructed by archaeologists, and why its subdivisions are debated.",
  "tags": [
    "Sumer",
    "Early Dynastic",
    "Tell Asmar",
    "Periodization"
  ],
  "title": "Early Dynastic Sumer: how a period gets its subdivisions."
}