ABSTRACT
F o r the archaeologist the Early Dynastic might be most easily distinguished from the preceding Jemdet Nasr and the succeeding Sargonid periods by a distinctive building method.
The rectangular tile-shaped bricks, used in Late Uruk and Jemdet Nasr buildings, were replaced by small plano-convex bricks, flat on one face but cushion-shaped on the other. Walls thus built were generally set in a foundation trench, and the bricks themselves are often laid not horizontally but sloping in opposite directions so as to produce a herring-bone effect, which was o f course masked by the plaster coating the whole wall. It has been suggested that this type o f brickwork was introduced by foreigners, accustomed to build in stone. Be that as it may, herring-bone masonry does occur early at Byblos in Syria, and is distinctive o f the earliest settlements at Troy on the Hellespont, Thermi on Lesbos, and in Early Helladic Greece.1 The name proposed by Christian, ‘plano-convex' might then seem a more apposite designation for the period than Early Dynastic.
