ABSTRACT
In the Middle and Late Bronze Age, settlements in Syria and the Levant maintained a certain degree of continuity. Virtually no major new settlement was built in this period and city plans practically remained the same, surrounded by the same fortification walls. In other words, cities did not grow enough to require the construction of new walls, so that the strong walls built at the beginning of the second millennium bc only required a few improvements and some restoration works on the gates. Within these walls, public buildings, and palaces in particular, became larger and richer at the expense of residential areas (Figures 19.1 and 19.2). Temples, both of the tripartite rectangular type and the ‘temple-tower’ type, remained relatively small.
