Models of Mesopotamian Landscapes. How Small-scale Processes Contributed to the Growth of Early Civilizations, edited by Tony J. Wilkinson, McGuire Gibson and Magnus Widell, Archeopress Publisher, BAR International Series 2552, Oxford 2013 (paperback, Pp. x+275, figs 131, Pls 23). ISBN–13: 978–1407311739, ISBN–10: 1407311735. Price £ 42.

The international multidisciplinary research team which goes, under the name of MASS project (Modeling Ancient Settlement Systems [in Mesopotamia]) carried out between the late 1990s and the early 2000s a groundbreaking research aiming at understanding the conditions under which the urbanization process or its opposites (ruralization or even collapse), might have taken place during the 3rd millennium BC in Northern and Southern Mesopotamia.