is largely as a result of the findings of these excavations that ideas of an "Uruk expansion" have arisen. The best known site is Habuba Kabira, a fortified port on the right bank of the river in Syria. The city covered around 22 hectares, surrounded by a defensive wall, roughly 10 percent of which has been uncovered. Study of the buildings on this site shows that it was a planned settlement, which would have required significant means. The archaeological material from the site is identical to that of Uruk, consisting of pottery, cylinder-seals, bullae, accounting calculi, and numerical tablets from the end of the period. Thus this new city has every appearance of being an Urukian colony. Around 20 residences of various sorts have been excavated. They have a tripartite plan, arranged around a reception hall with a foyer opening onto an internal courtyard, with additional rooms arranged around it. In the south of the site is a hill, Tell Qanas, which has a monumental group of several structures identified speculatively as 'temples' on an artificial terrace. The site was abandoned at the end of the 4th millennium BC, apparently without violence, during the period when the Uruk culture retreated. Habuba Kabira is similar in many ways to the nearby site of on a rocky outcrop, only 8 km further north. As at Habuba Kabira, there is an urban centre made up of residences of various kinds and a central monumental complex of two 'temples'. It is beyond doubt that this city too was built by 'Urukians'. A little further north, is a third possibly Urukian colony, Sheikh Hassan, on the middle Euphrates. It is possible that these sites were part of a state implanted in the region by people from south Mesopotamia and were developed in order to take advantage of important commercial routes. In the Khabur valley, Tell Brak was an important urban centre from the 5th millennium BC, one of the largest of the Uruk period, since it covered over 110 hectares at its height. Some residences from the period have been uncovered, along with pottery typical of Uruk, but what has received the most attention is a succession of monuments which are definitely for cultic purposes. The 'Eye Temple' (as its final stage is known) has walls decorated with terracotta cones which form a mosaic and with inlays of coloured stones and a platform which might