The biggest currently known – Taljanky – extends over an area of 300 hectares, outspanning the earliest phases of the city of Uruk in southern Mesopotamia. It presents no evidence of central administration or communal storage facilities. Nor have any government buildings, fortifications or monumental architecture been found. There is no acropolis or civic centre; no equivalent to Uruk’s raised public district called Eanna (‘House of Heaven’) or the Great Bath of Mohenjo-daro.
