The Kārum Period on the Plateau

International audienceDuring the first centuries of the 2nd millennium BCE, Assyrian merchants originatingfrom Assur, on the Upper Tigris, organized large scale commercial exchanges withcentral Anatolia. They settled in several localities, called kārums. This Akkadian word,which usually designates the quay or port in Mesopotamian cities, refers in Anatolia tothe Assyrian merchant district and its administrative building. Thus, the kārum period—which comprises the Old Assyrian period—covers the time period during which theAssyrians traded in Anatolia, from the middle of the 20th to the end of the 18th centuryBCE; it corresponds, more or less, to the Middle Bronze Age. In Anatolia, this period ischaracterized by an important phase of urbanization, with a flourishing material culturemixing native and foreign styles