Uruk period
Outside Uruk, few sites in southern Mesopotamia have yielded levels contemporary with the Uruk period. Soundages carried out on the sites of most of the key cities of Mesopotamia in the historic period have revealed that they were occupied in this period (Kish, Girsu, Nippur, Ur, perhaps Shuruppak and Larsa, and further north in Diyala, Tell Asmar and Khafajah). The sacred quarter of Eridu, site of the main monumental structures of the Ubaid period in Lower Mesopotamia, is poorly known for the Uruk period. The only important structure from the end of the 4th millennium BC so far known from the region outside Uruk is the 'Painted Temple' on the platform of Tell Uqair, which dates to the end of the Uruk period or perhaps the Jemdet Nasr period, and consists of two terraces superimposed on one another with a building of around 18 x 22 m identified as having a cultic function. More recently, a level belonging to the Uruk period has been revealed on the tell southeast of the site of Abu Salabikh ('Uruk Mound'), covering only 10 hectares. This site was surrounded by a wall which has been only partially revealed and several buildings have been brought to light, including a platform which supported a building, only traces of which remain. As for the site of Jemdet Nasr, which has given its name to the period of transition from the Uruk period to the Early Dynastic period, it is divided into two main tells and it is on the second ("Mound B") that the most important building has been brought to light, which contained a substantial cache of administrative documents—more than 200 tablets with impressions of cylinder seals.