Mesopotamian Architecture. Knowledge of architecture in Mesopotamia is generally restricted to monumental public buildings such as palaces and temples. Occasionally, however, archaeological excavations have uncovered ordinary houses and other sorts of buildings.

Late Uruk Period, circa 3300 - circa 2900 B.C.E. During this period urbanism took spectacular form in southern Mesopotamia. The site of Uruk provides the most extensive evidence. In an area later dedicated to the heaven god Anu, a temple was built on top of a high terrace that had been rebuilt at least seven times. The best-preserved shrine is the so-called White Temple, which has a tripartite plan, identical to the layout of ordinary buildings known elsewhere in Mesopotamia a millennium earlier. The terrace, built of thousands of small rectangular mud bricks known as Riemchen, rose with sloping and recessed walls. The tops of the terrace and stair walls were strengthened and...