Our work at Tell Brak in 1987 and 1988 included investigations in all three periods of major interest on the site, the fourth, third and second millennia B.C., but this brief article is not intended as the regular biennial report on all our discoveries, for two reasons. There is unusual pressure of space in this volume of Iraq, and we have also called a temporary halt to excavation in 1989 in order to prepare Volume I of a series of final reports on the excavations, which will deal with the Mitanni and Old Babylonian periods and will, we hope, be in press when Iraq 51 appears. We must, nonetheless, express our gratitude for generous financial support to the British Academy, the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (H. Dunscombe Colt Archaeological Institute Gift and Armida Colt Gift), and the Crowther-Beynon and C. H. W.Johns Funds of Cambridge University. We also offer our sincere thanks to all our friends and colleagues in the Directorate General of Antiquities in Damascus, Aleppo, Deir ez Zor and Hasake for their invaluable cooperation, and particularly to Dr. Afif Bahnassi, then Director General, and to Dr. Adnan Bounni, who has always taken a close and encouraging interest in our work, and to H.E. the Governor of Hasake province, who generously arranged for the loan of a mechanical shovel to remove our dumps in preparation for extended excavation in the next season. Our thanks are also due to Sayid Ibrahim, our Representative in 1987 who has always been most helpful in administrative matters, and Sayid Mohammed Muslim, Representative in 1988, who was an invaluable member of the expedition and, in particular, a most effective site supervisor on part of the building with which this article is primarily concerned. We must record our personal appreciation of the great contribution made by our colleagues, J.-M. Meunier, who was Assistant Director of the excavations in 1987 but was unfortunately unable to join us in 1988, and Jesper Eidem (epigraphist and site supervisor) and Helen McDonald (registrar and draftsman) who were with us in both seasons. In 1987 Mrs. Risë Taylor Andreasen was our very skilled conservator, John MacGinnis and Timothy Matney served as site supervisors, and Miss Susan Oates as archaeological assistant; Dr. Önhan Tunca also joined us for a month as site supervisor. In 1988 we were fortunate to have the assistance of David Warburton and Miss Wendy Horton as site supervisors, and Miss Fiona Burtt as finds assistant. We are extremely grateful to them all for their hard work and good company.