Abstract: The first large-scale expansion of Mesopotamian state-level society in the late Uruk period (3500-3200 BCE) established a network of social and economic interactions linking southern Mesopotamia with northern Syria, Anatolia and Iran. Uruk cultural materials found in sites along river and overland travel routes testify to this contact and to the transmission of Late Uruk culture. Algaze (1989) argues that this expansion, in a quest for resources, set the stage for increased social complexity in the populated centers in regions of contact. However, many populated centers that lay adjacent to main lines of contact do not demonstrate significant cultural influences from the Late Uruk system. In this context, sites located between Aleppo and Hama in inland west Syria, to the west of the Euphrates River, attest few indications of Late Uruk cultural contact during the late fourth millennium. Akkermans and Schwartz (2003) argue that only simple, small-scale communities appear there in this period and that there is little understanding of their urban hierarchies, socio-economic activities or local processes of social development. This study examines evidence to the contrary that demonstrates actual independent local development trajectories and urban hierarchies that exhibit social complexity. These trajectories of independently increasing social complexity can be traced clearly at the sites of Tell Afis and Tell Hama. Despite scattered evidence of cultural relations with areas outside the study region, the overwhelming evidence for independent cultural development serves as a reminder of the multiple sources of economic and social stimuli that operated in areas adjacent to the main lines of Uruk contact. During the early third millennium the depopulation or abandonment of many sites in the fertile plain of Afis stand in sharp contrast to the continued prosperity of Tell Hama to the south. In all probability the agricultural region around Afis suffered from a severe local crisis. This appears not to have affected Hama which apparently maintained its external relations with the Amuq Valley and other more distant points. In sum, the extent to which the social complexity in the study area thrived or failed is far from dependent upon particular Uruk influences. Instead, local social factors, including the apparent effects of local environmental changes emerge as key factors in explaining development patterns in inland west Syria during the early third millennium.