In the 4th millennium BC, Mesopotamia witnessed the world’s first urban settlements and associated economic and political complexities. However, the burial practices of this period are poorly known, leaving a gap in our reconstruction of the social implications of this important transition. The funerary traditions of the preceding and succeeding 5th and 3rd millennium BC in Mesopotamia are well-known, but there does not appear to be a continuum of practice across the intervening millennium. This paper explores the current state of knowledge of burial practices in 4th millennium BC Mesopotamia, including an under-examined adult-infant dichotomy. Based on recently-excavated data from Tell Brak in northeast Syria, we propose a model of site-edge burial during the urban transition in northern Mesopotamia.