THE MATURE NEOLITHIC OF THE LEVANT AND
ANATOLIA (7000-5400 BC)
A.
The Levantine Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB 7000-6000 BC)
1. Many
southern Levantine sites were temporarily abandoned around 7300 BC at the end
of the PPNA for reasons as yet unconfirmed although climatic change has again
been suggested. This did not affect the
northern Levant to the same extent so seems a local phenomenon. Many of the southern sites were resettled in
the early 7th millennium. This did not
affect the Zagros sites like Jarmo and Ali Kosh that had experienced continuous
occupation throughout the period.
2. The
succeeding PPNB period (7000-6000 BC) represents further development of the
Early Neolithic in the Levant with indications of closer contact and more
formal trading of obsidian, turquoise, jadeite, flint.
3. This
was also a time when the Neolithic expands beyond the areas of initial
settlement (Levant) into the areas of the Kopet Dags (Jeitun) and Mergahr in
the Baluchi Highlands. While these areas
are very distant from the main developments of the Fertile Crescent, they
probably represent diffusion rather than independent innovation with connecting
sites of the Iranian Plateau still to be found. (Notes: During this period the inhabitants of the Nile Valley
continued to exist in a semi-sedentary, pre-Neolithic hunting and gathering way
of life).
4. There are strong indications that in the PPNB
hunting significantly diminished in most areas and that there is progressively greater dependence of domesticated
food.
5. It is possible that incipient irrigation
developed in desert sites like Jericho and Beidha in the Southern Levant and
Cuyonu and Catal Huyuk in Anatolia (a little later), to sustain the food needed
to feed their greatly expanded populations.
6. In the
PPNB there were closer similarities in burial customs between the various
Levantine sites than previously. This
is mostly seen in the sub-floor secondary burial of skulls. One theory is that
this practice came from the north as part of the PPNB cultural emergence.
Regional Life-ways
1. The
general adoption of pottery throughout the regions by 6000 BC with a clear
development of local styles reflects emergence of specific modes of decoration
and cultural identity.
2. There
is growing evidence of differential socio/economic choices among the peoples of
the area. Thus:
3. There was strengthening of the nomadic
pastoralist way of life that probably emerged from descendants of the groups
that rejected sedentism at the end of the Natufian, like the Harifian Culture
(see earlier lecture notes). Thus
nomadic camps have been identified throughout the Southern Levant and
Sinai. This period clearly consolidates
the dichotomy that emerged from the Epi-Palaeolithic and persists till today - permanent
dependence on agriculture and farming opposed by an equally strong nomadic
pastoralist tradition.
4. There
was continued regional experimentation among the PPNB towns of the Levant. Jericho (15 acres) and Catal Huyuk (32
acres) dwarf such sites as Jarmo (3 acres) and its Zagros contemporaries. Jericho with its massive walled settlement
and earlier (fortification?) tower represents a level of labor and
administrative organization not seen elsewhere until possibly Catal Huyuk in
Anatolia late in this period (after 6500 BC).
5. Also
there is evidence that at PPNB Jerich an emerging formal religious system with
below floor secondary burials of skulls (ancestral?), figurines of animals and
humans (mostly female), ans possible a special “shrine” heralded the formal
systems that emerged throughout the Middle East in later periods.
6. Jericho was sharing in an emerging resource
distribution network with obsidian coming from Anatolia (Catal Huyuk), and
shell from the Red Sea.
7. Both of the large Levantine/Anatolian sites
contrast with the smaller villages of the Zagros where the Jarmo pattern of
small farming village continued unabated.
8. These
regional patterns illustrate that during the earlier Neolithic Periods various
local groups, even when they shared in a general pathway toward settled
agricultural life, developed their own identities and strategies befitting
their needs - physical and spiritual.
This experimentation & diversity was facilitated by the relative
isolation of the early villages, especially in the mountainous areas of
Anatolia and the Zagros and further east.
9. Around 6000 BC well-documented environmental
disruption (drying) caused breakdown of the Southern Levantine PPNB and most
sites were abandoned for 500 years.
Only in the north and later in the east did the Neolithic further
evolve.
The Anatolian Mature Neolithic and Catal
Huyuk (6500-5400 BC)
1. Catal Huyuk is located in the Konya Plain of
central Anatolia. This is an area of abundant wild cattle and wheat with lesser
numbers of sheep. These formed the
basis of settled life with accompanying hunting and wild plant gathering.
2. The emphasis on cattle again shows a local adaptation of the Neolithic as does the actual settlement pattern of Catal Huyuk.
3. Catal Huyuk overlaps the late PPNB of the Levant and continues down to 5000 BC.
4. It was a large "town" of 32 acres of
clustered rectangular mud-brick houses with common courtyards but no alleys or
streets.
5.
Interior spaces included adobe platforms (sleeping), and a kitchen area
with hearths, domed oven, storage bins and niches. Frequent burials (mostly
secondary) were placed in the platforms or under the floors with special
attention to skulls which were often separated from the body and placed in
special niches in tombs or walls.
Residential burials showed little evidence of rank - just bead, shell,
some copper, personal ornaments.
6.
Shrines. The residential area of Catal Huyuk contains
many rooms with bulls horns and heads, modelled plaster reliefs of cattle heads
and human breasts, placed on the walls.
Walls were often painted with scenes of hunting, topographic scenes,
dead bodies with vultures etc. Burials
in the shrines do indicate some social differentiation with weapons (daggers
and arrows), polished stone bowls, obsidian mirrors, mace-heads, etc.
8. Figurines. Many female figures have been
recovered from Catal Huyuk. They are
often associated with wild felines, children and birth.
7.
Economy.
-
Subsistence was based on raising wheat, cattle breeding and continuing hunting
of deer, wild boar, bear and ass. There may have been small-scale
irrigation. Also continued use of wild
plants.
- Probable trade in obsidian from a source near
the Konya volcano, also probably trade in skins and wheat.
- Technology developed an accomplished lithic
inventory of flint and obsidian with a lot of elaborate ground-stone. There was also a diversified bone tool
kit. This is still essentially a
Neolithic tool inventory. However,
simple metallurgy in the form of lead, and copper (smelting by 5500 BC.)
occurred to some extent. Pottery
consisted of simple bowls that were undecorated early but later painted.
8. Craft Organization. There
is no good evidence for craft specialization - no workshops or evidence of
central technical or storage facilities.
It is probable that a basically generalized economy existed in which
people were both food producers and household craft specialists with only at
best incipient central organization.
Catal Huyuk and Urbanism
1. Given the unparalleled size of Catal Huyuk,
its several thousand inhabitants, dense settlement, and probably long distance
economic contacts, the town has often been termed the first instance of
urbanism in the World(although earlier PPNA/B Jericho has also been given this
distinction).
2. It is probably better described as a primary
example of the socio/economic experimentation that characterizes the Neolithic
with people distributed in well-separated villages, each developing its own
version of sedentary society. Catal
Huyuk and possibly Jericho went furthest in developing the social
organizational capacity to integrate large populations and develop the required
related economic bases. However, they
ultimately proved to be exceptions to the basic Neolithic rule of small
self-dependent villages, and disappear without obviously affecting the broader
evolution of the Neolithic into later urban civilization.
3. The ultimate transition to urbanism came much
later and in the river valleys that had not to any significant degree
participated in the major Levantine and Anatolian experiments of the Neolithic,
deriving from the more modest village, small-farming base in the Zagros
foothills.
1. The arrangement and nature of the
symbolic/religious features at Catal Huyuk tell us much about the general
emphasis of the group ideation of the early Neolithic.
2. The
Neolithic was an emerging way of life in which the domesticated and safe was
not yet dominant over the wild and threatening. There was thus a constant awareness of fragility and insecurity.
This opposition of wild and domestic was recognized and mediated through the
symbolic use of art and space.
Opposition of Life and Death at Catal Huyuk.
1. In
symbolism there is a dichotomy of Female/Life/Domestic opposed to
Male/Death/Wild. This doesn't
necessarily relate entirely to task roles or personalities. It does, however,
use some of general qualities of each to oppose the two dominant and
antagonistic aspects of Neolithic life.
2. This
opposition occurs within several symbolic categories. Thus, female figurines commonly show nude females, sometimes
giving birth, seated on wild leopards.
Wall sculptures sometimes show human breasts with the beaks of vultures
or jaws of foxes set into them. In
murals vultures are associated with death (vultures flying over headless
corpses) and males. Houses combine areas devoted to the two contrasting
qualities in the same room. Thus there
is a stress in all symbolism of the close relationship and separation of life
and death/ wild and domestic.
3. Taking
this into the architectural sphere, we see a similar juxtaposition in the
arrangement of these symbols in the residential spaces.
4. Most
obviously, domestic areas are located near the entrances of houses and contain
ovens, hearths, no murals and large quantities of pottery. Further into the interior of houses are the
benches in which burials occur - women nearest the entrance and the domestic
area, men further back, often buried with hunting equipment. In the back area
around male burials are the murals depicting death, hunting, wild animals.
7. Thus
the domestic/female/life is segregated from the wild/male/death grouping and
encloses it within the confines of the Neolithic home. This indicates growing control by the
domestic over the wild as do the figurines with their symbolic taming of wild
animals by life-giving females. Here
male/female is used as a symbolic dichotomy – it doesn't necessarily mean that
in daily life men were seen as death figures or women purely domestic. This expresses the growing importance of the
Neolithic way of life over the nomadic hunting/gathering.