THE MATURE AND LATER NEOLITHIC IN
MESOPOTAMIA (6000-3500)
Introduction
1. After
Catal Huyuk the center of development east of the Nile shifted to the regions
bounding the Tigris Euphrates river plains to the east. For descriptive
purposes this area can be separated into two climatic zones located north and
south of Baghdad. In general the area
to the north is on the edge of the 250 mm rainfall limit below which rain-based
(“dry”) farming is not possible. The second
zone, south of Baghdad comprises the hot rainless plains of southern
Mesopotamia where irrigation is vital for farming.
2. In
this region the final developments that led to urban civilization took place in
the 1500 year period 6000-45000 BC in the context of an evolving Neolithic
culture of essentially small villages based on dry farming giving way to large
towns subsisting on irrigation.
3.
Overall development (Nissen 1988) begins with hunters needing a very
large "catchment area' to ensure enough food – an extensive space for
wild, migrating animals. This changes
with the introduction of farming so that villages become more stable and
produce more food near their homes, allowing more and closer settlements. Finally in the full-blown irrigation agricultural
phases intensive occupation is possible with various scales of settlements
co-existing in the same region.
4. The
Mesopotamian Late Neolithic sequence leads from a single innovative village -
Umm Dabaghiya (see below) through three chronologically overlapping
archaeological "cultures" identified originally largely through their
pottery styles - Hassuna, Samarra - to the initial move to the southern
alluvium and urbanism in the Ubaid period (4500-2600 BC)
5. During
this period, although the excavated site inventory remains sparse, we see moves
toward closer interregional connections in the context of continuing
regional/local differences. This involved the probable emergence of
multi-settlement cultural units whose members shared in concepts of
belief, technology, social organization and art, increasing social complexity,
and the emergence of embryonic institutions of the southern Mesopotamian
pattern of urban life.
6. Archaeologically, these later Neolithic trends
are most apparent in the changing pottery inventories.
7. First
we see that, following the settlement-specific Early Neolithic styles
(suggesting purely local cultural norms as applied to and expressed through
pottery), there was a gradual move toward regional styles (Hassuna), and supra
regional styles (Hassuna/Ubaid) -suggesting a sharing of taste, style, and to
some extent cultural identity as well as trade growth.
8. In terms of production organization, we see
crude undecorated or decorated household products (Catal Huyuk, Umm Dabaghiya)
giving way to individual specialists who crafted and carefully decorated the
entire pots (Hassuna/Samarra/Halaf), to the invention of the slow wheel and
specialized pottery workshops in the Ubaid. This represents the gradual growth
of specialization that probably also involved expansion of trade,
administration, irrigation, technology and religion.
Umm Daghabiya (6500-6000)
1. This
site is located in northern Iraq in an area of marginal rainfall, contemporary
with later Catal Huyuk. It appears to
be another of the rather examples of important Neolithic sites developing its
own self-dependant economy while sharing in increasingly intensive connections.
2. Umm
Daghabiya is a small site (6 families) with a mostly animal subsistence base
(domesticated animals plus wild onager and gazelle). The site is located in a
marginal area for dry farming, thus the emphasis.
3. There
is abundant plain pottery, copper, and Anatolian obsidian.
4. The
residential area contains similar religious iconography to Catal Huyuk - murals
of onager (wild ass) hunts and special burial treatment of skulls.
5. The
archaeological record contains huge quantities of onager bone relative to other
animals, indicating specialization in hides stored in the special cell-like
room blocks with roof entrances that characterized the settlement. Diana Kirkbride, the excavator, believes
that this indicates trade with Anatolia for obsidian.
6. Umm
Daghabiya is a typical mature Neolithic site in terms of its distinctive
specialization and economy but with intensifying distant links that forecast
the subsequent developments.
Hassuna Culture (6000-5200
BC)
1. This
archaeologically culture, defined by its ceramic style, encompasses a large
number of small villages set largely just within the 250mm rainfall belt of
Northern Iraq and easternmost Anatolia and sharing a number of cultural traits
for first time. Its mixed economy
generally includes greater reliance on cereal production.
2. Houses
of mud slabs and thatch with 3-4 rooms, sometimes around courtyard with
parching ovens and grain bins show the continuing development of Neolithic
technology (used to separate husks from kernels)
3. A shared ceramic style - first crude like Umm Dabaghiya, later with coarse painting is distributed around its "culture area." and leads into Samarran and Halafian Cultures.
4. There is no evidence of social differentiation
like the succeeding Samarran Culture – just small simple "rustic' villages
of a few kin-linked family groups in the typical Neolithic pattern.
Halaf Culture (5500-4800)
1. The
Halaf range includes the northern parts of Mesopotamia, Syria and southern
Anatolia. Ecnomy was based on dry
farming and stockbreeding.
2. The
elaborate Halaf pottery style spread across the entire northern region to the
Mediterranean, indicating intensive sharing of stylistic concepts through
cultural contact or trade although there appear to be different varieties of
this style, indicating against any form of wider political unity.
3. Halaf
was related to, and may well have grown out of, Hassunna and Umm Daghabiya in
the north as part of a general cultural/ social Neolithic pattern whose most
elaborate expression was seen at Catal Huyuk.
4. Halaf
sites are in general small like those of the Hassuna Culture of North
Iraq. Like Catal Huyuk, Umm Dabaghiya
and Hassuna suggest no strong signs of administrative bureaucracy or social
differentiation, except for its specialized pottery. This contrasts with the contemporary Samarra Culture further
south.
Samarran Culture (5500-4800)
1. The
Samarran settlement distribution demonstrates that communities of settled
farmers were moving into the fringes of the northern alluvium. This move necessitated simple irrigation to
enable adequate food production in this dry area. There is progressive lessening in importance of hunting at the
Samarran sites of Tell-es Sawaan and Chogi Mama.
2. The
area of Samarran pottery distribution includes the entirety of northern Iraq
north of Baghdad. It represents a style
comprising brown-painted geometric style pottery.
3. Trade
is indicated by turquoise, carnelian and obsidian. Alabaster and copper was also used.
4. Female figurines continue into the
tradition. They are different from site
to site, suggesting distinctive local forms of the same wide belief
system. Elaborate burials offer greater
evidence for social stratification.
Samarran Social
Organization
1. Both Tell-es Sawaan and Chogi Mama were
surrounded by large buttressed walls with indirect entrance. This suggests the presence of inter-site
raiding. It also suggests emergence of
the organizational systems required for raiding parties, labor, administration,
and irrigation.
2. There is now a clear differentiation of house
types with residential buildings being usually rectangular as opposed to a
second house form that was used later by both private and religious
institutions as the focus of their moves toward economic and political
hegemony. This was a T-shaped building
used for storage of grain and residence, containing elaborate female figurines
which indicates ritual connection. This
suggests that important kin-groups/families were communally owning produce and
building their own status on such ownership.
3. This room-type later became the T-shape room
that is better known on one hand as the temple form and on the other hand as
the residence of the extended private family.
This large family group was the forerunner of the feudal Sumerian
households (oikos) headed by an important landowner and including his sons,
their families and retainers. Samarran
culture at 5500 was developing in a more hierarchical direction than
contemporary Catal Huyuk.
4. Later, in Uruk and Early Dynastic Periods,
this dichotomy between temple and important landowners grew into a contest for
control that was ultimately won by the latter.
Ubaid Culture (4500-3600)
1. Marks the true initiation of settlement in the
Tigris-Euphrates alluvium.
2. Ubaid Culture probably developed from the
Samarran. The Ubaid further developed
the use of irrigation technology, land management (corporate family ownership),
overall religious centralization around a community temple (and divinity) and
long-distance trade, to create a way of life that grew upon its Neolithic past
to establish a new urban pattern fitted to life in the alluvial plains.
3.
Original Ubaid settlement comprised scattered small villages located
along riverbanks of the southern alluvium. This settlement may well have been
made possible by the lowering of water levels in the Gulf and the opening of
new areas that were still seasonally flooded, permitting easy irrigation
agriculture.
4.
However, the late 4th millennium saw a major and rapid move toward
large, nucleated cities clustered around temples, initiating large-scale
irrigation projects to reclaim desert land for farming.
5. The earliest example is Eridu where elite
residences and specialist potters clustered around a temple creating the temple
precinct that characterized later periods and the tradition of a sacred place
that retained its importance in Mesopotamian for millennia in many cases.
6. The
temple influence was still countered by private feudal estates. Here extended
family members lived in large homes that included several distinct living
complexes (Father and sons).
7. The
Ubaid spread throughout the entire region including the north, replacing Halaf
cultural influence there, and south along the shores of the Persian Gulf.
8.
However, the superficial supra-regional similarities of the Ubaid
overlay persisting differences between north and south Mesopotamia (originally
seen in the Samarran/Halafian distinction) that became evident again
later. Thus, the south developing urban
society of the Uruk period while the north retained closer connections with its
Neolithic past in the form of smaller farming villages. Similarly the small Ubaid towns in Arabia
later reverted to a chiefly hunting lifeway with cultural expressions distinct
from those of Mesopotamia.
Late Neolithic Summary
1. The Mature-Late Neolithic reveals a move from
very local and differential adoption of domestication in the context of small
isolated clusters of homes, to large towns incorporating sharing religious,
economic and social organizational features at the inception of the "Urban
Revolution."
2. The long process
involved:
- origins in the
Levant.
- regional
and local distinction:
: use of resources
: subsistence strategies
: technology
: social organizational
strategies
: population sizes and
densities
: religious belief
- At the end a move toward more formal
connections through shared:
: trade
: belief systems
: settlement patterns
: cultural connections
All this led to transformation on the
Tigris-Euphrates plains with the beginnings of the Urban Revolution in the
Ubaid.