Petr Charvát - Mesopotamia Before History (2008, Routledge)

The neolithic 31

occurred more frequently as it has been observed that Samarra culture sites tend to be situated some 1.5–3 km apart. This leaves the radii of 750 to 1500 m for distances between the village centres and the farthest points of their fields (Oates 1980).

Is it possible to estimate the proportion of the general food procurement provided for by intensive agriculture? In this instance we shall draw on the results of US research carried out on sites of the Deh Luran plain, the environment of which approximates that of the Mesopotamian plains (Hole and Flannery 1967; Hole, Flannery and Neely 1969). In the earliest Bus Mordeh phase (7500–6750 BC) of the Ali Koš period (c.7500–5500 BC), results of intensive agriculture made up less than 10 per cent of all the plant remains there (Hole and Flannery 1967, I69f.; Hole, Flannery and Neely 1969, 343f.). In the middle Ali Koš phase (c.6750–6000) this proportion increased to 40 per cent but in the final Mohammad Jaffar phase (c.6000–5600) it fell again to a mere 4 per cent (Hole and Flannery 1967, 175–177; Hole, Flannery and Neely 1969, 347–354). The plant component of the Neolithic diet thus included a sizeable portion of wild collected food, uncultivated cereals, other grasses and other comestibles such as pistachio nuts, as the occasion may have offered (on the cereal component of Neolithic diet and the ways and means of its treatment see Ruf 1993, albeit on European prehistoric materials). The Deh Luran plain sites do show, however, that the proportion of wild plant food ultimately decreased (Hole and Flannery 1967, 169–177; Hole, Flannery and Neely 1969, 343–354) though this process need not have necessarily been universal or unilineal. The Choga Mami evidence points to the conclusion that in spite of the diminishing seed size indicating problems in intensive agriculture, the significance of plant food grew, as is represented by the increasing quantities of sickle blades. The most logical interpretation of this situation would envisage harvesting of wild plants. In the case of Choga Mami, H.Helbaek (1972, 39) believes that the quite unusual quantity of rye-grasses must have been caused by their growing on irrigated land and thus this sophisticated agrotechnology need not have been confined to cultivated plants only. The relation between systematic cultivation of plant food and its collection was clearly far from rigidly fixed and could vary in time and place. One of the aspects involved in this situation may be elucidated by authors of the Deh Luran plain excavations who noticed the absence of unequivocally summer products (Hole, Flannery and Neely 1969, 343ff.), understanding this feature as a testimony for seasonal occupation of their sites. The relatively low output of intensive agriculture is also indicated by pollen spectra from the Neolithic of adjacent regions such as Syria which show the major disturbances of natural vegetation brought about by man to date as late as c.4000 BC (van Zeist and Woldring 1980, 120; Bottema 1993; van Zeist and Bottema 1999). The same situation is likely to have characterized the vicinity of Neolithic Catal Hüyük which can hardly be considered an exclusively agricultural site (Bottema and Woldring 1984, 148, agriculture in pollen spectra only from c.3000 BC). We may note in this connection that a number of pre-industrial communities practise the simplest slash-and-burn agriculture because it places the lowest demand on labour input and hardly any impulse towards the intensification of this component of subsistence activities is visible (Maisels 1990, 34–35). On the other hand, the cultivation of quite new plant food species must have also resulted in major adjustments of the spiritual life of early humans, including not only new conceptualizations of the universe and of the situation of men and women in it (Hodder 1987; Felten 1993) but even repercussions for cult and ritual. Some of these new features might have even provided ritual sanctions to

Mesopotamia before history 32

protect plants in particularly sensitive periods of their life cycle, perhaps in the manner documented for yam growing in Oceania (see Coursey 1972, esp. pp. 223ff.).

Let us notice the fact that the latest investigations point to the conclusion that most of the early cultigens of the prehistoric Near East were domesticated over a relatively short period of time and within a rather limited geographical area (Cauvin 1994, 183). Another aspect of Neolithic life brought forth by recent investigations is the decrease in comfort and greater stress under which humans lived, in comparison with the preceding Mesolithic times. For example, the Neolithic diet wore down the teeth of contemporary inhabitants of Syrian Abu Hureyra to a considerably greater extent than did the Mesolithic diet (Molleson and Jones 1991). Other human remains found at the same site yielded evidence for physically demanding work, including collapse of neck vertebrae due to carrying heavy loads on the head (Kiple 1996, 21). The food-producing economy was no fun: remember that the waggon would not be invented until the Chalcolithic.

Much in the same vein, animal husbandry and hunting represented two poles linked by a continuum of particular modes of subsistence. For the first time in history, Neolithic breeders put at the disposal of their communities herds of economically important animals differing from their wild ancestors (see Bökönyi 1994; Becker 1999). The fact that early hunters had been accompanied by tame dogs since the Palaeolithic (Palegawra) has already been noted. The Neolithic multiplied the host of domesticated animals with the addition of sheep and goats, bred out of their wild ancestors, Capra aegagrus (goat) and Ovis orientalis (sheep), perhaps in this very region (see also Croft 1995, 165). The transformation of the wild Bos primigenius into domestic cattle took place sometime during the sixth pre-Christian millennium in the east Mediterranean. Up to now, the most limited number of remains bear out the domestication of the pig from its wild ancestor Sus scrofa (Clutton-Brock 1980, esp. pp. 39–40; Flannery 1983). Nevertheless, most of the domesticated animals of the Neolithic displayed a high degree of variability and low type stability (Hole, Flannery and Neely 1969, 263f.). Authors of the Deh Luran plain excavations point to the conclusion drawn during the analysis of palaeozoological material that the local herds must have been in contact with other domestic animals (ibid. 350). This implies the mobility of shepherd groups. The emergence of specialized animal husbandry went hand in hand with changes in hunting practices. At the beginning of this period the Deh Luran hunters persisted in the traditional killing of wild goats (Hole and Flannery 1967, I69ff.) but for the rest of the Neolithic their counterparts concentrated mainly on gazelle and onager, quadrupeds living in the open plains (ibid. 169–178). The hunting of such animals represents a fairly complex affair (see the complete failure of Alexander the Great’s cavalry in this aspect: Adams and Wright 1989, 446), requiring careful organization and cooperation of groups of experienced hunters. The catching of onagers in provisional pens by directing the animals through a system of net barriers, driven by the sight of hunters and by sounds emitted by them, is documented by the early medieval paintings from the Jordanian site of Quseir Amra (Blazquez 1981, 192–194, Figs 4–6; Blazquez 1983). The introduction of specialized animal husbandry was thus paralleled by changes in hunting strategy which by the Neolithic required the cooperation of relatively numerous human groups as well as efficient organization of the whole enterprise. This conclusion is borne out by evidence from the Tepe Guran site where the Neolithic population hunted more gazelle than their predecessors who relied heavily on domestic goats (Mortensen 1972). The Neolithic inhabitants of the Deh Luran plain sites

The neolithic 33

also consumed more aquatic animals (fish, mussels, turtles, crabs) and migratory water birds than before (Hole and Flannery 1967, 175f.; Hole, Flannery and Neely 1969, 265f.). This may have been caused by the improvement of climate, supposed to have been warm and humid by then (Moore 1983, 93 and Fig. 2 on p. 105) and favourable to the vegetation that might have covered large areas of presently arid landscapes. Hunting activities could have varied even along the chronological axis: the intensification of gazelle hunting, observed at Choga Mami, could well be connected to the local decrease in cereal seed size. The conclusion that the local population, confronted with an agrarian crisis, responded with an increase in the exploitation of wild edible plants and by the intensification of hunting activities seems thus to lie at hand (a similar argument is pursued by Miller 1996, 524).

It need not be particularly stressed that much as in other spheres of human enterprise, animal husbandry was hardly ever a purely economic affair. Social and symbolical issues undoubtedly played their role (Keswani 1994).

The agricultural production of the Neolithic period may thus have consisted of a range of diverse activities of which intensive agriculture, gathering of wild edible plants, animal husbandry and hunting-cum-food-collection constituted border lines or rather points. In between these, the particular and concrete subsistence activities chosen by each community oscillated according to

Figure 3.9 The twin rivers of Mesopotamia have since time immemorial played a major role as the main communication arteries. Navigating the Euphrates upstream as far as the present Syro-Turkish border area, the ancient Mesopotamians could well have seen scenery similar to this.

Mesopotamia before history 34

what factors seemed most opportune at the given moment. There are no clear preferences and obviously hardly any fixed strategies: movements which would seem to us ‘progressive’ are accompanied by such ‘regressions’ as, for instance, increased insistence on food-gathering and hunting following the impact of an agrarian crisis(?) at Choga Mami. The commonly accepted and acknowledged ‘lifestyle’ stubbornly refused to bow to the mechanistic ideas of twentieth-century materialist-minded historians.

The sphere of technology has been given undue prominence in archaeological attention ever since the beginnings of Near Eastern field excavations. While it must be admitted that the technological level of processing the natural resources of the society in question provides an important indicator of its position on the temporal and civilizational scale and that some products have gradually acquired an additional significance which the ancients could hardly have foreseen (e.g. the importance of pottery for dating and classification of archaeological sites), it is by no means a sole index of ‘progressivity’ of the ancient community in question. It has repeatedly been emphasized that the significance of technological procedures and of the material culture in general must always be assessed against the background of a whole set of patterns of economic, social, political and spiritual life of the given society (on this see Oates 1980, 306; Pfaffenberger 1988). Modern research tends to prefer the mental reflection of the world to subsistence pressures as the vehicle of social changes (Cauvin 1978, 139–142). Recent research has confirmed the assumption that for a truly historical perspective of the context of every studied human population, investigation of the energy flow, more particularly of the amount of energy harnessed per capita and of the manner in which this energy is handled, distributed and invested is to be preferred to purely technological considerations. Essentially, the changes in Neolithic technology are few in number and far below the significance of the genetic manipulations of subsistence sources which, by the Neolithic period, resulted in the appearance of visibly new cultigens and domestic animals.

Neolithic craftsmen and craftswomen did not forget the art of turning out artificial, chemically transformed materials (lime burning at Umm Dabaghiyah). They employed bitumen for its impregnating and hafting qualities and bone for the traditional production of awls and spatulae. As to clay, in addition to being used as building material and for the production of such minor items as spindle whorls, ornaments and fig-urines, clay was now employed for the production of pottery decorated by such procedures as burnishing, painting and incisions (see most extensively Munchaev and Merpert 1981, 87–114; on contemporary painted pottery Bernbeck 1994, 129–141; McAdam 1995) (Figure 3.10). Technologically, these early pots are hardly particularly eloquent; having been built by hand, they obviously received firing at temperatures obtainable by combustion in open hearths, though fragments of a massive clay plaque with numerous apertures in the Xth layer of Yarimtepe I (Munchaev and Merpert 1981, 75) do indicate the presence of more sophisticated pyrotechnological facilities. It seems that as early as this age, the potters were quick enough to discover an optimum composition of clay paste for making vessels to be used for the millennia to come, even resorting to mixing various types of available raw materials if the desired pottery paste could not be found in a raw state (Makovicky and Thuesen 1990, esp. pp. 32–37, as well as Blackham 1996). The firing temperature of early Near Eastern pottery, varying between 850 and 1100 degrees centigrade down to the Uruk period, was clearly maintained right from the beginnings of local pottery

The neolithic 35

production (Makovicky and Thuesen 1990, 40). At least some of the designs on Samarrastyle painted pottery have been interpreted as potters’ marks (Bernbeck 1994, 268–275).

Figure 3.10 A Neolithic painted bowl of the Samarra culture (sixth millennium BC) from Samarra (after Bernbeck 1994, Pl. IV)

The exploration of natural resources and their distinctive properties led the Neolithic prospectors to more profound knowledge of particular qualities of metals and to their processing. Their employment as ornaments shows that they were treated just like other coloured stones worn in necklaces (copper pendants from Yarimtepe I). Another aspect of the early metallurgy is shown by finds of lead from Jarmo and Yarimtepe I (a bracelet). Unfortunately the state of preservation of these products does not allow us to determine if the copper was hammered or cast, but its distinctive ‘plasticity’ was certainly known. Copper-smelting could have been discovered accidentally in the course of firing pottery painted with colours prepared from copperand iron-containing minerals (Moorey 1982b, 18 and 1985, 22f.). Neolithic people were presumably perfectly acquainted with work employing organic matter, summarily used but hardly surviving. They worked with wood, wove mats of reeds and rushes, produced textiles and probably turned out a great many more things from perishable matter of which we will hardly ever

Mesopotamia before history 36

learn (on flax cultivation see van Zeist and de Roller 1991/1992, 81–82, and van Zeist and Bottema 1999, 32). As to the production of stone items, it is interesting to note that while the early settlers of the plain were quick to identify and open local resources of flint which they used for common everyday tools (at Umm Dabaghiyah, such a source of raw material was some 16 km from the site), the exotic obsidian products arrived in most cases in the form of finished tools and very little production of them took place on the plain sites. This bears out craft specialization and parallels from both archaeology and ethnography allow the assumption of specialized highland producer communities mining the stone and turning out large amounts of half-finished products and tools which they subsequently exchanged with the lowland settlers for their surplus products, though such phenomena are by no means a Neolithic innovation (see p. 7 on the site of Karim Shahir). A visible index of changes is represented by the clear impoverishment of the type range of chipped industry, narrowing to the predominant blades, especially sickle components, followed by scrapers and borers. This gives very few clues as to their true use because most of the everyday service tool kit was represented by simple untrimmed flakes. The practical employment of every tool category should, where possible, be investigated for the identification of traces left by the working procedures. Thus it could be demonstrated that some of the Yarimtepe I arrowheads served as borers (Munchaev and Merpert 1981, 120). Stones suitable for the production of ground and polished implements were also extracted (at Umm Dabaghiyah at a distance of c.34 km from the site) and traditional products fashioned out of them, sometimes with considerable mastery (the Tell esSawwan alabaster vessels). It is worth mentioning that the bead-makers of Jarmo might have used borers with flat points, the efficiency of which was increased by the addition of an abrading agent (Larsen 1991, 139). In short, the first Neolithic revolution was accomplished with tools and material equipment that differed but little from those employed by the preceding Mesolithic populations. This, of course, did not prevent the Neolithic inventors from making brilliant discoveries, testing them in practice and enriching through them the lives of their communities. The modest material garb disguises the resplendent achievements of the Neolithic mind.

A wide range of possibilities for assessment of external contacts of the Neolithic communities is opened by excavations results. The most conspicuous evidence for overland contacts is, of course, constituted by the presence of exotic materials such as obsidian, Iranian(?) turquoise, marine shells (Arabo-Persian Gulf or the Mediterranean?) or, in the Deh Luran plain, hematite from Fars (Hole, Flannery and Neely 1969, 350– 357). Naturally, this is only the most conspicuous component of the volume of exchanged goods which must have included a variety of commodities. There exists now unequivocal evidence for the exchange of agricultural products (cultivated pea, lentils and six-row wheat brought to Umm Dabaghiyah), wild and gathered comestibles (pistachio nuts at Choga Mami), for contacts of cattle herds belonging to various communities (Ali Koš in the Deh Luran plain: Hole, Flannery and Neely 1969, 350) and for transport of (sections

The neolithic 37

Figure 3.11 Reconstruction of the use of a Neolithic chipped-flint borer (after Ferchland and Wartke 1990, leaf 2)

of?) hunted game (animals, presumably from Jebel Sinjar, at Umm Dabaghiyah) as well as for exploitation of natural resources situated quite definitely outside the activity zones delimited by the radii of 5 and 10 km from the site, assumed to cover the subsistence areas of agriculturalists and hunters (Dennel 1980, 41; on the 5 km agricultural radius in Chalcolithic India see Pappu-Shinde 1990, esp. pp. 326–330). A case in point is naturally the Umm Dabaghiyah site with its well-developed exploitation pattern of local resources of stone (silex source 16 km away and grinding-stone source 34 km away) and wood (tree trunks from Jebel Sinjar). Something similar has now been proposed for Mesolithic and Neolithic Jericho where a number of ecozones, from riverine forests to mountain slopes, supplied the local inhabitants with their harvests (Röhrer-Ertl 1996). Up to now, this evidence has been interpreted in terms of a complex pattern of inter-regional trade

Mesopotamia before history 38

(see, for instance, the discussion in Mortensen 1983 or Munchaev and Merpert 1981, 116–121). This, of course, is one of the likely forms in which exotic commodities available at only a limited number of sources circulated throughout the network of consumer commodities, but it is not necessarily the only one. In order to provide for goods exchanged with others, the plain dwellers would have had to accumulate some specific surplus, most probably consisting of agricultural products (given the environment in which

Figure 3.12 Head of a Neolithic

Samarra culture female statuette from

Tell Songor A (after Forest 1996, 37,

Fig. 23)

they were settled). Now this is precisely what they did not do. As we have seen above, theirs was a ‘broad-spectrum economy’, applying to a varying degree agricultural, foodcollecting, cattle-keeping and hunting activities without any visible bias to a particular kind of this enterprise which would have brought them the necessary surplus (with a possible exception of Umm Dabaghiyah, a hunting site). Moreover, it would seem strange that they would have tended to procure essentially the same commodities which were the fruits of their labour (foodstuffs, for instance). But what if it were not the goods but the people who moved around, as has been suggested most pertinently for the earliest Neolithic of the Indian subcontinent (Fairservis 1991, 110)? In fact, the possibility of seasonal transhumance between highland and lowland sites was hinted at by the authors of the Deh Luran plain excavations who noticed the absence of summer products in their sites, interpreting them as winter camps (Hole, Flannery and Neely 1969, 343ff.). A number of other features of the archaeological record seem to point in this direction. These include the marked similarity between the sites of Çayönü Tepesi (eastern Anatolia, Schirmer 1990) and Yarimtepe I, the homogeneity of artistic creation embodied in contemporary seals of Mesopotamia and Syro-Cilicia (von Wickede 1990, 81, 85 and 92) or, alternatively, the presence of wild flax and oats, possible winter weeds, at Choga Mami. Reinhard Bernbeck (1994, 194–195) has provided indications that may point in our direction as well. If the classical Samarra-style pottery turns up in northern Mesopotamia up to about the latitude of Assur, and only from there ‘dissolves’, or rather ‘trickles off’ into the mixed Hassuna-Samarra assemblages, this again may mean that

The neolithic 39

ostentatious consumption, involving the use of exquisite pottery, tended to be topographically bound to the Tigris-bank riverine encampments. The existence of the Samarra-style pottery complex Sawwan-Samarra-Baghouz, finding little reflection in sites farther north and west, may actually be interpreted in this direction as well— activities performed along the banks of the Tigris might Lave mirrored different aspects of Neolithic social life than those of the submontane sites. All this, in turn, may find confirmation in the variance of subsistence activities (Bernbeck 1994, graph in Fig. 36 on p. 277). Submontane sites tend to depend on cattle-keeping and possibly hunting (ibid.— Dabaghiyah, Choga Mami, Yarimtepe I); of the riverside abodes, at least Sawwan displays an animal-husbandry sector leaning on livestock and fishing complemented by hunted game. The Neolithic lowland sites (or at least their initial stages) could represent winter encampments in which extensive hunting of the plain-living game (gazelle, onager) would have been accompanied by sowing of winter cereals. An analogy is provided by the Zagros site of Tepe Guran (Mortensen 1972), originally such a winter camp, which gradually grew into an all-year(?) village where the agriculturalists supplemented their diet by hunting and food-gathering. Let us also note that at the (admittedly much later) Uruk culture site of Tepe Shaffarabad in the Deh Luran plain, gazelle hunting was a winter pursuit (Wright, Miller and Redding 1980, 276, Table V). Some time around the winter-summer transition, in spring (in subrecent times, this happened in April), the lowland groups would have (split? and) moved into the highlands where they could graze their herds on fresh pastures, gather newly grown plant food and cultivate summer crops on the well-watered valley bottoms; the possibility of an alternative set of ‘congregation sites’ where people gathered to tap the natural riches available at large such as the biotopes of wild cereal grasses is to be reckoned with. In fact, a remarkable parallel exists, though from a different spatiotemporal context which is nevertheless at the other end of the Mediterranean—Spain and southernmost France at least since the Middle Ages (Le Roy Ladurie 1975, esp. pp. 156–169). Here the sheep transhumance involved a calendrically fixed sequence of herd movements, the pivot stages of which were the months of May (ascent to the upland pastures) and end of September or early October (descent to the lowland winter quarters). Lambs are born around Christmas (for confirmation by the Near Eastern data see Wright, Miller and Redding 1980, 271; Wright, Redding and Pollock 1989, 108–109; Hruška 1995, esp. pp. 82–83) and in May they are usually grown enough to walk even over heavy ground and to be weaned so that sheep can be milked from that time on. In May the shepherds with their herds usually ascend the summer pastures whereupon the sheep are sheared and new wool employed to settle all accounts, debts and obligations that the shepherds or their masters might have incurred before, the season of cheesemaking following in the months of June and July. These May and October thresholds fit so well the winter-summer and summer-winter transitions in the Near East that I cannot resist the temptation to quote the whole sequence in this connection, just for the sake of comparison. At any rate, arguments in favour of such a hypothesis include the importance of sheep for the animal husbandry of Neolithic Mesopotamia and the non-stationary character of settlement of this period, indicated both by the scanty representation of such non-nomadic domesticates as pig (Hole 1983, 183; Meadow 1992, 263–264) and by the very limited number of cemeteries, implying a low degree of territorialization of contemporary human groups (see pp. 36, 81–83 and 91). Moreover, let us notice that the plains of the Taurus

Mesopotamia before history 40

submontane zone do have sufficient rainfall for the winter crops but do not support cultivation of summer crops (Weiss 1983, 40). Such a model of winter-summer transhumance (suggested also by Maisels 1990, 119, Fig. 4.4; on modern ethnographic parallels from the Near East see Hall 1930, 151–152; Marx 1978, esp. p. 46; KöhlerRollefson 1992, 14–15; Levy 1992, esp. p. 70) may offer explanations for all the deviations from the expected state of affairs such as the limited degree of specialization of the plain dwellers and of identical general character of the local and imported goods at lowland sites. Furthermore, we may perceive the plain settlements as congregation sites in which large numbers of people could have lived together temporarily. This is suggested by two facts. First, all such localities have yielded evidence for hunting gazelle and onager, a fairly complex business requiring a number of participants and efficient organization. Let us not forget that such sites as Umm Dabaghiyah bear out the long-term and systematic character of hunting activities leaving their imprint in a number of aspects of the site (the storage complex, the chipped industry, local works of art). Other sites like this now famous congregation point may be discovered with time (for a possible parallel to the Dabaghiyah storage complex at Kharabeh Shattani see Baird 1995, 6–8). Second, it has been noticed that Samarra culture sites tend to be bigger than those of the Halaf culture (Oates 1980, 309; for a similar situation around contemporary Tepe Yahya in southern Iran see Damerow, Englund and Lamberg-Karlovsky 1989, viii). In short, it has been fittingly remarked that ‘the sites were permanent but the people in them were not’ (Harris, Gosden and Charles 1996, 440).

The resulting idea is thus one of winter congregations of more numerous communities in the lowlands practising large-scale hunting, animal husbandry and cultivation of winter crops. Such gatherings would provide occasion for more elaborate patterns of social life including some collective ritual practices which might have left behind such evidence as clay statuettes or mural paintings (for Palaeolithic but also later evidence see Peoples and Bailey 1988, 138–139, and Bruce Dickson 1990, 200–202; in addition to the abovementioned sites, see also the murals and terrazzo pavements of Tepe Guran, Mortensen 1972). Having thus survived winter, such congregations would (split into smaller groups? and) ascend to the mountains for the hot season where they could cultivate and gather summer crops, hunt and collect fresh food and graze their animals on the mountain slopes, perhaps streaming together at parallel convergence sites where a multitude of summer resources could have been tapped. After all, movements of the same community between lowland and upland sites have existed up to very recently (Allan 1972, 221). The above cited Indian example shows that this pattern may have ultimately led to permanent occupations of both highlands and lowlands and to the emergence of settlement clusters characterized by identical geographical situations, forming local sodalities (Fairservis 1991, 110). Such a model would also provide a handy explanation for the growing independence of Mesopotamian plain sites from the highland sources, reflected most conspicuously by the decreasing proportion of obsidian tools in the chipped industry (Deh Luran sites, Yarimtepe I, Choga Mami, see Munchaev and Merpert 1981, 116–118). This process may well be illustrated by the situation of Choga Mami where the number of sickle blades and the significance of gazelle hunting grow with