Petr Charvát - Mesopotamia Before History (2008, Routledge)
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Progress may be registered in the sphere of metallurgy as well, though Mesopotamian products of this time can hardly rival the splendid achievements of contemporary Iranian coppersmiths (Moorey 1982a, 83–85). The somewhat sceptical assessments of the 1980s (Moorey 1982a, 1985), pointing to the paucity of the available evidence, nevertheless conceded to Chalcolithic metallurgists at least the continuous use of lead (Moorey 1985, 122) and the introduction of gold (the Ubaid culture cemetery of Ur: ibid. 76). Recent analyses do not deny the scarcity of
Figure 4.20 These Ubaid culture sickles of baked clay, found on the surface of a southern Mesopotamian archaeological site, have fused together because of the excessive heat of the potter’s kiln in which they were fired. The fusing shows that the firing temperature must have reached about 1,000 degrees. This, in turn, points to the high level of Ubaid age pyrotechnology and know-how applied by Ubaid age potters.
information, but point to the fact that arsenic bronze of copper, which was to dominate Mesopotamian metallurgy for at least a millennium to come, first appeared in the upper Euphrates area in the Ubaid period (Müller-Karpe 1991, 110). The same author sees in the high technological level of Uruk period metallurgy and especially toreutics a strong
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argument for a long production tradition likely to reach back into the period under discussion (Müller-Karpe 1990a, 161). The fact that some sophistication of the Ubaid period metallurgical production may be expected follows from the observation that for the first time stonecutters of the period successfully attacked materials of Mohs’s hardness scale 4–7; this is most likely to have happened with the aid of metal tools (see p. 70). Last but not least, we owe to M. Müller-Karpe (1990b, 192) the ingenious suggestion that the enigmatic clay models of Ubaid culture metal tools (Moorey 1982b, 19; 1985, 23) could be master versions for the production of models for lostwax casting. As to gold, it appeared in the other areas of the Fertile Crescent roughly at the same time (Palestine, for instance: Wolff 1991, 498–499 for the Nahal Kana cave) and the Mesopotamians were thus not late in the employment of new natural resources. This must reflect a deliberate search for information as south-east Mesopotamia, where the Ubaid gold comes from, is hardly a place where findspots of such exotic materials would have been common knowledge.
Progress in work with organic materials may be measured only with difficulty given the perishable nature of the evidence. In addition to the ubiquitous and traditional reed matting we have at least some hints at developments in this sphere. The Deh Luran plain sites demonstrate that this period saw the introduction of coiled basketry replacing the earlier plaited work (Hole, Flannery and Neely 1969, 220; in Anatolia the sequence is reversed). Making of finer cords is attested to by imprints in Halaf culture sealings from Arpachiyah (Charvát 1994, 10) and Tepe Gawra (von Wickede 1990, 99, 288, No. 80, Table 80). If the excavators of Tell Awayli identify the loomweights from their site correctly, this is the first moment in history when the weaving loom, representing a fairly sophisticated machine, appears on the archaeological horizon. Weaving activities might have acquired an important symbolic meaning (Ippolitoni-Strika 1996; on the symbolic meaning of human clothing see Shupak 1992). Only occasionally do minor art monuments allow us to catch a glimpse of contemporary dress fashions, such as a statuette from Awayli showing a skirt held on to the body by straps worn across the shoulders and crossed between the breasts and on the back (Forest 1996, 80, Pl. 24, lower register).
Let us finally glance at developments in stone working. The best recently published sample is probably that of the Syrian site of Shams ed-Din Tannira (Azoury and Bergman 1980). Of its 4,207 chipped industry items most are cores or half-products and retouched tools make up no more than 18 per cent of the whole assemblage. Chert served as the most frequent material, obsidian making up 11 per cent of the total. The tool types present include scrapers, borers, burins, truncations, denticulates, notches, sickle elements and retouched blades. Chert blades were separated by percussion, obsidian ones perhaps by pressure flaking. Absence of obsidian cores and raw obsidian indicates that implements made of this material arrived at the site as finished products processed elsewhere. Nevertheless, the abundance and variability of chipped industry from this site,
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Figure 4.21 A Chalcolithic painted cup. Halaf culture, the site of Chagar Bazar (after von Wickede 1986, 23, Fig. 32)
Figure 4.22 A Chalcolithic painted jar. Halaf culture, the site of Tell Arpachiyah (after von Wickede 1986, 23, Fig. 37)
where the hunters undoubtedly required a tool kit different from that of peasants or shepherds, is somewhat exceptional. The general trend, manifested especially in lowland
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sites, points in the direction of impoverishment both of the quantity of tool types and of the quality of stone working (a case in point being the Deh Luran sites: Hole, Flannery and Neely 1969, 74–81, 356). Technological process is nonetheless perceptible. First and foremost, the degree of specialization and professionalization in stone working is illuminated by hoard finds of raw materials (Tell Abu Husaini, Ubaid culture: Tusa 1984, 275). Second, some of the specialized procedures of chipped industry production, most frequent in the mining or primary-treatment sites, now ceased to be a monopoly of the highland dwellers and were mastered also by specialists working in the plains. This is the case of pressure flaking on obsidian (Tell Awayli; in general see Inizan 1985). Third, Ubaid period stonecutters evolved for the first time tools sophisticated enough to cope with materials of degrees 4–7 of Mohs’s hardness scale; until then the threshold of Mohs 3 had not been crossed (Heimpel, Gorelick and Gwinnett 1988, graph on p. 202; see also Larsen 1991, 60–61, esp. Table 12, p. 61). Incidentally, this fact sheds light on Ubaid period metallurgy as well. Some of the more exotic stone types worked in those times not only bear out the professional skill of master craftsmen and craftswomen but even indicate at least some segments of the supply-line network that once interlinked the Chalcolithic communities. In addition to the well-known lapis lazuli, most likely brought over from Badakhshan, finds of turquoise probably indicate contacts with eastern Iran or central Asia (Ismail and Tosi 1976). Results of specialized analyses suggest that obsidian travelled to Arpachiyah and Eridu from several sources, most probably in eastern Anatolia (Renfrew 1964, 76).
Figure 4.23 A Chalcolithic painted jar. Halaf culture, the site of Tell Arpachiyah (after von Wickede 1986, 24, Fig. 42)
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Figure 4.24 A Chalcolithic painted jar. Halaf culture, the site of Tell Arpachiyah (after von Wickede 1986, 25, Fig. 48)
As a conclusion to this section it may now be pointed out that nearly all branches of Chalcolithic craft activities leaving archaeologically retrievable evidence show the amount of attention focused by then on the processing of natural resources, on the development of technology and on specialized know-how. Though not all the innovations and inventions of the period were put to full use immediately, they certainly laid the foundations for the seemingly revolutionary changes of the subsequent period. The specialists of Mesopotamian cultures who learned both by making their own discoveries and by borrowing from their highland neighbours were now in possession of a store of experience and knowledge which justified great expectations for the future.
Sketchy and incomplete as the evidence for changes in the sphere of transport and communication may be, it does offer a few hints. A trend which I have already mentioned involved the decrease in quantity of imported obsidian, perhaps reflecting more permanent lowland settlement and severing of more or less direct contacts with montane zones (see pp. 34–35 and, for the Deh Luran plain sites, Hole, Flannery and Neely 1969, 74 and 356–357). The plain dwellers either learned the stone-trimming technology themselves, laying great stress on economical handling of the imported obsidian (Tell Awayli) or compensated for the loss of the volcanic glass by procurement of a host of materials which sometimes arrived as finished tools and must thus have been produced
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Figure 4.25 The best Mediterranean ports, like Byblos which may be seen here, facilitated the diffusion of material and immaterial Mesopotamian products over a vast area of the Mediterranean, including the Balkans from which the first bearers of Neolithic cultures—ultimately also of Mesopotamian inspiration—advanced as far as central and north-western Europe.
elsewhere (e.g. the Ubaid culture site of Tell el-Saadiya: Kozlowski and Bielinski 1984, 106, or contemporary Tepe Farukhabad: Wright et al. 1981, passim, for instance 273). Far from having vanished altogether, imported obsidian, much like other stones brought in for the same purpose, took over the role of a status marker both in adornment and in interior furnishings (stone vessels), as is exemplified by the situation at Tepe Gawra XIII–XII. Other stones diagnostic as geographical indicators are the east Iranian turquoise and Baluchi lapis lazuli (see pp. 7, 23 and 51). Extremely limited information on the concrete modalities of overland contacts is available. The essentially uniform stylistic character of both Halaf and Ubaid culture pottery, for instance, does suggest that far-flung contacts, especially along the courses of both twin rivers, must have been fairly frequent. Whether ancient navigators used boats such as those exemplified by models from Eridu (Figure 4.26) or Tell Awayli or some other device such as keleks—rafts borne by a series of inflated animal skins—(on this most recently see Tardieu 1990, 71–102) will be decided by future investigations. Such traffic must have continued far into the Gulf area, as Ubaid culture pottery has been collected from sites on its southern shores
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reaching a considerable distance into the south-east region (see Potts 1990; Rice 1994; Carter et al. 1999, esp. pp. 52–57). Data gathered by NAA analysis of such imports bear out a non-identity among Mesopotamian and Persian Gulf Ubaid-style pottery (Roaf and Galbraith 1994) and this points rather to the exposure of Gulf potters to Ubaid-style models than to direct importation of Mesopotamian pottery. On dry land the increasing representation of cattle remains on Ubaid sites, especially in the southeast, and the signs for waggons and sledges in the script of the immediately following Uruk culture make us suspect the introduction of animal-drawn wheeled transport or the use of cattle as beasts of burden during this time. In short, specialization and professionalization prevailed even in the sphere of Chalcolithic transport and communications. That exchange contacts may span considerable distances even in the conditions of clan societies is amply demonstrated by ethnographic parallels (e.g. Eggert 1991, esp. pp. 22–25).
Figure 4.26 A Chalcolithic model of a seagoing ship. Late Ubaid culture, the site of Eridu, cemetery (=layers VII– VI) (after Safar, Mustafa and Lloyd 1981, 227)
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Exchange of goods is also represented by finds of sealings on clay from a number of sites. The sealings, mostly impressions of different seals but invariably found together at a single findspot, may reflect packing and sealing of the conveyed goods outside the collection station and convergence of the sealed commodities on the ‘address point’, where the subsequent unsealing of the packages and dumping of mobile containers took place. Only very rarely can we catch a glimpse of the treatment of the goods conveyed at the ‘address point’ but we have absolutely no information as to whether the senders of the originally despatched goods received something in compensation for their deliveries (as would be normal practice in pre-industrial societies characterized by reciprocity exchange; see, for instance, Morris 1986) or whether the goods amassed at the ‘address point’ were purely and simply consumed in an act of non-institutionalized redistribution. The Halaf culture Arpachiyah supplied fine pottery not only to Tepe Gawra (Davidson and McKerrel 1980, 161f.), but possibly also to Kharabeh Shattani (Campbell 1986, 57– 62 and esp. p. 61, No. KS-20). More and more sites have been yielding Halaf period sealings
Figure 4.27 A Chalcolithic painted jar. Final phase of the Halaf culture, the site of Tepe Gawra (after Brenirmer 1996. 1 56. Pl. 4:2) Breniquet 1996, 156, Pl. 4:2)
(see the container sealings of Tell Sabi Abyad: Akkermans 1993 and 1996 and Akkermans and Duistermaat 1997) and the question of how far the circulation of painted
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pottery and sealed goods were related to each other is gaining importance. The practice of reciprocity is generally compatible with such activities in pre-industrial societies (see Morris 1986) but the whole question is in need of further elucidation (see Charvát 1988a and 1992a and, for the material evidence, von Wickede 1990, 93–238).
All in all, the Chalcolithic economy seems to have been a success, as is borne out, inter alia, by physical-anthropological examination of contemporary human remains where available (Ubaid period cemeteries at Arpachiyah: Mallowan and Linford 1969; Eridu: Vértesalji 1984, 24f.). Though the average age at death oscillated between 20 and 40 years, as is usual in pre-industrial societies, these people had good nutrition and diet. The preponderance of strong young men at Arpachiyah and of adult (20–40-years-old) women at Eridu may reflect differences in the manner of use of these cemetery sites.
In the economic sphere, Chalcolithic communities undoubtedly set forth on a journey towards civilization and statehood. They applied the whole range of Neolithic discoveries and inventions to secure abundant supplies, sometimes at the cost of considerable energy expenditure. Sedentarization, first occurring in the south where the environment offered plentiful food sources, spread northwards where the local communities gradually adopted the new settlement system. Wholesale application of traditional inventions and deliberate efforts at maximization of the energy output (more cattle) must have brought in economic returns considerably surpassing those of traditional subsistence modes. Of course, this process was necessitated by population growth as a consequence of sedentarization (see p. 76). The amount of attention focused on more efficient exploitation of natural resources is particularly visible in the sphere of arts and crafts where successful innovations and improvements invaded nearly all production branches documentable by archaeology. Finally, the affluent Chalcolithic communities managed to create and maintain a network of regular contacts, sometimes over considerable distances, which served for the cultivation of all-purpose links with human groups far and wide. This exchange, probably assuming the garb of reciprocity or non-institutionalized redistribution (for institutionalized redistribution we will have to wait until the next, Uruk culture period) and providing also economic help in emergency cases, constituted a social linkage of the diversified human communities and enabled the circulation of technological know-how, new ideas and spiritual constructs. There was hardly any aspect of the economy of historical Sumer and Akkad which would not have been present, at least in an embryonic form, in the Chalcolithic age.
Society
Even if there were no unequivocal indications of sedentarization processes in the economic sphere, the massive stratigraphies of a number of sites ‘cry out to heaven’ to confirm the previous conclusions. By way of example let us review in passing the sixteen layers (themselves representing multiple stratigraphic sequences) of Arpachiyah, Eridu’s and Gawra’s twenty layers, or the tens of stratigraphic units at Tell Awayli. Of course this pertains only to major centres around which subsidiary settlements took root, blossomed and withered as time passed by. A case in point is Eridu where the permanent ‘temple’ centre was at first accompanied by a Hajji Muhammad culture settlement under the Ubaid cemetery (parallel to Temple XVII–XIV). After its extinction a new settlement thrived in the vicinity in Ubaid 3 times (‘Hut Sounding’, parallel to Temple XII–VI).
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Figure 4.28 A Chalcolithic painted bowl. Early Ubaid culture (fifth millennium BC), the site of Eridu, layer VIII (after Safar, Mustafa and Lloyd 1981, 156 and 179, Fig. 82:3)
That even important sites with impressive architecture could have been deserted is shown by the fate of the Ubaid 3 terrace at Tell Awayli. Repeated observations of small size, short duration, minimalized energy expenditure and thinner refuse and especially ashy strata on Halaf culture sites (Hole 1987b, 561; Watkins and Campbell 1987, 453–454; see also Baird, Campbell and Watkins 1995) indicate the changing character of climate (hot and dry, see Moore 1983, 93 and Fig. 2 on p. 105) but concern mainly minor sites