Petr Charvát - Mesopotamia Before History (2008, Routledge)

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constituted a useful device through which the rapidly spreading kin aggregates, living over extensive territories in which considerable distances separated the farthest members, could operate to maintain group coherence. In early Anatolia, mother goddesses presided over cemeteries (van Loon 1991b, 265–266, n. 5) and there may thus be a connection with the predominantly female sex of our statuettes.

In addition to changes in the funerary sphere some other intellectual operations may now be documented with a varying degree of probability. Analysis of ground plans of the Ubaid culture central-hall buildings has recently induced Jean-Daniel Forest (1991) to suggest that the architects of such houses might have known and applied Pythagoras’ theorem. This age must also have seen the birth of at least the graphic versions of some of the signs of earliest Uruk culture writing systems. This does not concern only the classical bucranium example. The SAL sign, depiction of a female pudenda, was certainly understood in this sense in the Halaf culture period, as is shown by an anthropomorphic vase from Yarimtepe II (Munchaev and Merpert 1981, 252, Fig. 98). The vase with figural scenes from Hijara’s Arpachiyah excavations (von Wickede 1986, 22, Fig. 26) depicts, among others, two female figures flanking a rectangular object with plaits along its rim. This may very well show a weaving scene and the plaited object is thus likely to constitute a predecessor of various signs for mats or rugs, attested to in the Uruk IV script (Szarzyńska 1988a, 228, Table I: T-31 to T-34). The same goes for images of combs on Halaf culture pottery (von Wickede 1986, 21, Figs 20, 21; 16, Fig. 7, 4th line from top, 7th column from left) which may re-appear in the form of earliest cuneiform signs (Szarzyńska 1988a, 228, Table I: T-6 to T-9). Traces of another early spiritual construct came to light at Arpachiyah. Sir Max Mallowan (Mallowan and Rose 1935, 107ff.) noticed that until his layer TT 7, pottery painting was exclusively bichrome. The characteristic white-red-black colour triad prevailed only in TT 6 when relationships to the Hajji Muhammad culture patterns first appeared (von Wickede 1986, 31–32). In spite of its modernity, the white-red-black colour triad determined the TT 6 fashion to such an extent that in addition to painted pottery, it is reflected by the mineral pigments brought to the site (Mallowan and Rose 1935, 100—blocks of black, red and yellow clay with yellow substituting white), by materials for the palettes used for crushing the pigments (ibid., white, pink and grey stone) and by the abundant beads. In the latest case a complete necklace found in this layer (ibid. 97, A 909 on Pl. XIa) proves this beyond doubt by its composition of obsidian and white cowrie beads, the latter provided with interior red-paste inlays visible through the cut-away front parts of the shells. Moreover, inhabitants of prehistoric Tepe Gawra subscribed to the same colour triad from layer XIX onwards, taking over even some of the pottery decoration influenced by the south (von Wickede 1986, 32—via Arpachiyah?). This distinctive colour pattern, though introduced in the Chalcolithic, did not percolate through the entire Ubaid culture sphere, as traditional two-colour schemes seem to prevail in the Luristan cemetery sites (Vanden Berghe 1987, 113–114, 116, 121). Its full potential was nonetheless unfolded in the colours of geometrical compositions of mosaic cones adorning the monumental architectures of Uruk in the following, Uruk culture phase. Much as in the use of pottery bearing figural scenes for funerary purposes, the ‘message’ of the white-red-black triad seems to have addressed both prehistoric and the earliest historic populations of Mesopotamia and I assume that however it may have been comprehended in the past, it probably expressed the essential unity, or at least compatibility, of the underlying

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spiritual constructs of the times in which it was publicly displayed (for a recent example of a religious statement conveyed by means of the same colour triad see Duff-Cooper 1991, 188). The fact that in other civilizations the earliest universally acknowledged spiritual activities pertaining to the welfare of the entire community are frequently articulated in rituals believed to constitute the essential moving factor behind all the natural and human activities, releasing the benign forces and keeping the world in harmonious relationships (Kravtsova 1991, esp. pp. 33–34, Overmyer et al. 1995), may indicate similar functions for our colour triad. A substantial component of such rituals is music and here we have a harmony of colours. Again, major social transitions tend to be expressed by changes in publicly displayed colours (T’ang China: Wechsler 1985, 6–7). I believe that we may be right in characterizing this development as a construction of a rational and coherent set of attitudes to the world expressed—undoubtedly among other means and ways—by the white-red-black colour triad, the significance of which was so profound that it continued to address the best brains of Mesopotamia for centuries after the extinction of the cultural system in which it had first been used. Symbolically, however, the set of attitudes to the world in question, or rather its visual representation, in Arpachiyah TT 6 sprang from two sources, the southern and the northern (see p. 65 on decorative patterns on pottery). For the first ascertainable time in history, representatives of communities distant from one another put their minds together to create something which would survive all of them and address the generations to come, and in this endeavour they succeeded. We may well be witnessing the process that left in the cultural tradition of ancient Mesopotamia the belief that Eridu (as a representative of the south?) constituted the source of all wisdom and the seat of the god of knowledge.

Thus the first intelligible universal religion seems to have been born. The colour triad would make good sense in ancient Egyptian religion, where it would affirm the progress from earthly existence (red) through death (black) to eternal life (white, Wilkinson 1994, 106–107, 109). It is, of course, a fact that if and when people distinguish more colours in their languages, they customarily recognize white, red and black colours (Wardhaugh 1992, 232). Remarkably, however, the colour triad black-white-red came to the fore in medieval alchemy, where it marked out progression from common everyday matter (black) via its transformation by the alchemical art (white) to the original archetypal substance which transforms all matters in the world (red). Such an interpretation of the colours may reach back to Greek antiquity (Roberts 1994, esp. pp. 54–56). This phenomenon may have been accompanied by the first distinction between ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ space retrievable from the archaeological record. Here I resort to categories put forward by Mircea Eliade (a bibliography of his writings on this subject is found in Bruce Dickson 1990, 224). The first case where we can find them highly relevant concerns the sudden change at Arpachiyah TT 10 where the round structures, or tholoi, are first built on stone foundations (Figure 4.42) and subsequently renewed throughout every successive layer as far as TT 7 followed by the remarkable TT 6 structure to which cultic aspects can hardly be denied. The introduction of stone foundations followed after the sequence of six stratigraphic layers (Hijara VI–XI), of which the two immediately preceding TT 10 (Hijara VII–VI) contained ordinary tholos architecture of clay, of purely profane character on other sites such as Yarimtepe II. It is nonetheless remarkable that as early as Hijara VI the ruins of the disused buildings were levelled to provide foundations for the succeeding structures, a procedure hardly belonging to ordinary settlement

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Figure 4.42 A series of Chalcolithic round buildings (tholoi) on stone foundations. Halaf culture, the site of Tell Arpachiyah, layers TT 10 to TT 7 (after Breniquet 1996, 185, Pl. 33a)

practices. The unprecedented change in TT 10, the extraordinary energy expenditure involved in the procurement of stone for each successive tholos generation and the nonaverage functions of the TT 6 settlement all converge, as I believe, to indicate that we are dealing with an archaeological sequence translating into material terms the transition between ‘the profane’ and ‘the sacred’. Apart from the profane items, the TT 6 house contained material features which strongly suggest its cultic function. The pair of limestone statuettes depicting a woman and a man, finds of a human finger bone and of stone models of such relics as well as the highly stylized stone shapes unearthed together in this layer (Mallowan and Rose 1935, 99–100, A 920 on Fig. 52:3), add weight to the

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observation of the first occurrence of the white—red-black colour triad at the site to indicate the universal, sacred-cum-profane character of this edifice in which spiritual supremacy seems to have been vested in evidence for a general ‘transformation’ of the uncultivated environment by means of both ritual procedures and conversion of a number of natural resources into usable, and hence ‘tamed’, ‘civilized’ or ‘humanized’ items (production of material goods at TT 6 Arpachiyah: Mallowan and Rose 1935, 100–122, 130–135, 172). This gradual emergence of more distinct cultic features of the archaeological evidence seems to continue into the Ubaid culture period.

A similar transition from ‘profane’ to ‘sacred’ buildings may be suspected at Tepe Gawra where, after a purely secular development within strata XX–XV, a single stonebased central-hall building occupies the whole site in layer XIV. Again, as at Arpachiyah, the form replicates common buildings, but the extraordinary energy expenditure involved in the procurement of stone for the foundations, unparalleled at the site both before and after this moment, does point to a special, perhaps cultic, significance for this structure. The Ubaid period central-hall buildings frequently display a peculiar artistic finish in their largest rooms, usually in terms of wall paintings (Tepe Gawra XVI, Eridu VI, Tell Madhhur) and non-average activities were clearly taking place in the central hall of the Madhhur house (counters). A particularly fine example of a high-level layout of the central hall, provided, in addition to mural paintings in the familiar white-red-black polychromy, with hearths on terracotta plaques of geometrical shapes, has been studied recently at Degirmentepe (Esin 1983 and 1985; Mellink 1988). The elaborate hearths may point to the sphere of fertility and male procreation symbolism, frequently connected with fireplaces (Van der Toorn 1991, 45–46). In the light of this evidence, showing the comprehensive character of the apperception of the world in terms of closely interlocking sets of ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ elements, so clearly expressed in domestic architecture, statements about Ubaid period ‘temples’ are to be assessed with caution (Anon. 1972, 149; Jahresbericht 1977, 640; and Heinrich 1982, 32–33, Figs 71 and 74). Purposefully cultic structures may be present in the Chalcolithic period in the form of huge brick platforms such as those of Eridu, Tell Awayli, or, on a really magnificent scale, Susa. Unfortunately, too little is known about them to warrant safe conclusions. The Susa evidence (Pollock 1989, esp. pp. 283–286) indicates that such edifices had both residential and funerary functions but that they were repaired with far less attention than the Eridu or Gawra ‘temples’ and the Awayli example shows that even sites with such huge structures could be entirely deserted. In periods when residential and cultic functions of buildings had not yet become clearly differentiated the ultimate decision must depend, for lack of any better criterion, on the presence or absence of ordinary settlement refuse, as was originally proposed by M.Hoffmann (1974; see Gibbon 1984, 156–161, esp. pp. 160–161). Here it is significant that even the most accomplished ‘temples’ of Eridu and Gawra did display settlement rubbish accumulations within their walls, a clear sign of their profane functions. My impression is that the Chalcolithic eye perceived the material and spiritual components of the world as so closely intertwined that no activities which would disregard any single one of these spheres of life were conceivable.

It is assumed that with sedentarization, the vision of the universe changes from a sequence or series of disparate worlds, which may or may not exist in relation to one another, to the idea of one single space disposed in concentric segments (A.Leroi-

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Gourhan, in Taine-Cheikh 1991, 113–114). In such conditions the geographical diffusion sphere of a given society may be manipulated to comply with sets of features deemed to be fundamental to the structure of a given society (e.g. Miller 1980). In a recent paper (Charvát 1994) I suggested that the fact that Halaf culture seals are present throughout the entire diffusion sphere of this culture, while Halaf culture sealings are found only at Arpachiyah and Gawra, may be interpreted in terms of the role of both sites as (successive?) centres and focal points of the whole Halaf culture oikoumene. At that time I was aware neither of the new mass find of sealings at Tell Sabi Abyad, for information on which I am obliged to Peter Akkermans (1993 and 1996; Akkermans and Duistermaat 1997), nor of the new finds from Tell Kerkh (Tsuneki et al, 1997 and 1998). The existence of such ‘catchment areas’ of the pristine élites who either collected sealed contributions or, alternatively, presided over socially acknowledged procedures requiring sealing of symbol sets, implies that the Halaf culture population groups could have seen their world as possessing at least a centre and a periphery, an observation which would comply with the above-mentioned proposition. The question how far this argument applies to the Ubaid culture with its system of (more or less) generalized exchange of goods awaits an answer. Whether any single centre of the Ubaid culture world existed must thus remain a question for future research, though in the following Uruk culture the centrality of Uruk is proved beyond any reasonable doubt by its heavy concentration of ceremonial buildings. Let us close this review by mentioning briefly the possibility that the introduction of seals and sealing into contemporary public life, likely to incarnate a stability of relationships between animate subjects and inanimate objects, heralds the appearance of signs of private property on the horizon of archaeological visibility.

CONCLUSIONS

Though the Chalcolithic period lasted probably for something like two millennia, which is not too long in the history of the human race, the conditions in which our ancestors lived at its end were quite different from those prevalent at its beginning. A factor for which archaeological evidence implies the most substantial role in the transformation of human life is sedentarization. Monocausal explanations are always suspicious and sedentarization can hardly be seen as a single major event ‘that started it all’. Nevertheless, the occupation of permanent residential areas by human groups appears to have triggered a series of changes and transformations which were of substantial importance for human social and spiritual life.

Let us first try to assess the new, and hence in early human vision undoubtedly undesirable and wrong features that sedentarization brought for the men and women of yore. By releasing an irreversible trend of population growth, sedentarization must have resulted in economic intensification if all the new mouths were to be fed. Furthermore, this necessity of catering for the needs of more humans than before must have led to systematic and profound assessments of the economic potential of landscapes inhabited by human groups and to environmental exploitation far more intense than before. In the social sphere, people had to comply with situations of relative overpopulation. All of a sudden, whole landscapes clad themselves in settlements and, while in the Neolithic you were delighted to live with neighbours you saw only every six months or so, in the

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Chalcolithic you had them permanently ‘on the other side of the hill’. Finally, sedentarization had to be brought into accord with the vision of the world, and human minds were flooded by the invasion of new facts, impressions and emotions to such an extent that, afraid lest the essential classificatory schemes melt away altogether in the maze of new experiences, they proceeded to catch the first glimpses of the essential unity in diversity, making now operative the universal principle or set of principles on which the world was built.

How did Chalcolithic populations react to this challenge? In the economic sphere the following general observations may be put forward:

a)Full use of the existing economic know-how.

b)Expansion of the range of natural resources tapped.

c)Overall increase of the output of the arts and crafts.

d)Introduction of new technologies and work procedures.

Thus apparently maximizing their economic output, Chalcolithic communities found no difficulty in parting with a section of their produce in the form of first centralized(?) and then generalized commodity exchange, probably along the principles of reciprocity.

The same trend of unity in diversity may be perceived in the social dimension of Chalcolithic life. Chalcolithic populations included numerous craft specialists, peasants, shepherds, hunters, warriors and masters in work with clay, metal and stone as well as, with a degree of probability, cultic personnel (perhaps at least part-time—elderly community members?); the ‘three castes’ or ‘three estates’ are, in fact, already in existence. These differences, however, were still firmly enveloped by, and embedded within, the matrix of essential social equality. This was expressed by the following features:

a)On the basic social level by the households, represented in the archaeological record by the central-hall buildings, offering under their roofs shelter to several (2–3?)

nuclear families and constituting the stage for comprehensive human activities covering all aspects of relations between human beings and their visible and invisible environment.

b)On the regional level by groupings consisting of such households (or groups thereof), possibly kin aggregates. These were distinguished by the following characteristics:

1 They acted as foci of pristine social stratification, setting their component communities, egalitarian in their character, to positions within a preconceived system appointed according to a commonly acknowledged social (hierarchical?) order.

2 Relations within this system (and later on, among systems, when such groupings multiplied in the Ubaid culture period) were maintained by means of various systems of exchange of commodities bearing visible symbols of the donors (sealings), probably in terms of reciprocity.

3 At least some of these groupings could have given articulation to their corporate rights over the territory in which they resided by the establishment of extensive cemeteries.

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c)Finally, on the highest, ‘humankind’ level all such systems constituted ‘the community’ by commonly shared spiritual constructs expressed in ostentatious

commensality and employment of exquisite tableware.

Chalcolithic men and women conquered their environment both by material and by spiritual means. The basic unity shining through superficial diversity is clearly perceptible in the Chalcolithic approach to the things of the mind. People were by then certainly aware of the variation in individual talents, abilities and destinies and gave such notions a clear expression in the multiplicity of roles played by human beings both before and after their death, as is reflected by the variation in burial customs. Nevertheless, spiritual unification left its traces not only on the level of the everyday ‘consumer’ magic (human and animal figurines in settlement refuse layers), but in the form of what was probably the first recognizable ritual (human figurines in cemeteries=ancestor cults?) and, above all, in the search for the basic constitutive principle of the universe. Though the stage on which spiritual life played its role was still constituted by the common, everyday spaces, areas and landscapes of human experience, the Chalcolithic witnessed the articulation of such a constitutive principle in terms of the first systematic application of the white-red-black colour triad at Arpachiyah TT 6, taken over by the sages of Tepe Gawra and ultimately by the creators of the Uruk culture where these colours enhanced the cultic message of monumental buildings by dominating the mural decoration adorning their walls. The individual aspects of this principle could have assumed various external forms. One of these might have been the duality, clearly present at Tepe Gawra XVI–XIII in architecture (twin entrances of central-hall buildings and then of ‘temples’), burial customs (deposition of bodies on both sides) and ritual (renewed occurrence of animal statuettes together with female ones, duplicated at Yarimtepe III: Merpert and Munchaev 1982, 148). This implies that the world could have been perceived as ordered on a (sexual?) binary principle. This period of time is likely to have witnessed the emergence of not only humankind’s first religion, but also private property.

It is thus in the Chalcolithic that the first predecessors of all the constitutive principles of civilized human life must be sought. In terms of Mesopotamia, the statement that all the essential forms of major features of the Uruk civilization were present at least in the preceding Ubaid culture may not be too far from the truth. From the viewpoint of human history, the Mesopotamian Chalcolithic, together with the local Mesolithic, ranks among the crucial and formative periods of a society that was to contribute major innovations on which the civilized world draws to this day.

Chapter Five

The Uruk culture

A civilization is born

PlLOT SITES

Uruk

An extensive site 60 km west-north-west from Nasiriyah, a cornerstone of Mesopotamian archaeology, the almost century-long excavation of which by various German teams (1912–1913 under J.Jordan and C.Preusser; 1928–1939 under J.Jordan, A.Nöldecke, E.Heinrich and H.J. Lenzen; 1953–1967 under H.J.Lenzen; 1967–1977 under H.J.Schmidt; 1980–1990 under R. M.Boehmer) has, in itself, entered history. This complex site has received extensive coverage in the series of the ‘Vorläufige Berichte über die von der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft im Uruk-Warka unternommenen Ausgrabungen’ (abbreviated here as UVB), but the questions and

Figure 5.1 Pottery vessels of the Uruk culture

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Figure 5.2 This Late Uruk sealing shows a man ascending a ladder in order to empty a sack of grain into one of the huge domed granaries of the period, likely to have inspired the proto-cuneiform sign MAH. Late Uruk period (c.3500–3200 BC), Susa (after a drawing by Petr Charvát, Amiet, No. 663, 1972, p. 103, Pl. 16, SB 2027)

problems of its interpretation will provide grist to the mills of generations of future archaeologists, historians and Assyriologists. Major recent reviews of the matter under consideration may be found in Lenzen 1974, Strommenger 1980a, Heinrich 1982, Schmandt-Besserat 1988a, Boehmer 1991, and a register of find reports in Finkbeiner 1993. The Berlin team has most laudably initiated publication of the series of ‘Ausgrabungen in UrukWarka-Endberichte’, abbreviated here as AUWE, which is of cardinal importance (among others, Becker and Heinz 1993; Eichmann 1989; Finkbeiner 1991; Kohlmeyer and Hauser 1994; Limper 1988). A deep sounding at the site within the precinct of the goddess Inanna, bearing the name of Eanna, has exposed a ‘Chalcolithic’ stratigraphy of eighteen layers (Schmandt-Besserat 1988a, Table 3 on p. 38). C-14 date: level XVIII—5300–4575 cal. BC= Ubaid 4 (Annex 734). Of these, the lowermost three (XVIII–XVI) belong to the Ubaid culture, layers XVI–X to the Proto-Uruk and Early Uruk period (the last Ubaid pottery registered in layer XII), layers IX–VI to Middle Uruk and layers V–IV to the Middle and Late Uruk period, constituting the focus of my interest here. In terms of architectural structures, two plans of central-hall ‘temples’ of Ubaid IV or early Uruk have come to light under the Uruk period ‘Steingebäude’ (Heinrich 1982, 32–33, Figs 71 and 74, see also Finkbeiner 1991, 191–192). Summarized data only are available for the occurrence of various artifacts within these strata. The Ubaid culture displays, in addition to the ubiquitous pottery, sickles of baked clay in limited quantities; no metal finds of any consequence have turned up but stone vessels and rare obsidian

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tools are known. From layer XVII the material culture shows an essential continuity of all its constitutive features until layer VI. The last Ubaid pottery appeared in layer XII and layers XI and X have been assigned to the Early Uruk period. Among clay finds, the occurrence of baked sickles is interrupted in layers XIVc and XIVb but from layer XIVa on they represent a constant feature of the find groups. Clay tokens exist from layer XVII up. The first mosaic cones have been registered in layer XIIa and from that time they continue, albeit in limited quantities. First metal tools also appear in layer XI. The strata of this time are characterized by an increase in the quantities of imported stone. Unworked items appear in layer XV and continue until the end of layer XIVa. Missing from layer XIII, they are limited to alabaster only from layer XII. Chipped industry consists of flint (from layer XIIb onwards), although most of the pieces are represented by unretouched items, and quantities of imported obsidian grow to make this material a normal component of the site assemblage. Layers XII–IX saw the limited occurrence of ‘Steinwerfel’ (stone weights?) as well as a temporary absence of stone vessels which had continued from the previous period. Finally, the fully fledged Uruk material culture (Sürenhagen 1986a, 9–10) gradually sets in after layer X. Bevelled-rim bowls (Figure 5.3) occur en masse from layer IX onwards (Sürenhagen 1986a, 8) as well as ‘Blumentöpfe’ (Strommenger 1980a, 482) and the technique of using a string to cut freshly formed vessels off the cone of the raw material

Figure 5.3 A bevelled-rim bowl, one of the most ubiquitous but also most enigmatic products of the Late Uruk age

positioned on the wheel is known since layer VIII (Sürenhagen 1986a, 8). Baked sickles go out of use after layer IX, appearing in secondary contexts in layers VIb2-VIa. Clay tokens disappear for a while in layers VIII/1–VII, becoming frequent in subsequent strata. Mosaic cones rise to a frequency peak in layers VIc2–VIb2, whereupon they disappear. Copper tools, a constant component of the find groups, terminate in layer VI. Flint tools