World Prehistory: Class 9

ã Copyright Bruce Owen 2000

• You will notice that the dates in the text and my lectures sometimes disagree
• many "events" are very gradual, so there is no precise date
• I try to give you calibrated radiocarbon dates (corrected based on tree rings)
• although I can't always tell whether my own sources are reporting raw or calibrated dates
• for the neolithic, these may be up to 1000 years older than uncalibrated "conventional" dates
• But for some of these sites, books always cite the uncalibrated dates
• because many of these excavations were published in the 60's, before people knew about or trusted the calibration technique
• and people just keep citing the same, raw dates
• but don't worry; I won't ask test questions that hold you responsible for knowing which dates to trust.
• As we saw last time, farming makes it possible for people to live not only in camps and hamlets of a few families, but also in towns: an important change in the way humans lived
• This must have happened in many places and at various times, many of which have been buried, eroded away, or destroyed by later people living in the same place.
• Today we will look at two extremely early towns that have survived and been excavated, as examples of the first towns on earth: Jericho and Çatal Hüyük.
• Jericho
• located in the Levant
• as we saw last time, around 11,000 - 8500 BC. there were many small settlements of Natufians in the Levant
• specialized, at least semi-sedentary foragers focussing on intensive harvesting of wild grains
• One of these Natufian settlements is now called Jericho.
• Jericho is located on the western edge of the Jordan valley in the Levant (Palestine)
• the area now called the "West Bank" (of the Jordan river), which you hear mentioned often in the news.
• The archaeological site and modern town of Jericho is located next to a spring that waters a moderate-sized oasis
• right on the western edge of the Jordan valley, at the foot of the mountains, with relatively easy access to higher elevations
• Excavated in the 1950s by Kathleen Kenyon
• The first people to live by this spring were a band of typical Natufians
• Jericho was a large but not atypical Natufian settlement, around 1,000 square meters
• that is only a round area 36 m across (about 120 feet across)
• five of these sites would fit in the "Bacon and Eggs" quad (the one with the new food kiosk)
• probably 150 to 250 people
• circular houses with stone foundations
• each with one or a few storage pits for grain and nuts
• they left a lot of grinding stones ("querns")
• grinding stones indicate heavy use of grains
• stone blades set in bone handles have "sickle gloss" from silica particles in grass stalks
• indicates cutting lots of grass stalks, presumably for harvesting grain, or thatch roofing, or both
• animal bones indicate gazelle hunting seasonally
• taking advantage of herds that would migrate past them every year
• Each house had its own storage pits and grinding stones
• rather than having shared storage or grinding areas that would serve multiple houses or the whole settlement
• this suggests that each family harvested, stored, and processed its own grain and looked after its own needs
• rather than working in larger units where more people would depend on each other
• so economically, the Natufians were not organized much differently than are most foragers
• burials show considerable variability in richness
• some have no grave goods, others have stone bowls and dentalium shells
• suggesting some social ranking
• some of the rich burials are of children
• suggesting that social rank may have been acquired by birth, rather than achieved
• that is, that certain family lineages were richer or more prestigious than others
• this development of economic differences is to be expected when people settle and can begin accumulating wealth
• one structure was different from the others
• smaller than most houses
• plastered, clean floor
• it may have been a shrine or other special-purpose structure
• suggesting some sort of shared community activity
• but nothing very elaborate
• this was already a pretty complex society to be based on foraging
• thanks to the especially favorable environment
• Around 8500 BC, the people at Jericho, like others in the region, began to cultivate their own food
• this period is called the Pre-Pottery Neolithic "A", or PPNA
• "Neolithic" means that they were early farmers
• "Pre-pottery" means that they did not make ceramics yet
• "A" labels this early part of the pre-pottery Neolithic in contrast to a later part, called "B"
• By the way, you may read other descriptions of Jericho that differ in various ways from what I present here
• such as giving a much larger size of the site
• this is largely because some authors do not clearly distinguish between PPNA remains and the later, bigger occupations of the same site.
• as we saw last time, this shift from foraging to farming was probably related to climate changes, possibly exacerbated by population growth
• there is some debatable evidence that the climate went into a long dry spell around 9000 BC
• this would have probably both increased seasonality (lengthened the lean season)
• and decreased the productivity of the wild grains accessible from any one place
• the Natufians were already focussed on grains, and had the technology to harvest, store, and process them in great quantities
• so they began to encourage them artificially in areas close to their settlements
• and gradually depended more and more on them
• in the process, domesticating the grains as we saw last time
• specifically, they domesticated wheat, barley, and lentils
• they also continued to depend on a lot of wild plant foods
• the process of domesticating the grains and becoming dependent on them for a significant part of the diet apparently took a few centuries
• very rapid compared to the duration of foraging
• but probably imperceptible to the people who were doing it
• maybe the few who lived to age 60 could tell the difference from their childhood...
• There was also a similarly "rapid" shift from the Natufian practice of gazelle hunting, to heavy (but not total) reliance on sheep and goats for meat, presumably kept in controlled herds
• in the PPNA, a village was founded at Jericho and grew rapidly (8500 - 7300 BC at Jericho)
• it was a dense cluster of houses with no streets or organized plan
• the houses were circular or oval, 4-5 m (13-16 feet) across
• slightly inward-leaning walls built of mud bricks on stone foundations to protect the mud bricks from moisture in the ground - much like Natufian houses
• sunken floors finished with mud
• wooden doorjambs and a few steps with wooden treads leading down to the floor
• probably domed roof of interlaced branches plastered with mud (wattle and daub), probably supported by some wooden beams
• Some divided into up to 3 rooms
• Grain storage bins associated with individual houses
• each household still seems to have supplied most or all of its own needs
• one family was pretty much like the next
• that is, no families that specialized in making certain goods, trading, etc., unless it was very small scale and very part time.
• and so not much interdependence between families
• Jericho was one of many similar PPNA settlements, except that it grew to be unusually large
• we'll look at the size and population estimates later
• After around 500 years of occupation (!), the people at Jericho built a wall around part or all of the town (roughly 8000 BC)
• presentation by Sandra Massey
• the first wall was at least 4 m (13 feet) high, 1.8 m (6 feet) thick at the base, built of stacked stones
• it was actually higher than this, since the top had been eroded away, but we don't know how much is missing
• just inside the wall, they built a circular stone tower, 9 m (30 feet) diameter, 8.2 m (27 feet) high (plus an unknown amount not preserved)
• a doorway at the base leads to an internal corridor and a stairway of 20 steps that led towards the top of the tower (the top is no longer there)
• the step stones and roof stones of the passage are up to a meter long (about 3 feet) and almost as wide, hammered to shape
• the interior was roughly plastered with mud; the outside might originally have been plastered, too
• later, a large ditch or moat was cut into the rock outside the wall, 9 m (30 feet) wide, 3 m (almost 10 feet) deep
• maybe to make the wall next to it effectively higher?
• maybe to channel floodwater?
• the chips were piled against the outside of the wall, and a new wall built leaning against them
• Purpose of the walls and tower
• probably defense
• tower may have had some ceremonial/religious function?
• possibly flood control
• but then, why so tall? why the tower?
• flooding was a problem, though: one sector of the town, exposed in a trench that was not near the wall, had a stream flow through it on at least three occasions
• a stream cut through the site, eroding a channel at least 1.5 m (almost 5 feet) deep into the layers of floors and walls of houses
• after first forming, this channel filled up with silt, later eroded down again, then silted up and eroded down a third time
• Implications of the walls
• This construction was absolutely unprecedented
• there may be other examples, but we don't know of them
• if this is not the very first case of such building, it is close and can stand for it
• so: no humans had ever built such a thing before, ever, anywhere
• why did they do it? what does it mean?
• if the wall was for defense, it implies a serious fear of attack by a large, powerful force
• implies serious warfare and probably war leaders with considerable powers
• regardless of the purpose, it implies the power to mobilize a great deal of labor
• and implies project managers/directors/designers with power over others, even if voluntarily given
• that is, implies some social status hierarchy
• also implies a lot of surplus wealth to support all the labor to build the walls
• suggesting that some people may have had control of this surplus, while others did not, i.e. wealth and power differences
• As the mudbrick houses inside were abandoned, leveled, and rebuilt with new bricks, the inside surface rose
• so the freestanding wall eventually came to be a retaining wall around an artificial mound or platform
• and later on in the PPNA, they added onto the front surface and the top of the wall, making it thicker and taller
• they also added "skins" onto the tower on two occasions, making it larger in diameter and probably taller
• This continued for six or seven hundred years, until the site was abandoned around 7300 BC.
• no known reason for abandonment
• no evidence of destruction or other catastrophe
• suspected that the climate dried a bit and made the region unattractive to live in
• A long time, but London has been occupied twice as long
• "Fall of the walls of Jericho"?
• the biblical story refers to the town of Jericho as it was thousands of years later
• as Wenke says, the story might be based on an earthquake; the region is tectonically active
• but this PPNA wall and tower show no signs of earthquake damage
• and they were probably completely underground and long forgotten by biblical times
• The total area within the PPNA walls is not known exactly, since they were only exposed in a few places and one side of the mound had been destroyed by a road cut
• but what is known suggests that the PPNA wall enclosed between 0.8 and 1.6 hectares (2.0 to 4.0 acres)
• ballpark comparison: about half the size of the open area of the SSU main quad (between 40% and 80%)
• Population estimates range from over 2000 down to 400 people
• don't know the exact size of the site
• don't know if entire area was occupied, or if some spaces were open for public use, animals, etc., or if some people lived outside the walls
• don't know if entire area was occupied at the same time
• but a town in that region in the 1950s of that size range would have held about 750 to 1500 people
• Unlike the preceding Natufian period, little status differentiation in the burials of PPNA
• this is the opposite of what you might expect
• if the wall and tower imply a new degree of leadership and concentration of surplus, why do the burials look more egalitarian than before?
• Some hints of religious ritual and complex ideas about the dead
• greenstone amulets (or charms, or votive offerings, or ??)
• special treatment of heads of some dead
• bodies buried in pits below the floors of houses
• sometimes with the head removed
• skulls were collected and left in carefully arranged groups placed in holes in walls, buried below house floors, or buried below structures that might be storage bins
• one example has several skulls in a circle, all looking inward
• another has three groups of three, all looking in the same direction
• below one possible storage bin was the burial of a complete infant, plus several infant skulls with the neck vertebrae
• this indicates that the heads were removed while there was still soft tissue on the body, rather than being taken from old burials where the bones would not be attached to each other.
• Incidentally, Jericho was reoccupied several centuries later, but by a different culture, labeled Pre-pottery Neolithic B (PPNB)
• after 7000 BC
• Culturally different from PPNA
• Rectangular houses, rather than round, with plastered floors, and many other differences
• similar to the rectangular neolithic houses at Jarmo and 'Ain Ghazal
• But they continued the apparent veneration of ancestors
• bodies buried headless in floors of houses
• skulls were decorated with plastered faces and buried in caches; one of these PPNB plastered skulls in shown in Fagan
• the PPNB occupation lasted until about 6000 BC, when pottery appeared
• then Jericho was abandoned again, as part of a general, severe decline in population throughout the Levant
• this time a change to a drier climate is better supported by pollen in lake cores
• Jericho continued to be occupied and abandoned all the way up to modern times. A lot of the upper part of the mound is covered by Roman ruins...
• What led to the precocious development of the PPNA?
• Jericho was probably not the only town of its kind at this time
• Jericho's early development was not due to special farming potential; although it is a good spot, it is nothing extraordinary
• Maybe trade?
• since many minerals and shells from distant sources are found there, possibly imported for use in Jericho, or as items that were destined for trade to other places
• obsidian from Anatolia
• green stones from Jordan
• turquoise from Sinai
• cowry shells from Red Sea
• and since Jericho is near Dead Sea sources of special resources that could have been traded for products from distant places
• salt
• bitumen (a tar-like material useful for sticking things together like small stone blades in their handles, and for waterproofing things like basketry)
• sulfur (a bright yellow mineral useful as a pigment and possibly for medicinal or ritual purposes)
• but others argue that these materials are available in many places, so Jericho was not particularly favored in this regard, either
• Çatal Hüyük
• located in Anatolia, where a river breaks up into branches in an inland delta, forming a marsh
• Excavated in early 1960s (1961-1963, 1965) by James Mellaart
• More is being excavated now (the current excavation project has an interesting web presentation; you can get there from a link on the class web page)
• Incredible preservation (not clear why)
• not covered by later occupations
• First settled some time before 6500 bc (the lower case "bc" indicates an uncalibrated radiocarbon date); that is about 7400 BC calibrated.
• Notice that this is more or less when PPNA Jericho was being abandoned; Çatal Hüyük is later than the first walled town of Jericho
• Also notice the Çatal Hüyük is far, far away from Jericho
• there was no direct connection, although both shared some of the same general cultural traits that were widespread throughout Anatolia and Southwest Asia
• Remarkably stable, relatively unchanging culture during 1000 years of occupation (to about 6400 BC, calibrated)
• Rectangular flat-roofed houses stuck together with back-to-back walls, something like a southwestern pueblo, stepping up the side of the mound.
• one story tall, some possibly with light structure on roof
• Walls made of mud bricks filling spaces between massive squared oak posts
• Generous rooms average 6 by 5 m (20 by 15 feet)
• Small windows high in the walls
• No ground-level doorways
• Entrance from roof only, by climbing down a ladder
• Possibly arranged for defense (why else have no doors and only high, small windows?)
• Some small side rooms entered only from main room through small doorways, contained storage bins possibly for grain
• Raised bench around 3 sides of room, apparently for sleeping and activities (burials underneath, too)
• Hearths and raised, plastered "ovens"
• Traces of plant fiber mats on floors
• Walls plastered in cream color, often with paintings in red, yellow, brown, blue, green, purple, and gray; mica included may have added glitter
• Some walls have low reliefs modeled on them in mud plaster
• Some paintings seem to imitate complex geometric designs similar to modern Anatolian kilims (Turkish rugs)
• Rooms were kept clean, trash dumped outside in abandoned houses and courtyards (spaces between houses)
• Formation of site:
• rooms built and used
• replastered and repainted repeatedly
• eventually abandoned and allowed to partially fill with trash, or rebuilt immediately
• walls knocked down to partially fill room, new walls built using stubs of old ones as foundations
• Religion
• forty shrines found (over 1/4 of all rooms excavated)
• repeated repaintings of wall designs; Mellaart suggests maybe annually
• aurochs (wild ox) imagery
• "bucranea" (the horns and top of skull of a cow or similar animal) on walls, pillars, and in rows on benches
• reliefs on walls
• stone and clay female "statues", showing young woman; woman giving birth to child, ram, or bull; older woman; possibly variants of a single deity
• a few male "statues" as well
• in many burials, the condition and positions of the bones indicate that the body was exposed to the elements until little flesh was left, often without its head, and then the bones were buried in a room or shrine
• this is probably what the wall paintings of birds and headless bodies represent
• human heads or crania were set up in shrines, in baskets beneath ox heads, etc.
• one with cowry shells placed in eye sockets, like the roughly contemporary PPNB people at Jericho
• much has been written about what all this symbolism might mean
• the important point is not the content of the beliefs, but rather that:
• a lot of effort and space was devoted to some kinds of rites
• these efforts were scattered among many separate, modest rooms not very different from living spaces
• as opposed to temples where many people would have gathered and a few would have presided
• so this religion would have been practiced by families or many individual specialists, probably part-time, rather than a powerful institution
• Subsistence
• your basic SW Asian neolithic subsistence:
• wheat (emmer, einkorn, and bread varieties), barley, pea
• almonds, acorns, pistachios
• probably herds of sheep and cattle (but possibly hunted)
• hunting of wild oxen, red deer, wild ass, etc.
• Trade
• presentation by Becca Johnstone
• lots of obsidian, may have controlled the nearby source from which came much of the obsidian used in western Anatolia, Cyprus, and the Levant
• except that the source never looks so close on the map to me; "control" cannot have been very tight
• Caches of up to 23 obsidian spear points buried in bags below floors: storage of wealth?
• What they got in exchange:
• flint from Syria
• Shells, esp. dentalium, from Mediterranean
• possibly copper?
• Lots of craft production
• stone beads, figurines, and vessels
• grinding equipment
• greenstone axes and adzes
• native copper and lead beads
• ochres and other pigments
• exceptional flaked stonework that could only have been made by skilled specialists
• ground obsidian mirrors
• woven wool textiles, maybe as complex as modern Turkish rugs, if the wall paintings are representations of them
• wooden cups, platters, boxes
• seals made of pottery, possibly for applying paint to textiles, or for body painting (not used on clay, like later seals)
• pottery was crude and rare early in the occupation; by 6725 BC they were making plain cooking pots; minimal painted lines, no plastic decoration
• i.e. clearly at least part-time craft specialists, probably some degree of interdependence and exchange for products made by others
• this is much more marked at Çatal Hüyük than at Jericho
• Social status differentiation
• by sex
• burials of both sexes contained textiles, wooden vessels and boxes
• female burials: jewelry, bone spatulae and spoons, obsidian mirrors, baskets with red pigment powder
• but also adzes, which are heavy woodworking tools, used for tasks like cutting trees and squaring up beams
• male burials: maceheads, flint daggers, obsidian points, bone hooks and eyes, belt fasteners
• suggesting hunting, maybe fighting; fasteners suggest more warm clothing, possibly needed for hunting
• but also clay seals... why?
• wall painting of bearded figures hunting suggests that hunted was done by men
• by religious role?
• burials outside shrine rooms tend to have only a few personal ornaments
• burials in shrine rooms are the ones with more goods, and goods such as tools, utensils, etc. -- things other than those that they probably wore on them in life
• suggests that ritual activities were associated with access to more goods, that is, higher status
• did the ritual activities bring these people high status, or did high-status people do the rituals?
• or were high-status people just more likely to be buried in the ritual places?
• the burials with the most goods are of females in "shrine" rooms
• combined with all the female imagery in the shrines, this suggests that some women may have had the preeminent roles in religious life
• and a high material status to go with it
• Total area of mound is 13 ha (32 acres)
• roughly ten times the size of PPNA Jericho
• 6.7 times the open area of SSU's main quad
• Population estimates vary from 1,650 to 10,000
• Unknown whether excavated area is representative of whole site
• Unknown what portion of the whole mound was occupied at any given time
• Unknown what amount of space might have been open, for gathering or ceremonial space, market, animals, etc.
• Unknown what fraction of rooms might have been abandoned and accumulating garbage at any give time
• Shrines were probably not living spaces (Mellaart includes them in his population estimate of 10,000)
• The recent project at Çatal Hüyük estimates around 5,000
• based on estimates of density of houses across the site, made by scraping the surface to find walls
• and a guess of 4 people per house
• I would guess that is still a little high, since it assumes all the rooms were fully occupied at the same time
• Adult burials average 34 years old for men, 30 for women, but some individuals lived past 60
• What do you think of the lifestyle implied here?
• The global pattern:
• around 8000 to 5000 BC in various places in the world
• various societies clustered into larger settlements
• with more complex social, economic, and religious arrangements
• these were widely scattered in both space and time, and relatively independent of each other
• these were isolated flashes of complexity, or social experiments
• some lasted a long time, but none developed into more complex societies
• it wasn't until around 5000 BC that one of these societies developed a kind of organization that continued to get bigger and more complex and eventually produced true cities and civilization: the Sumerians in Mesopotamia