Halaf Culture Bowl and Plate From Arpachiyah. 5500-5000 BC. British Museum.

Preview of this post. Last week, we introduced the Samarra, Hassuna, and Halaf cultures of Northern Mesopotamia. We also observed the Ubaid refugees from the Dilmun Valley (finally filled with seawater and now known as the Persian Gulf) swelling the population of Southern Mesopotamia and gathering into cities to enable large mutually beneficial projects, foremost of which was to irrigate the remaining fertile but arid Tigris-Euphrates Valley. While great wealth (and thus power) was just forming in Southern Mesopotamia, we saw the three promising Neolithic cultures of Northern Mesopotamia merge into one: with the Halaf seemingly dominant. This week, we will look deeper at that Halaf culture, seeking to get a reasonably good feel for its nature. All the while, we must remember that we are searching the pre-literate Neolithic, and all of our conclusions will depend upon material artifacts, and archaeology’s hypothetical interpretations.

Prof. dr. Peter Akkermans. As I searched for the latest on Halaf, I concluded that Dr. Akkermans seems to have been doing the most visible excavating and publishing on Halafian origins, and is challenging prior hypotheses about the formation and nature of that culture. I added him to this website’s Archaeologists page, and now proceed to that excavation and begin to give you leads for your own research (as deep as you care to go) as-well-as a summary overview of his work. Of course, I’m certain you’re informed on the warfare in Syria and won’t be surprised to find that archaeological excavations have slammed on the brakes for now. Even worse, much of the artifacts from his most important dig, Tell Sabi Abyad, have been dumped out at the site’s storage facility. Of course, no one can assess that damage yet, but most modern archaeology makes digital images (often in 3D) of important artifacts as soon as possible after discovery. In this way, the artifacts along with the reports are digitized and added to the world’s “cloud,” hopefully.

Tell Sabi Abyad. This excavation website is terrific, one of the best–if not the best–I have seen in terms of user friendliness and thoroughness. I want you to take advantage of this website and carefully examine and read all the dropdown menus. As is the excavation, so is this website’s content supervised by Dr. Akkermans. Its great orderliness will give you a quick and thorough insight into this vitally important excavation, which will create the foundation for your understanding and enjoyment of what follows below, and your own inquiries. For those of you starting the Fall trimester or semester, this would be a good object lesson on how to approach all of your major inquiries. For the rest of us, a good “executive summary” is the best way to get our feet wet in a new subject. And don’t fail to add the Links and the Publications to your source list. I already downloaded a handful of Akkermans’ PDF documents on subjects that interest me.

Death and Dying in the Neolithic Near East. Burial customs are a defining attribute of any culture. Here, Dr. Akkermans describes those of the Halaf culture. You should read enough of this short section to get a feel for how burial customs are described by an archaeologist.

Old and New Perspectives on the Origins of the Halaf Culture. By reading this paper in its entirety, I gained a broad perspective of the similarities and differences between the surviving Halaf culture and those other cultures (e.g. Samarra) that were absorbed into it. I also gained insight into how much weight Dr. Akkermans gives different aspects of the comparison.

8.2 Kiloyear Event. This linked Wikipedia page describes this global Paleoclimatic event as resulting from rapid and massive inflows of glacial melt-water from the final collapse of the Laurentide ice sheet and the draining of Lake Agassiz into the North Atlantic. The 200 to 400 year drop in Northern Hemisphere temperature starting in 6200 BC coincides with transitional events in the Halaf culture currently being investigated by a new project led by Dr. Akkermans at Leiden University. It is very interesting that this Leiden project link refers to this new project with the enigmatic statement: “The integration of new data and insights from recent fieldwork will throw a completely new light on what has so far been one of the darkest periods in the history of the Near East.” Sounds exciting. I intend to stay tuned to this man’s work on this now recognized lead–a fine illustration of the slow process of “connecting the dots” across all of science. I suspect this 8.2K Event may prove to be the catalyst that caused the Halaf culture to collapse and submerge into the Ubaid. 

Tell Sabi Abyad on Wikipedia. This will give you more leads and references on this important dig.

Tell Sabi Abyad Facebook Page. This may be the best mechanism for keeping up with the dig.

Choga Mami at southern tip of Halaf Culture. Ubaid Culture lies south to Persian Gulf.

Halaf Religion. Since we’re in the preliterate Neolithic, we can only probe Halafian religious culture by examining artifacts. Googling “ancient tell Halaf neolithic goddess sculpture” yields these photos. (Be sure to check the labels on each picture.) These mother goddess figurines predominate in the late Paleolithic and Neolithic, as we may recall they did in the Indus Valley Civilization (Harappa), and virtually everywhere in West Asia–except with the Indo-Europeans. These Earth Mother figurines uniformly portray morbidly obese female forms, which represent, among other things, a female deity who enjoys superabundant food.

Choga Mami. This link opens an Oriental Institute paper “Excavations at Choga Mami, Iraq,” wherein you will see an early encroachment of the Ubaid culture into the Halaf culture. You will recall my prior descriptions of the process by which the Ubaid immigrants in Southern Mesopotamia gathered in mega-villages to concentrate manpower in order to dig canals and irrigate the arid savannah between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Choga Mami had long been a Halaf town, but British archaeologists found clear evidence of irrigation canals in its later excavation levels. Such copycat diffusion of knowledge was one way that Ubaid culture penetrated the Halaf, and may be the way Halaf culture had spread among its predecessors.

This is a good point to complete this post. We will resume in the next post with a closer examination of the Ubaid culture, its development, and its assimilation of the Halaf culture.

Thanks for visiting,

R. E. J. Burke

End Note:

“Before Present” definition. I have been tardy in giving you the precise definition behind “BP.” It keys off 1950 as the “Present.” So if an artifact is radiocarbon dated at 5065 years ago, we would know that it will translate into 5000 BP (5065-2015+1950) i.e. BP means Before 1950.