Halaf and Ubaid Territories Before Ubaid Displaces Halaf. Source.
Summary of today’s post. We will now reach closure on the Halaf and Ubaid predecessors to the Sumerian culture, summarizing the most comprehensive and current views on the Halaf-Ubaid Transition. As the Ubaid culture supplants the Halaf and spreads northwest through Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean and north into the Zagros Mountains, it also где погулять в Пензе spreads southeast down the north coast of the Persian Gulf. In the Ubaid homeland of South Mesopotamia, Ubaid villages grow into cities which morph into Uruk and the other cities of South Mesopotamia.
We have been mining the 2010 Oriental Institute’s published report, Beyond the Ubaid, which contains the final versions of scholarly papers presented at an international workshop held in Grey College at the University of Durham, UK, in 2006. This is the most up-to-date and comprehensive survey of archaeological thinking on the Ubaid culture, its displacement of the Halaf culture, and its contributions to the Uruk culture. I suggest, if you haven’t already, that you download the PDF copy of the full book, offered free by the Oriental Institute via the link below.
Philip Karsgaard authored the 4th theoretical framework (page 51) of Beyond the Ubaid which is titled The Halaf-Ubaid Transition: A Transformation Without A Center? He proposes there is little evidence the Ubaid material horizon expanded from Southern Mesopotamia into the Halaf territories by migrations of the Ubaid. Rather, he proposes that such an expansion is a figment of imagination incited during the first half of the 20th century by premature conclusions, poor choices in labeling ceramic artifacts, and an early bias toward attributing changes in material horizons to conquests. He suggests that the labels Ubaid and Halaf were misidentified with people groups rather than with two horizons of material artifacts named after the earliest excavation sites where they were identified.
After first reading his paper, I wanted to ridicule the idea, because there are some features of the Ubaid phenomenon that speak of a unique people, clearly different from the dry dirt farmers of Halaf. After forming and writing down my arguments, I checked his paper in several places and started to perceive wisdom in what he was saying. So, I spent several hours studying the article and reshaping my snap judgments. He presents several arguments, and I will summarize these to you as best I can.
Population Density of Northern and Southern Mesopotamia.
In Figure 4.4, p.58, Dr. Karsgaard compares the maximum and minimum settlement densities for five regions. To define settlement density, take the defined area in square kilometers and divide it by the number of settlement sites it contains. I will use the “maximum settlement density” numbers: Southern Mesopotamia [60 Km², 4.4 Km], Tell Beydar [50 Km², 3.9 Km], Deh Luran [20 Km², 2.5 Km], North Jazira (Northern Mesopotamia) [10 Km², 1.8 Km] , and Tell Brak [15 Km², 2.2 Km]. The first number shown above in brackets is the average area surrounding each settlement site (square kilometers), and the second number is the radius of this surrounding area (kilometers). (One Km = 0.6 miles. One Km² = 0.36 miles².)
The author’s intent is to show that in Southern Mesopotamia, on average, there is one known settlement site on every 60 Km² at maximum population density, and one site per 160 Km² at minimum population density—far less dense than the small towns and hamlets of the other regions in his list. He cites a study suggesting that northern Mesopotamia was more populated than the South in the late Halaf period, while ignoring the paucity of southern excavations.
This imbalance of sites exists because Archaeological field surveys are many and work well where the site reaches the surface (e.g. Tell Zeidan in the Jazira where pottery shards litter the surface)). However, these surveys don’t work at all where the sites are 50 to 100 feet down in the alluvial soil in Southern Mesopotamia, mostly without a trace, and remain forever abandoned in prehistory. Not all is lost, however, since new technologies such as Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR) promise to allow much more economical surface surveys within the GPR’s depth limit.
Moreover, Dr. Karsgaard’s proposal that northern Mesopotamia had higher population density than the south is untenable on a more basic level, given the much smaller food-growing capacity of dry farming (with its variable rainfall, drought risks, and limited arable land) in most of the Halaf regions, especially when compared to wet (river irrigated) farming in the Ubaid region in the south. The Ubaid started first-time farming on virtually unlimited virgin, fertile land between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, and that land could be expanded for centuries by simply digging more canals to more virgin land. To produce crops on a rapidly expanding scale, the Ubaid opportunity and early success attracted huge canal and farming work forces cohabiting in dense cities and surrounding hamlets out to 5 Km (3 miles), while providing a wide variety of craftsmen and protection to inhabitants.
After the first couple hundred years into this urbanized farming system, the Ubaid would have been multiplying like rabbits. But the dry farming region of the Halaf would soon reach its sustainable population limit. A good question would be whether the boom-times in the south drew immigrants from below the dry farming line to the north (with less than 20” of annual rainfall) and from excess population above the dry farming line who wanted their own land. Such migrations seem logical to me.
Late Halaf and Early Ubaid Ceramics.
In Figure 4.1, Dr. Karsgaard presents comparisons of two rare Ubaid bowls with very fancy decoration from Tell Haji Mohammad and Tell Eridu. He then compares them with much more familiar fancy Halaf bowls from Tell Arpachiyah. He asserts all these finely decorated bowls are from the same time period. Then he points out that the decoration of the vast majority of Halaf and Ubaid pottery after this period was less decorated, most being undecorated. From this, he hypothesizes that these gaudy decorated Halaf and Ubaid pottery indicate a banquet-centered luxurious display of wealth during interactions among and between late Halaf and early Ubaid elites. If his provenance and dating are correct, this hypothesis seems reasonable.
Mature Ubaid Ceramics.
Dr. Karsgaard then attributes the later decline in decoration as a trend away from such personal (even diplomatic) showmanship toward some sort of communal, rather than personal, aggrandizement. By this stage, Ubaid ceramics are ubiquitous across the northern and Levantine Fertile Crescent from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean, and the Halaf material horizon is no longer distinguishable.
He also suggests that during the Halaf-Ubaid transition, the slow potter’s wheel (tournette) led to faster production and to decorations easier to apply on the wheel, and thus simpler. And with demand for household ceramics, rather than elite conspicuous consumption, decorations became increasingly rare, as he illustrates in histograms for Tells ‘Abr and Eridu (p.55 Fig. 4.2) and in specific examples of simpler decorations in later Ubaid Ceramics (p. 56, Fig. 4.3).
Dr. Karsgaard’s Conclusions.
He said at the beginning of his article, “Peer-polity interaction is also explicitly concerned with increasing sociopolitical complexity, a developmental trajectory that is indeed often assumed for the Halaf-Ubaid transition and later Ubaid period, but perhaps less successfully demonstrated (p.60).” On first reading this, I challenged the good doctor’s words. “Increasing sociopolitical complexity…(is) less successfully demonstrated?” I was surprised he didn’t consider the appearance of large cities, the organization of canal digging and maintenance, huge monumental temples with infrastructure, the organization of large populations in burgeoning cities, and the emergence of community cemeteries to be more complex than managing dry farming in Halaf hamlets above the dry farming line where most Halaf populations were located. Perhaps I misread his statement and he meant, “Peer-polity interaction is also explicitly concerned with increasing sociopolitical complexity…(which is) perhaps less successfully demonstrated (in the erstwhile Halaf region after the Ubaid material culture displaced it.)”
Dr. Karsgaard concludes his arguments with the hypothesis that the Halaf-Ubaid transition was a “transformation without a center.” There is a systemic problem in hypothesizing “transformations without a center” and similar arguments where the data is limited and imbalanced by exogenous variables i.e. ancient sites (e.g. Tell Zeidan) representing one side of the argument are at or close to the surface and far cheaper to excavate than those on the other side of the argument, which are 50-100 feet (or more) below alluvial deposits and mostly unidentified. His conclusion from artificial—albeit well understood–silence (paucity of southern sites) is unconvincing. I would be more convinced if the impediment to the other side of the argument: the depth to be excavated, prohibitive expense to locate more settlements in southern Mesopotamia, and effects of the state of war in Iraq were factored into his conclusion.
New ways to date artifacts and thus test hypotheses
I would like to conclude today’s post by turning your attention to the promise offered by new technologies, and rapid improvements in earlier ones. Therein, I believe, lie the tools to better resolve many current conundrums, such as the Halaf-Ubaid transition. Today’s tool of enhanced C14 analysis is explained by Felix Höflmayer in Chronologies of Collapse: Climate Change, wherein he applies it to resolve a specific archaeological hypothesis in this Oriental Institute presentation.
Thanks for visiting,
R. E. J. Burke