Following this easier and quicker way of producing decoration, the proportion of decorated wares found in the total pottery yield increases far beyond the proportion in which painted vessels can still be regarded as luxury goods, as in former times. Because many excavators have concentrated on decorated pottery, details of the proportion of unpainted vessels are unfortunately difficult to obtain in most cases. Hence, there is no evidence to support the conjecture that the total number of pottery vessels used at any one time also increased. It was certainly no later than the time at which this sort of pottery was produced that pottery was manufactured by professional potters, and in the process the different procedures were probably the responsibility of different workers.
Figure 13. Pottery vessels of the Ubaid period, from (a–c) Tell al’Ubaid, (e–f) Tell Uqair, and (d and g) Ur (all Iraq). After H. R. Hall and C. L. Woolley, “Al-Ubaid,” Ur Excavations I (1927), pl. 49; S. Lloyd and F. Safar, “Tell Uqair,” Jour. of N. E. Studies 2 (1943), pl. 21; C. L. Woolley, “The Early Periods,” Ur Excavations 4 (1956), pl. 18.
The next technical innovation was setting the wheel’s axle in bearings and hence the creation of an actual potter’s wheel, probably at the end of the Ubaid period. The aim of this was probably once again a simplification of the production process. Again there were considerable effects on both the process itself and, more especially, on the appearance of the pottery. Even though these developments belong chronologically to the next chapter, they will be briefly outlined here.
The main changes in pottery after the Ubaid period stem from the different properties required in the consistency of clay when it is worked on a potter’s wheel. The potential of the potter’s wheel can only be fully exploited if the clay is pliable and does not break off while it is being worked. A great deal more time than before had therefore to be spent in preparing the clay before it was used.
The properties required in the clay could be enhanced by the use of additives, and depending on which of these materials were used, the finished vessels might look totally different from one another. Thus, for example, the addition of substances containing ferric oxide can radically change the basic color after firing. The fact that the basic yellowish color of untreated vessels of the later Uruk period was, in the following period, replaced, after firing, by a reddish-brown background color may be connected with such a process.
Apart from these technical changes, a whole series of other factors, which we are unable to name, certainly influenced the very evident differences between the pottery of the Ubaid period and that of the following Uruk period. Painting was discontinued, apart from a very few examples, and, aside from particular shapes that were given an incised pattern, the pottery is undecorated. An ever-greater role was played by vessels whose shapes indicate that they were used for specialized purposes rather than all-purpose pottery. These changes can in no way be seen as a sign of a change in the population, however, as has occasionally been suggested.
We can, with the greatest certainty, assume that there was an extensive internal division of labor in pottery production after the introduction of the potter’s wheel, because we may assume that the long-drawn-out process of preparing the clay was done by others. In addition, it is possible that in larger workshops there were individual potters who specialized in particular forms, a point made probable when finds from the Late Uruk period in Habuba were investigated. Such workshops, which probably also existed in other crafts, could not have carried on working without supervisors and coordinators.
The development just described not only illustrates the evolution of the organization of labor, but it also indicates the connection between specialization and the building of centers. In order to throw more light on this, let us return to a consideration of the development of settlements, or rather of settlement systems.
In the following discussion, this development will be considered especially from the point of view of the thesis that the degree of organization of settlement systems depended on the size of their particular ecological units. As an example I shall choose only one area of the Near East, which offers a practically ideal example of the external preconditions needed to test this hypothesis—the area from Lower Mesopotamia eastwards up to the ridges of the Zagros Mountains. All the external factors required of the natural environment for the different stages of development of organizational forms can be found here in the smallest possible area.
Within this area we find four different zones that can be described as rough ecological units: the narrow valleys of the Zagros; the small alluvial plains in this range of mountains; the alluvial plain of the Karun and Kerkha rivers lying below them, which we call Susiana after the ancient political center of Susa; and, finally, to the west, the great alluvial plain of lower Mesopotamia. These areas are naturally not completely separated from one another and have more or less large-scale features in common. There are, however, also crucial differences. Among the latter are climatic conditions, the prevailing temperatures and the amount of annual precipitation. However, one of the most important differences is the difference in the size of the units suitable for settlements.
In this relatively small section of the Near East, we find all types of settlement, from the first settlements of the prepottery and pottery Neolithic period through the first larger permanent settlements up to all the higher forms of organization, such as the city and the state. Thus, on the one hand, the area offers a wide spectrum of geographical potential, and, on the other, it was the home of such a variety of phases of the development of early civilizations that we might even be tempted to conclude that it played a special part in the growth of early forms of civilization in the Near East.
It fits in very nicely that, at the same time, our chosen area belongs to the part of the Near East for which we have a relatively large amount of reliable evidence about early society. This is not so much related to the actual number of sites excavated but rather to the number of research projects, whose results we are dependent on if we wish to speak about settlement systems and the changes that took place in them. Here we have to rely on projects aimed at surveying, without excavation, all the archaeologically significant remains visible on the surface in a given area. Since settlement sites of all types have left some visible trace behind them, even if it is only, as in most cases, a vast number of discarded pottery shards, it is possible to establish the location of these old settlement sites.
The position and size of all these settlements can therefore be plotted on maps, and surface archaeological finds of many types make it possible to classify these ruined towns by period. In this process, as already mentioned, pottery plays the greatest part because great numbers of broken fragments can be found on the surface of almost every old settlement. In addition, because of the worthlessness of these fragments, we do not have to conclude, in our assessment, and especially in the dating of a complex of finds, that important pieces are missing or that the whole complex was disturbed in its composition at a later date. In the majority of cases where verification is possible, it has in fact been shown that the finds on the surface provide us with a rough, but faithful, picture of what an excavation would produce for purposes of dating. It is self-evident that such investigations can be no substitute for excavations, if only because of the fact that hardly anything else except pottery fragments is ever found on the surface.
Figure 14. Map of the Near East with sites mentioned in the text.
The results of such archaeological surface investigations are maps that show the location and size of the settled sites divided up according to periods, such as, for example, those shown by the maps in figure 20. However, this is precisely the basic information we need to arrive at statements about settlement systems and the changes that took place in them.
For the area in which we are interested at the moment, we have this type of survey for the great plains of Babylonia and Susiana, as well as for a few of the smaller plains and valleys in the neighboring Zagros Mountains. From t
hese we obtain the following picture: not only the sites with settlements from the pre-pottery Neolithic period, but also the earliest sites from the pottery Neolithic period, such as Tepe Guran, Tepe Sarab, Ganj Dareh, Qalʾat Jarmo, and Qalʾe Rostam, are all situated in valleys of the Zagros or at the exits to such valleys to smaller plains. They were all isolated settlements, each situated far away from other sites of the same period.
It is only during the following period that we find individual settlements advancing into smaller plains. Local peculiarities, which we can no longer identify in detail, must certainly have guaranteed the necessary breadth of potential for exploitation. We may treat Tepe Jaffarabad or Chogha Mish in Susiana or Ras-al ˓Amiyah and Eridu in Lower Mesopotamia as examples of such settlements that had advanced further, although here we still seem to be dealing with isolated settlements.
Completely developed settlement systems can, for the first time, be identified in a period we call the Late Susiana period, based on the order of the layers at some sites in Susiana. Clearly, this is not meant to imply that in the previous period there were no systematic relationships among settlements, but between the previously mentioned phase of isolated settlements and the one from which we now first know of settlement systems, there is a period for which we have hardly any information at all.
These earliest developed settlement systems were located on small plains amid the Zagros Mountains. The plain surrounding the modern town of Behbehan can serve as an example (fig. 15). Here the different places settled during the early period were all abandoned within a very short space of time during the Late Susiana period and were never settled again. Hence, the remains from the early period were directly visible on the surface, and there was extremely informative material available for evaluation.
Figure 15. Settlements on the plain of Behbehan around 4000 B.C. and zones of probable land use. Author’s original.
The plain lies at the junction of two natural routes through an otherwise impassable mountain area. The first of these is the most important east-west passage, which is not only used today for roads between the modern towns of Ahwaz and Shiraz, but was also already an essential section of the “King’s Road” of the Achaemenids. The other route, which uses different longitudinal mountain valleys and the passes between them, connects the area a little to the south at the head of the Gulf with the Isfahan region of the central Iranian plateau.
This route is difficult to follow and is of almost no importance today, but it clearly was of great importance during the Middle Ages. The early settlements certainly took advantage of it, because the relationships we can prove to have existed at that time between the civilizations west and east of the Zagros must have made use of this route. It is then easy to suppose that Tepe Sohz, by far the largest site, had a part to play on this connecting route, about which, for the time being, we cannot be any more specific. However, the location of this site near the spot where the Marun River flows into the plain shows that its primary importance had a different basis. Because of its location, the site was in a dominant position for an irrigation system that drew its water from the Marun, a little to the north of Tepe Sohz.
It is true that today the old canal is no longer readily identifiable in an area used intensively for agriculture, but the location of most of the ancient places on a line parallel to a modern irrigation canal that extends from Tepe Sohz is evidence enough. Because of its size and location, Tepe Sohz, with a surface area of almost twelve hectares, was undoubtedly the center of the group of smaller settlements, each of which hardly occupied more than two to three hectares of land. There is no doubt that we are dealing here with a simple settlement system.
Since we know of similar situations on other small plains of this type, we may assume that for the chronological horizon of the Late Susiana period this was the normal form of organization. Interestingly enough, this does not appear to have been true of the Susiana plain immediately to the west. Although there is evidence of sites from this period there, they do not appear to have had such close communications with one another. In this case, it is to be hoped that the publication of research done a long time ago will have more to teach us.
Figure 16. Distribution of settlements in Susiana in Late Uruk times. After G. A. Johnson, “Early State Organization in Southwestern Iran,” Proc. of the IVth Ann. Symp. on Archaeol. Res. in Iran (Teheran, 1976), p. 196.
Figure 17. Results from deep drilling in the floor of the Persian Gulf: proportions of organic matter (hatched) in the sediments and inferences regarding the ancient climate. After W. Nützel, “The Climatic Changes of Mesopotamia and Bordering Areas, 14,000 to 2,000 B.C.” Sumer 32 (1976): 20.
In the next phase we find completely developed settlement systems in the Susiana plain, with centers, such as Susa, that exceed in size anything else we know of up to that time. In addition to this, it has been possible to identify a network of relationships among these settlements that points to a multilevel hierarchy of importance. We are probably not wrong in assuming that here, for the first time, we are dealing with three-tiered settlement systems.
Before we now turn to Lower Mesopotamia, the last great geographical unit of the area outlined above, we must first provide an introduction. This is because it is astonishing to discover that, at a time when the areas just to the east had developed centers of a higher order, we find nothing in Lower Mesopotamia that points to any stage beyond that of isolated individual settlements. Recent research does, however, permit us to give an explanation for this curious state of affairs.
The period with which we were concerned before, the beginning of the fourth millennium B.C., was clearly one that witnessed considerable climatic changes. The evidence for this was provided partly by the findings of a voyage by the research ship Meteor in the Gulf during the winter of 1964/65. Tests of the sediment that forms the floor of the Gulf, especially the discovery of the respective proportions of organic materials, revealed astonishing changes in its composition. With the help of individual carbon 14 measurements, it was possible to fix the points chronologically on a graph produced in this way (fig. 17).
Because the percentage of inorganic materials increases with the quantity of water flowing in from a river, a low proportion of organic material in the substances carried by a river and later deposited points to a large amount of water—that is, to high precipitation in the drainage area of the river, and therefore to a damp, humid climate. The consequences are of great importance to us because the span of time for which particularily conspicuous changes are evident corresponds partly to the periods of interest to us here.
The profile reproduced in figure 17 shows that roughly in the middle of the fourth millennium B.C. what was probably a slight, but noticeable, change of climate must have taken place, leading to slightly cooler and dryer average conditions. According to the evidence provided by a graph of the variations in sea level in the Gulf, reconstructed with the help of other observations, the sea level was almost three meters higher at the time when the climatic changes began than it is today.
The effects of climatic changes are visible in the gradual drop in sea level, as well as in the fact that, because they carried less water, the rivers that flowed into the Gulf also carried and laid down less sedimentary material. Here it is significant for us that the reduction in precipitation that was the cause of this affected the whole drainage area of these rivers, so that this climatic fluctuation was not just a localized affair but must have involved the whole of the region drained by these great rivers and their tributaries.
Of course these climatic changes also had an effect on the mountainous regions we have been discussing and on the plains that lie among them. However, it would seem that there was no change in one important respect. These regions definitely remained within the area in which there was sufficient precipitation for plant cultivation.
In contrast, the effects on Lower Mesopotamia were far-reaching. A prolonged period in which only very scattered individual settlemen
ts existed was suddenly followed by a phase in which the land was clearly so densely settled that nothing like it had been seen even in the Susiana of the previous period. With the help of information from the Meteor research project, an explanation for this development in Babylonia is now possible. The land, which had been unsuitable for settlement owing to the high sea level in the Gulf or the large amount of water in the rivers, had at first supported only a few island sites, but from the moment the waters began to recede it was open to much more extensive inhabitation.
The question of developments in the other regions of the Near East mentioned earlier can, unfortunately, be answered very quickly. There, the sites investigated are always very much farther apart from one another and cannot therefore furnish as much information as the area discussed above. The places investigated in the latter area are in each case so close together that we cannot avoid assuming that there was a direct linkage in space and in time, whereas elsewhere in the Near East we almost always find ourselves in a situation where we have to bridge huge gaps. The interpolations necessary for this must, however, inevitably lead to false assertions, because such a method of proceeding always tends to obscure existing differences. This means that an important point such as the beginning of local differentiation will certainly keep being covered up.
Let us select one obvious example of our helplessness. We have already seen that the period named for the finding of Halaf pottery also produced other pottery groups. The most characteristic of these other groups is called “Samarra” pottery, after the site on the central Tigris where it was first found. Like Halaf pottery, it, too, belongs to the painted types of pottery, which are remarkable for their great wealth of patterns. However, the differences between these two groups are there, staring us in the face. Samarra pottery tended to simpler shapes and circular patterns, which, moreover, were applied in matte colors, as opposed to the glossy paints used on Halaf pottery.
The Early History of the Ancient Near East (9000-2000 BC) Page 7