Ubaid period

Ubaid period

Tell Abu Shahrain Tell al-'Ubaid Tell el-'Oueili Tepe Gawra Choga Mami class=notpageimage| A clickable map of Iraq detailing important sites that were occupied during the Ubaid period.
Geographical range	Near East
Period	Neolithic
Dates	c. 5500 – c. 3700 BC
Type site	Tell al-'Ubaid
Major sites	Tell el-'Oueili Tell Abu Shahrain Hadji Muhammed Choga Mami Tell Abada Tepe Gawra
Preceded by	Pottery Neolithic Samarra culture Hassuna culture Halaf culture
Followed by	Halaf-Ubaid Transitional period Uruk period

The Ubaid period (c. 5500–3700 BC) is a prehistoric period of Mesopotamia. The name derives from Tell al-'Ubaid where the earliest large excavation of Ubaid period material was conducted initially in 1919 by Henry Hall and later by Leonard Woolley.

In South Mesopotamia the period is the earliest known period on the alluvial plain although it is likely earlier periods exist obscured under the alluvium. In the south it has a very long duration between about 5500 and 3800 BC when it is replaced by the Uruk period.

In Northern Mesopotamia the period runs only between about 5300 and 4300 BC. It is preceded by the Halaf period and the Halaf-Ubaid Transitional period and succeeded by the Late Chalcolithic period.

History of research

The excavators of Eridu and Tell al-'Ubaid found Ubaid pottery for the first time in the 1910-20s. In 1930, the attendees at a conference in Baghdad defined the concept of an "Ubaid pottery style". This characteristic pottery of this style was a black-on-buff painted ware. This conference also defined the Eridu and Hajji Muhammed styles. Scholars at this conference thought that these pottery styles were so different that "[...] they could not have developed out of the old, as is the case with the Uruk ware after the al-'Ubaid ware [...]". For many attendants of the conference, "this sequence based largely on pottery represented a series of different 'ethnic elements' in the occupation of southern Mesopotamia." These ideas about the nature of the Ubaid phenomenon did not last. The term Ubaid itself is still used, but its meaning has changed over time.

Joan Oates showed in 1960 that the Eridu and Hajji Muhammed styles were not distinct at all. Instead, they were part of the greater Ubaid phenomenon. She proposed a chronological framework that divides the Ubaid period in 4 phases. Other scholars later proposed phases 0 and 5.

Scholars in the 1930s only knew a few Ubaid sites. These included the type site of Tell al-'Ubaid itself, Ur, and Tepe Gawra in the north. Since then, archaeologists found Ubaid material culture all over the ancient Near East. There are now Ubaid sites in the Amuq Valley in the northwest all the way to the Persian Gulf coast in the southeast. Important research includes the many excavations in the Hamrin area in the 1970s. There, archaeologists found a complete Ubaid settlement at Tell Abada, and a really well-preserved house at Tell Madhur. The excavation at Tell el-'Oueili in the 1980s reveiled occupation layers that were older than those from Eridu. This discovery pushed back the date for the earliest human occupation of southern Mesopotamia.

Excavations along southcoast of the Persian Gulf provided a lot of evidence for contacts with Mesopotamia. The site of H3 in Kuwait, for example, provided the earliest evidence in the world for seafaring. The explosion of archaeological research in Iraqi Kurdistan since the 2010s also led to a lot of new data on the Ubaid. For example, this research showed that cultural links between the Shahrizor Plain and the Hamrin area further south were stronger than those with the north.

Climate and environment

See also: Geography of Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia does not have local, high-resolution climate proxy records such as Soreq Cave. This makes it difficult to reconstuct the region's past climate. Even so, it is known that the environment during the sixth and fifth millennium BC was not the same as today. A more temperate climate settled in around 10,000 BC. Marshy and riverine areas transformed into floodplains and finally river banks with trees. The area south of Baghdad may have been inhabitable by humans in the eleventh millennium BC. Humans could have lived south of Uruk as early as the eighth millennium. This is much earlier than the oldest evidence human occupation in this area. The oldest known site in southern Mesopotamia (Tell el-'Oueili) dates to the Ubaid 0 period. Archaeobotanical research in the Ubaid 0 levels at 'Oueili (6500-6000 BC) has indicated the presence of Euphrates poplar and sea clubrush, both indicative of a wetland environment. As a result of changes in sea-level, the shoreline of the Persian Gulf during the Ubaid was different from that of today. At the beginning of the Ubaid, around 6500 BC, the shoreline at Kuwait may have ran slightly further south. During the subsequent 2.5 millenna, the shoreline moved further northward, up to the ancient city of Ur around 4000 BC.

Date palms were present in southern Mesopotamia since at least the eleventh millennium BC, predating the earliest evidence for domesticated dates from Eridu by several millennia. Date palms require a perennial water source, again indicating that this period may have been wetter than today. Similarly, oak was present from the eighth millennium, but disappeared at around the same time that Ubaid material culture spread outward from southern Mesopotamia during the sixth millennium BC. It has been suggested that acquisition of high-quality wood may have played a role in this expansion.

The available evidence in northern Mesopotamia points to a cooler and drier climate during the Hassuna and Halaf periods. During the Halaf-Ubaid Transitional (HUT), Ubaid and early Uruk periods, this developed into a climate characterised by stronger seasonal variation, heavy torrential rains and dry summers.

Dating and geographical distribution

Ubaid and Ubaid-like material culture has been found over an immense area. Ubaid ceramics have shown up from Mersin in the west to Tepe Ghabristan in the east, and from Norşuntepe and Arslantepe in the north to Dosariyah in the south along the Gulf coast of Saudi Arabia. In this area, researchers have discerned considerable regional variation, indicating that the Ubaid was not a monolithic culture through time and space.

The Ubaid period is most commonly divided in 6 phases, called Ubaid 0-5. Some of these phases equate with pottery styles that were, in earlier publications, considered to be distinct from Ubaid, but that are now considered to be part of the same phenomenon. Some of these styles, such as Hajji Muhammed (previously thought to be Ubaid 2) are now known to occur in Ubaid 3 contexts as well, thereby limiting their value as chronological markers. The relative chronology is based on the long stratigraphic sequences of sites such as Ur, Eridu and Tepe Gawra. The absolute chronology is harder to establish, mainly due to a lack of abundant radiocarbon dates coming from southern Mesopotamia.

Relative Ubaid chronology

phase	alternative name	Northern Mesopotamia	date (BC) (after Pournelle 2003 / after Harris 2021)
Ubaid 0	Oueili phase	Early Pottery Neolithic	6500-5900 / 6800-6200
Ubaid 1	Eridu style	Halaf	5900-5200 / 6200-5500
Ubaid 2	Hajji Muhammad style	Halaf-Ubaid Transitional	5200-5100 / 5500-5200
Ubaid 3	Tell al-'Ubaid style	Northern Ubaid	5100-4900 / 5200-4600
Ubaid 4	Late Ubaid	Northern Ubaid	4900-4350 / 5200-4600
Ubaid 5	Terminal Ubaid	Late Chalcolithic 1	4350-4200 / 4600-4200

Southern Mesopotamia

'Ubaid

Eridu

Ur

'Oueili

Tell Abada

Tell Madhur

Tepe Gawra

Arpachiyah

Uruk

Tell Uqair

H3

Bahra 1

class=notpageimage|

Map of important Ubaid period sites in Iraq.

In the south, corresponding to the area that would later be known as Sumer, the entire Ubaid spans an immense period from ca. 6500 to 3800 BC. It is here that the oldest known Ubaid site - Tell el-'Oueili - was found. In southern Iraq, no archaeological site has yet yielded remains older than Ubaid, However, this might be more a result of the fact that such ancient settlements are now buried deep under alluvial sediments. This was the case, for example, of the site of Hadji Muhammed, which was discovered only by accident.

Central and northern Mesopotamia

Mersin

Norşuntepe

Tell Zeidan

Arslantepe

Tell Brak

Tepe Gawra

class=notpageimage|

Map of important Ubaid period sites in northern Mesopotamia.

In central and northern Iraq, the Ubaid was preceded by the Hassuna and Samarra cultures. The Ubaid may have developed out of the latter. In northern Syria and southeastern Turkey, the Ubaid follows upon the Halaf period, and a relatively short Halaf-Ubaid Transitional period (HUT) dating to c. 5500-5200 BC has been proposed as well. HUT pottery assemblages displayed both typically Ubaid and Halaf characteristics. The relations between these periods - or cultures - is complex and not yet fully understood, including how and when exactly the Ubaid started to appear in northern Mesopotamia. To resolve these issues, modern scholarship tends to focus more on regional trajectories of change where different cultural elements from the Halaf, Samarra, or Ubaid - pottery, architecture, and so forth - could co-exist. This makes it increasingly hard to define an occupation phase at a site as, for example, purely Ubaid or purely Halaf.

In northern Mesopotamia, Ubaid characteristics only start to appear in Ubaid 2-3, i.e. toward the end of the sixth millennium BC, so that the entire Ubaid period would be much shorter. For Syria, a range of 5300-4300 BC has been suggested. However, some scholars have argued that the interaction between the originally southern Mesopotamian Ubaid and the north started already during Ubaid 1-2.

Persian Gulf

H3

Dalma (island)

Bahra 1

Dosariyah

Wadi Debayan

Ain Qannas

class=notpageimage|

Map of important Ubaid period sites along the Persian Gulf coast.

Ubaid pottery started to appear along the Persian Gulf coast toward the end of the sixth millennium BC, reaching a peak around 5300 BC and continuing into the fifth millennium. Coastal sites where Ubaid pottery has been found include Bahra 1 and H3 in Kuwait, Dosariyah in Saudi Arabia, and also island sites such as Dalma Island in the United Arab Emirates. Ubaid pottery has also been found further inland along the central Gulf coast at sites like Ain Qannas, suggesting that the pottery may have been traded and valued in and of itself, rather than just being a container for some other commodity. This suggestion is reinforced by locally-produced pottery imiting Ubaid wares found at Dosariyah. It is unclear which products were exchanged for the pottery. Suggestions include foodstuffs (dates), semi-precious materials, jewellery (made from pearl and shell), animal products, and livestock. Notably, the degree of cultural interaction between the Ubaid and local Neolithic communities is much stronger in the area of Kuwait than further south, up to the point that it has been suggested that Mesopotamians may have actually lived (part of the year) at sites like H3 and Bahra 1. Small objects such as labrets, tokens, clay nails and small tools that may have had cosmetic use, and that are known from southern Mesopotamian sites also occur on sites along the Gulf coast, notably the sites in Kuwait.

Conversely, there is also evidence for Arabian Neolithic material in southern Mesopotamia. It has been noted that certain types of flint arrowheads found at Ur show clear resemblance with the Arabian Bifacial Tradition. Arabian Coarse Ware has been found at the sites of 'Oueili and Eridu. As at the sites in Kuwait, it may have been possible that Arabian Neolithic persons lived in southern Mesopotamia.

Description

Large buildings, implying centralized government, started to be made. Eridu Temple, final Ubaid.

Ubaid culture is characterized by large unwalled village settlements, multi-roomed rectangular mud-brick houses and the appearance of the first temples of public architecture in Mesopotamia, with a growth of a two tier settlement hierarchy of centralized large sites of more than 10 hectares surrounded by smaller village sites of less than 1 hectare. Domestic equipment included a distinctive fine quality buff or greenish colored pottery decorated with geometric designs in brown or black paint. Tools such as sickles were often made of hard fired clay in the south, while in the north stone and sometimes metal were used. Villages thus contained specialised craftspeople, potters, weavers and metalworkers, although the bulk of the population were agricultural labourers, farmers and seasonal pastoralists.

During the Ubaid Period (5000–4000 BC), the movement towards urbanization began. "Agriculture and animal husbandry [domestication] were widely practiced in sedentary communities". There were also tribes that practiced domesticating animals as far north as Turkey, and as far south as the Zagros Mountains. The Ubaid period in the south was associated with intensive irrigated hydraulic agriculture, and the use of the plough, both introduced from the north, possibly through the earlier Choga Mami, Hadji Muhammed and Samarra cultures.

The archaeological record shows that Arabian Bifacial/Ubaid period came to an abrupt end in eastern Arabia and the Oman peninsula at 3800 BC, just after the phase of lake lowering and onset of dune reactivation. At this time, increased aridity led to an end in semi-desert nomadism, and there is no evidence of human presence in the area for approximately 1,000 years, the so-called "Dark Millennium". The increased aridity might have been due to the 5.9 kiloyear event at the end of the Older Peron.

Society

A map of the Near East detailing the expansion of the Ubaid culture from southern to northern Mesopotamia c. 5400 – c. 4000 BC.

The Ubaid period as a whole, based upon the analysis of grave goods, was one of increasingly polarized social stratification and decreasing egalitarianism. Bogucki describes this as a phase of "Trans-egalitarian" competitive households, in which some fall behind as a result of downward social mobility. Morton Fried and Elman Service have hypothesised that Ubaid culture saw the rise of an elite class of hereditary chieftains, perhaps heads of kin groups linked in some way to the administration of the temple shrines and their granaries, responsible for mediating intra-group conflict and maintaining social order. It would seem that various collective methods, perhaps instances of what Thorkild Jacobsen called primitive democracy, in which disputes were previously resolved through a council of one's peers, were no longer sufficient for the needs of the local community.

Ubaid culture originated in the south, but still has clear connections to earlier cultures in the region of middle Iraq. The appearance of the Ubaid folk has sometimes been linked to the so-called Sumerian problem, related to the origins of Sumerian civilisation. Whatever the ethnic origins of this group, this culture saw for the first time a clear tripartite social division between intensive subsistence peasant farmers, with crops and animals coming from the north, tent-dwelling nomadic pastoralists dependent upon their herds, and hunter-fisher folk of the Arabian littoral, living in reed huts.

Stein and Özbal describe the Near East oecumene that resulted from Ubaid expansion, contrasting it to the colonial expansionism of the later Uruk period. "A contextual analysis comparing different regions shows that the Ubaid expansion took place largely through the peaceful spread of an ideology, leading to the formation of numerous new indigenous identities that appropriated and transformed superficial elements of Ubaid material culture into locally distinct expressions."

The earliest evidence for sailing has been found in Kuwait indicating that sailing was known by the Ubaid 3 period.

There is some evidence of warfare during the Ubaid period although it is extremely rare. The "Burnt Village" at Tell Sabi Abyad could be suggestive of destruction during war but it could also have been due to other causes, such as wildfire or accident. Ritual burning is also possible since the bodies inside were already dead by the time they were burned. A mass grave at Tepe Gawra contained 24 bodies apparently buried without any funeral rituals, possibly indicating it was a mass grave from violence. Copper weapons were also present in the form of arrow heads and sling bullets, although these could have been used for other purpose; two clay pots recovered from the era have decorations showing arrows used for the purpose of hunting. A copper axe head was made in the late Ubaid period, which could have been a tool or a weapon.

During the late Ubaid period around 4500–4000 BC, there was some increase in social polarization, with central houses in the settlements becoming bigger. But there were no real cities until the later Uruk period.

See also

• Art of Mesopotamia
• Bahra 1
• Tell Zeidan
• Tell Abada
• Tell Rashid
• Ubaid house

References

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• Carter, Robert (March 2006). Carver, Martin (ed.). "Boat remains and maritime trade in the Persian Gulf during the sixth and fifth millennia BC". Antiquity. 80 (307): 52–63. doi:10.1017/S0003598X0009325X.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
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• Hall, Harry Reginald; Woolley, Charles Leonard (1927). Al-'Ubaid: A Report on the Work Carried Out at Al-'Ubaid for the British Museum in 1919 and for the Joint Expedition in 1922-3. ASIN B00086M1HG.
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• Kuhrt, Amélie (1995). The Ancient Near East, C. 3000-330 BC. Routledge history of the ancient world. Vol. 1. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9780415167635.
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• Roux, Georges (1966). Ancient Iraq. Penguin Books. ISBN 9780140125238.
• Stiebing Jr., William H. (2016-07-01). Ancient Near Eastern History and Culture. MySearchLab Series (revised ed.). Longman. ISBN 9781315511160.
• Stein, Gil; Özbal, Rana (2006). "A Tale of Two Oikumenai: Variation in the Expansionary Dynamics of Ubaid and Uruk Mesopotamia". In Stone, Elizabeth C. (ed.). Settlement and Society: Ecology, urbanism, trade and technology in Mesopotamia and Beyond. Santa Fe, New Mexico: School for Advanced Research Press. pp. 329–343.
• Uerpmann, Margarethe (2003). "The Dark Millennium—Remarks on the final Stone Age in the Emirates and Oman". In Potts, Daniel T.; Al Naboodah, Hasan; Hellyer, Peter (eds.). Archaeology of the United Arab Emirates. Proceedings of the First International Conference on the Archaeology of the U.A.E. United Kingdom: Trident Press. ISBN 9781900724982.
• Wittfogel, Karl August (2010-09-07). Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power. Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power. United Kingdom: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780835782562.

Further reading

• Charvát, Petr (2002). Mesopotamia Before History (revised ed.). Routledge. ISBN 9781134530779.
• Martin, Harriet P. (1982). "The Early Dynastic Cemetery at al-'Ubaid, a Re-Evaluation". Iraq. 44 (2): 145–185. doi:10.2307/4200161. JSTOR 4200161.
• Mellaart, James (1975). The Neolithic of the Near East. New York: Scribner. ISBN 0684144832.
• Moore, A. M. T. (2002). "Pottery Kiln Sites at al 'Ubaid and Eridu". Iraq. 64: 69–77. doi:10.2307/4200519. JSTOR 4200519.
• Nissen, Hans Jörg (1990). The Early History of the Ancient Near East, 9000–2000 B.C.. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226586588.

External links

• British Museum, Trustees of the (2008-06-03). "Stone statue of Kurlil". The British Museum. Archived from the original on 2015-10-18.
• British Museum, Trustees of the (2007-11-13). "Copper figure of a bull". The British Museum. Archived from the original on 2007-11-13.
• British Museum, Trustees of the (2008-06-06). "Ubaid visit and photos". The British Museum. Archived from the original on 2008-08-01.