Ancient Mesopotamia

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By the mid-sixth millennium BC the third of the Neolithic Mesopotamian farming cultures had appeared, this time in northern Mesopotamia. The Halaf culture (5500-4500 BC) was named where it was first identified, after the site of Tell Halaf in the Khabur valley in north-eastern Syria.

The culture was centred on northern Mesopotamia between Lake Van and Samarra (to the south of modern Tikrit in Iraq), filling the gap between the Tigris and the Zagros mountains, but initially it extended little farther west than that.

The arrival of Halaf culture

The Halaf was unrelated to earlier north Mesopotamian cultures. Instead it may represent the arrival of new settlers from outside the region. For its first few centuries it was concentrated to the east of the Euphrates, before it began spreading west into northern Syria towards the footsteps of the Taurus mountains.

By AD 2008 no Halaf settlement had been extensively excavated but some individual buildings had been uncovered. Detailed archaeological work did take place from AD 2010 under the LMU.

Tell Aswad (in the Balikh valley in Syria) and also perhaps Chagar Bazar (the ancient city of Ashnakkum - see sidebar links) witnessed the transition into the Halaf, while many other settlements in this region such as Tel Aqab and Tepe Gawra were probably first occupied during this period. Tell Brak is another of these, although it is possible it was first settled in an earlier period.

Architecture and burials

Its architecture was distinctive, characterised by domed round-houses which were built with sun-dried clay, the largest exceeding ten metres in diameter. Amongst the best-known Halaf sites are Arpachiyah, Sabi Abyad (located to the south-east of Yunus and outside the main Halaf coverage area), and Yarim Tepe, all small agricultural villages with distinctive buildings which perhaps are inaccurately known as tholoi in reference to much later Greek structures.

Instead it is possible that some of these structures were temples. These rounded domed structures, with or without antechambers through which the domed area was approached, were made of different materials depending upon what was available locally: limestone boulders or mud and straw.

This map shows the general area of the Fertile Crescent from where - especially along its northern edges - the origins of agricultural farming emerged between about 10,000-6000 BC (click or tap on map to view full sized)

The walls were sometimes placed on stone foundations and may have been for ritual use (one contained a large number of female figurines), but other circular buildings on this and other sites were probably family dwellings.

Those buildings which were found on later sites to the west of the Euphrates were usually rectilinear, as at Ras Shamra (near the Mediterranean coast, not far from Sakchagozu in south-eastern Turkey).

New burial customs are associated with the Halaf culture. Many people were now buried in shaft graves, formed from a deep, narrow shaft sunk into the ground. Burials were then placed at the bottom. There is also evidence of complex cremation practices which included the ritual smashing of grave goods, and the burial of ashes in a pot below the house floor.

Pottery and farming

The Halaf produced pottery which is amongst the finest ever made in the region. Halaf potters used different sources of clay from that of their neighbours, and they achieved outstanding elaboration and elegance of design with their superior quality ware.

Each site made some of its own pottery but imported the rest from nearby centres and even from sites farther afield. The archaeological site of Shakhi Kora (see links) provides evidence of Chalcolithic pottery use which is likely to be part of the Halaf.

The finest polychrome Halaf vessels came from the potter's workshop at Arpachiyah. This site and that at Tepe Gawra have produced typical eastern Halaf ware while a rather different western Halaf version is known from such Syrian sites as Carchemish (a Syrian city on the upper Euphrates which became important during the later Mitanni and Assyrian periods), and Halaf itself.

The pottery had a fine painted monochrome or polychrome finish in black, brown, or red, on a burnished buff background. Other vessels were coarser and were undecorated with hand-smoothed surfaces. These classes of pottery were typical of the pre-Halaf period but they continued to be made by the Halaf culture. Such Halaf shards are indistinguishable from older Neolithic examples.

How and why their pottery spread so widely is a matter of continuing debate, although analysis of the clay indicates the existence of production centres and regional copying. It is possible that such high-quality pottery was exchanged as a prestige item between local elites.

This example of Halaf culture pottery comes from one of its best known find sites: Arpachiyah, which had its own potters workshop

As well as their fine painted pottery, Halaf communities made baked clay female figurines and stamp seals of stone. These latter artefacts are often thought to mark the development of the concept of personal property because, at a later date, seals were used to produce marks of ownership.

They also imported materials for jewellery. One find from Arpachiyah consisted of six obsidian beads and one of dark clay which seems to imitate obsidian, a material which had to be imported from eastern Anatolia. The cowrie shells will have come from the Persian Gulf, and would originally have contained red ochre.

The population of the Halaf practised dry farming (based on natural rainfall without the help of irrigation) growing emmer wheat, two-rowed barley, and flax. They also kept cattle, sheep, and goats.

There is little evidence of conflict between Halaf groups, and projectile points are correspondingly rare. Sling bullets are common but these may have been used in hunting rather than warfare. The discovery of twenty-four human skeletons buried in a disused well at Tepe Gawra may be a result of such apparently rare warfare, or they are just as likely to be plague victims.

The Halaf existed alongside the fourth and most successful of the Neolithic cultures, the Ubaid, for approximately a millennium, before the latter eventually absorbed and replace it.

Main Sources

Ember, Melvin & Peregrine, Peter N - Encyclopaedia of Prehistory

Lloyd, S - The Archaeology of Mesopotamia

Postgate, J N - The First Empires

Scarre, Chris (Ed) - Past Worlds - The Times Atlas of Archaeology

The British Museum

The History of the Ancient Near East - Electronic Compendium

The Metropolitan Museum of Art - Timeline of Art History

Secondary Sources

Arkeonews

Greek Reporter

Heritage Daily

Ludwig Maximilians-Universtat Munchen

Images and text copyright © P L Kessler, including exhibits at the British Museum. An original feature for the History Files.