natural environment versus cultural environment: the implications of creating a built environment

UNIVERSIDAD AUTÓNOMA DE MADRID

Proceedings of the 5th International Congresson the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East

Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

Proceedings of the 5th InternationalCongress on the Archaeology of

the Ancient Near EastMadrid, April 3-8 2006

Edited byJoaquín Mª Córdoba, Miquel Molist, Mª Carmen Pérez,

Isabel Rubio, Sergio Martínez(Editores)

Madrid, 3 a 8 de abril de 2006

Actas del V Congreso Internacionalde Arqueología del Oriente Próximo Antiguo

VOL. III

Centro Superior de Estudios sobre el Oriente Próximo y Egipto

Madrid 2008

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5th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near EastV Congreso Internacional de Arqueología del Oriente Próximo Antiguo

Scientific Committee Scientific Steering CommitteeComité Científico Organizador Comité Científico Permanente

Joaquín Mª Córdoba Manfred BietakSergio Martínez Barthel Hrouda (honorary member)Miquel Molist Hartmut KühneMª Carmen Pérez Jean-Claude MargueronIsabel Rubio Wendy Matthews

Paolo MatthiaeDiederik MeijerIngolf ThuesenIrene J. Winter

Executive CommissionComisión Ejecutiva

Ana Arroyo, Carmen del Cerro, Fernando Escribano, Saúl Escuredo, Alejandro Gallego,Zahara Gharehkhani, Alessandro Grassi, José Manuel Herrero †, Rodrigo Lucía, MontserratMañé, Covadonga Sevilla, Elena Torres

Technical collaboratorsColaboradores técnicos

Virginia Tejedor, Pedro Bao, Roberto Peñas, Pedro Suárez, Pablo Sebastagoítia, JesúsGonzález, Raúl Varea, Javier Lisbona, Carmen Suárez, Amanda Gómez, Carmen Úbeda,Cristina López, José Mª Pereda, Rosa Plaza, Lorenzo Manso, Juan Trapero

Congress VenueSede del Congreso

Universidad Autónoma de MadridFacultad de Filosofía y Letras

SponsorshipsApoyos y patrocinios

Universidad Autónoma de MadridMinisterio de Educación y CienciaMinisterio de CulturaMinisterio de Asuntos ExterioresComunidad de Madrid

Themes of the CongressTemas del Congreso

1. History and Method of Archaeological ResearchLa historia y la metodología de la investigación arqueológica

2. The Archaeology and the Environment of the Ancient Eastern Cities and VillagesLa arqueología y el entorno de las ciudades y las aldeas antiguas

3. Arts and Crafts in the Ancient Near EastLa artesanía y el arte en el Oriente Antiguo

4. Reports on the Results from the Latest Archaeological SeasonsInformes sobre los resultados de las recientes campañas de excavación

Index - Índice

VOL. I

Á. Gabilondo Pujol, Prólogo...................................................................................... 17P. Matthiae, Opening Speech ........................................................................................ 21J. Mª Córdoba, M. Molist, Mª C. Pérez, I. Rubio, S. Martínez, Bienvenida........ 25

Opening Lectures to Main Themes - Apertura de las sesiones temáticas

N. Chevalier, Considérations sur l’histoire de l’archéologie, ses origines et son développe-ment actuel.............................................................................................................. 31

S. Mazzoni, Arts, crafts and the state: A dialectic process............................................ 37

Papers and posters - Comunicaciones y pósters

M. Abdulkarim, O. Olesti-Vila, Territoire et paysage dans la province romaine dela Syrie. La centuriatio d’Emesa (Homs) ............................................................... 55

G. Affani, Astragalus bone in Ancient Near East: Ritual depositions in Iron Agein Tell Afis ........................................................................................................... 77

A. Ahrens, Egyptian and Egyptianizing stone vessels from the royal tomb and palaceat Tell Mišrife/Qa!na (Syria): Imports and local imitations ................................... 93

B. Ajorloo, The neolithization process in Azerbaijan: An introduction to review............... 107C. Alvaro, C. Lemorini, G. Palumbi, P. Piccione, From the analysis of the archaeo-

logical context to the life of a community. «Ethnographic» remarks on the ArslantepeVIB2 village .......................................................................................................... 127

Sh. N. Amirov, Towards understanding religious character of Tell Hazna 1 oval............. 137Á. Armendáriz, L. Teira, M. Al-Maqdissi, M. Haïdar-Boustani, J. J. Ibáñez, J. Gonzá-

lez Urquijo, The megalithic necropolises in the Homs Gap (Syria). A preliminaryapproach ................................................................................................................. 151

A. Arroyo, Akpinar.................................................................................................... 163

L. Astruc, O. Daune-Le Brun, A. L. Brun, F. Hourani, Un atelier de fabricationde récipients en pierre à Khirokitia (Néolothique pré-céramique récent, VIIe millénaireav. JC, Chypre........................................................................................................ 175

G. Baccelli, F. Manuelli, Middle Bronze Khabur Ware from Tell Barri/Kahat ..... 187B. Bader, Avaris and Memphis in the Second Intermediate Period in Egypt (ca. 1770-

1770-1550/40 BC)............................................................................................... 207F. Baffi, Who locked the door? Fortification walls and city gates in Middle Bronze Age

inner Syria: Ebla and Tell Tuqan .......................................................................... 225L. Barda, El aporte de los mapas y descripciones antiguas en el ensayo de reconstrucción

de sitios arqueológicos, periferias y rutas (con uso del SIG) ...................................... 245C. D. Bardeschi, A propos des installations dans la cour du Temple Ovale de Khafajah..... 253C. Bellino, A. Vallorani, The Stele of Tell Ashara. The Neo-Syrian perspective............ 273D. Ben-Shlomo, Iconographic representations from Early Iron Age Philistia and their

ethnic implications ................................................................................................... 285A. I. Beneyto Lozano, Manifestaciones artísticas desde Oriente Próximo a Al-Andalus 305L. Bombardieri, C. Forasassi, The pottery from IA II-III levels of Late-Assyrian

to Post-Assyrian period in Tell Barri/Kahat .......................................................... 323B. Brown, The Kilamuwa Relief: Ethnicity, class and power in Iron Age North

Syria....................................................................................................................... 339A. Brustolon, E. Rova, The Late Chalcolithic settlement in the Leilan region of Nor-

theastern Syria: A preliminary assessment .............................................................. 357S. M. Cecchini, G. Affanni, A. Di Michele, Tell Afis. The walled acropolis (Middle

Bronze Age to Iron Age I). A work in progress..................................................... 383B. Cerasetti, V. A. Girelli, G. Luglio, B. Rondelli, M. Zanfini, From monument to

town and country: Integrated techniques of surveying at Tilmen Höyük in South-EastTurkey.................................................................................................................... 393

N. Chevalier, Fouiller un palais assyrien au XIXe siècle: Victor Place à Khorsabad....... 403L. Chiocchetti, Post-Assyrian pottery from the Italian excavations at Fort Shalmaneser,

1987-1990 ............................................................................................................ 417X. Clop García, Estrategias de gestión de las materias primas de origen mineral en Tell

Halula: primera aproximación................................................................................ 441A. Colantoni, A. Gottarelli, A formalized approach to pottery typology: The case of

some typical shapes from the Late Bronze Age in Northern Syria .......................... 455A. M. Conti, C. Persiani, Arslantepe. The building sequence of the EB3 settle-

ment ....................................................................................................................... 465C. Coppini, Mitannian pottery from Tell Barri ........................................................... 477J. Mª Córdoba, Informe preliminar sobre las últimas campañas en al Madam (2003-2006).... 493F. Cruciani, The atributes of Ishtar in Old Syrian glyptic and the Mesopotamian literary

tradition.................................................................................................................. 509A. Daems, Alternative ways for reading some female figurines from Late Prehistoric

Mesopotamia and Iran............................................................................................ 519

10 Proceedings of the 5th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East

A. D’Agostino, Between Mitannians and Middle-Assyrians: Changes and linksin ceramic culture at Tell Barri and in Syrian Jazirah during the end of the 2ndmillennium BC ....................................................................................................... 525

A. D’Agostino, S. Valenti, N. Laneri, Archaeological works at Hirbemerdon Tepe(Turkey). A preliminary report or the first three seasons ......................................... 549

M. B. D’Anna, R. Laurito, A. Ricci, Walking on the Malatya Plain (Turkey): Pre-liminary remarks on Chalcolithic pottery and occupation. 2003-2005 ArchaeologicalSurvey Project ......................................................................................................... 567

I. de Aloe, A preliminary report on the 1995 Tell Leilan survey: The pottery fromthe Hellenistic to the Sasanian Period ..................................................................... 575

F. Dedeoglu, Cultural transformation and settlement system of Southwestern Ana-tolia from Neolithic to LBA: A case study from Denizili/Çivril Plain.................. 587

K. De Langhe, Early Christianity in Iraq and the Gulf: A view from the architec-tural remains .......................................................................................................... 603

T. De Schacht, W. Gheyle, R. Gossens, A. De Wulf, Archaeological researchand CORONA: On the use, misuse and full potential of historical remote sen-sing data ................................................................................................................. 611

C. del Cerro, Life and society of the inhabitants of al Madam (UAE). Interdisciplinarystudy of an Iron Age village and its environment .................................................... 619

G. M. Di Nocera, Settlements, population and landscape on the Upper Euphrates betweenV and II millennium BC. Results of the Archaeological Survey Project 2003-2005in the Malatya Plain .............................................................................................. 633

S. Di Paolo, Dalle straordinarie avventure di Lady Hester Stanhope alla «Crociata» archaeo-logica di Butler : la politica «religiosa» dei viaggi delle esplorazioni scientifiche nellaregione di Damasco tra XIX e XX secolo .............................................................. 647

R. Dolce, Considerations on the archaeological evidence from the Early Dynastic Templeof Inanna at Nippur.............................................................................................. 661

R. H. Dornemann, Status report on the Early Bronze Age IV Temple in Area E atTell Qarqur in the Orontes Valley, Syria ............................................................... 679

A. Egea Vivancos, Artesanos de lo rupestre en el alto Éufrates sirio durante la época romana.. 711A. Egea Vivancos, Viajeros y primeras expediciones arqueológicas en Siria. Su contribución

al redescubrimiento de Hierapolis y su entorno ........................................................ 731B. Einwag, Fortified citadels in the Early Bronze Age? New evidence from Tall Bazi

(Syria) .................................................................................................................... 741M. Erdalkiran, The Halaf Ceramics in "irnak area, Turkey..................................... 755F. Escribano Martín, Babilonia y los españoles en el siglo XIX ................................. 767M. Feizkhah, Pottery of Garrangu style in Azarbaijan (Iran).................................... 775E. Felluca, Ceramic evidences from Bampur: A key site to reconstruct the cultural development

in the Bampur Valley (Iran) during the third millennium BC................................. 797E. Felluca, S. Mogliazza Under-floor burials in a Middle Bronze Age domestic quarter at Tell

Mardikh – Ebla, Syria ........................................................................................... 809

Index - Índice 11

VOL. II

S. Festuccia, M. Rossi, Recent excavations on the Ebla Acropolis (Syria).................. 17S. Festuccia, M. Rossi Latest phases of Tell Mardikh - Ebla: Area PSouth Lower

Town ...................................................................................................................... 31J.-D. Forest and R. Vallet, Uruk architecture from abroad: Some thoughts about

Hassek Höyük....................................................................................................... 39M. Fortin, L.-M. Loisier, J. Pouliot, La géomatique au service des fouilles archéologiques:

l’exemple de Tell ‘Acharneh, en Syrie ...................................................................... 55G. Gernez, A new study of metal weapons from Byblos: Preliminary work..................... 73K. T. Gibbs, Pierced clay disks and Late Neolithic textile production.......................... 89J. Gil Fuensanta, P. Charvàt, E A. Crivelli, The dawn of a city. Surtepe Höyük excava-

tions Birecik Dam area, Eastern Turkey ............................................................... 97A. Gómez Bach, Las producciones cerámicas del Halaf Final en Siria: Tell Halula (valle

del Éufrates) y Tell Chagar Bazar (valle del Khabur) ............................................. 113E. Grootveld, What weeds can tell us Archaeobotanical research in the Jordan Valley ... 123E. Guralnick, Khorsabad sculptured fragments............................................................ 127H. Hameeuw, K. Vansteenhuyse, G. Jans, J. Bretschneider, K. Van Lerberghe,

Living with the dead. Tell Tweini: Middle Bronze Age tombs in an urban context... 143R. Hempelmann, Kharab Sayyar : The foundation of the Early Bronze Age settle-

ment ....................................................................................................................... 153F. Hole, Ritual and the collapse of Susa, ca 4000 BC ................................................ 165D. Homès-Fredericq The Belgian excavations at al-Lahun (biblical Moab region), Jordan.

Past and future ....................................................................................................... 179J. J. Ibáñez et al., Archaeological survey in the Homs Gap (Syria): Campaigns of 2004 and

2005....................................................................................................................... 187A. Invernizzi, El testimonio de Ambrogio Bembo y Joseph Guillaume Grelot sobre

los restos arqueológicos iranios ................................................................................. 205K. Jakubiak, Pelusium, still Egyptian or maybe Oriental town in the Western Synai.

Results of the last excavations on the Roman city ................................................... 221S. A. Jasim, E. Abbas, The excavations of a Post-Hellenistic tomb at Dibba, UAE..... 237Z. A. Kafafi, A Late Bronze Age jewelry mound from Tell Dayr ‘Alla, Jordan ......... 255E. Kaptijn, Settling the steppe. Iron Age irrigation around Tell Deir ‘Alla, Jordan Valley .... 265C. Kepinski, New data from Grai Resh and Tell Khoshi (South-Sinjar, Iraq) collected

in 2001 and 2002 ................................................................................................. 285A. Klein-Franke, The site in Jabal Qarn Wu’l near #iziaz in the region of San$an

(Yemen) .................................................................................................................. 297G. Kozbe, A new archaeological survey project in the South Eastern Anatolia: Report of

the Cizre and Silopi region ..................................................................................... 323P. Kurzawski, Assyrian outpost at Tell Sabi Abyad: Architecture, organisation of

space and social structure of the Late Bronze settlement ......................................... 341


R. Laurito, C. Lemorini, E. Cristiani, Seal impressions on cretulae at Arslantepe:Improving the methodological and interpretative references........................................ 351

A. R. Lisella, Clay figurines from Tell Ta’anek ........................................................... 361M. Lönnqvist, Kathleen M. Kenyon 1906-1978. A hundred years after her birth.

The formative years of a female archaeologist: From socio-politics to the stratigraphi-cal method and the radiocarbon revolution in archaeology......................................... 379

K. O. Lorentz, Crafting the Head: The human body as art? ...................................... 415C. Lorre, Jacques de Morgan et la question de l’origine de la métalurgie dans le Caucase.... 433S. Lundström, From six to seven Royal Tombs. The documentation of the Deutsche

Orient-Gesellschaft excavation at Assur (1903-1914) – Possibilities and limits ofits reexamination .................................................................................................... 445

N. Marchetti, A preliminary report on the 2005 and 2006 excavations at TilmenHöyük.................................................................................................................... 465

O. Marder, I. Milevski, R. Rabinovich, O. Ackermann, R. Shahack-Gross, P. Fine,The Lower Paleolithic site of Revadin Quarry, Israel ............................................. 481

R. Martín Galán, An example of the survival of ancient Mesopotamian architectonicaltraditions in Northern Jazireh during the Hellenistic period .................................... 491

A. C. Martins, Oriental antiquities and international conflicts. A Portuguese epi-sode during the 1st World War ............................................................................... 515

K. Matsumura, Hellenistic human and animal sacrifices in Central Anatolia: Examplesfrom Kaman-Kalehöyük .......................................................................................... 523

P. Matthiae, The Temple of the Rock of Early Bronze IV A-B at Ebla: Structure,chronology, continuity .............................................................................................. 547

M. G. Micale, The course of the images. Remarks on the architectural reconstructionsin the 19th and 20th centuries: The case of the Ziqqurrat ........................................ 571

L. Milano, Elena Rova, New discoveries of the Ca’Foscari University – Venice Teamat Tell Beydar (Syria) ............................................................................................. 587

I. Milevski, Y. Baumgarten, Between Lachish and Tel Erani: Horvat Ptora, a newLate Prehistoric site in the Southern Levant ........................................................... 609

O. Muñoz, S. Cleuziou, La tombe 1 de Ra’s al-Jinz RJ-1: une approche de lacomplexité des pratiques funéraires dans la peninsule d’Oman à l’Âge du Bronze ancien 627

L. Nigro, Tell es-Sultan/Jericho from village to town: A reassessment of the EarlyBronze Age I settlement and necropolis ................................................................... 645

L. Nigro, Prelimiray report of the first season of excavation of Rome «La Sapien-za» University at Khirbet al-Batrawy (Upper Wadi az-Zarqa, Jordan) .................. 663

A. T. Ökse, Preliminary results of the salvage excavations at Salat Tepe in the UpperTigris region............................................................................................................ 683

V. Orsi, Between continuity and tranformation: The late 3rd Millennium BC ceramicsequence from Tell Barri (Syria) ............................................................................. 699

A. Otto, Organization of Late Bronze Age cities in the Upper Syrian EuphratesValley..................................................................................................................... 715

M. Özba%aran, Musular: The special activity site in Central Anatolia, Turkey................. 733F. Pedde, The Assur-Project. An old excavation newly analysed .................................. 743

Index - Índice 13

C. Persiani, Chemical analysis and time/space distribution of EB2-3 pottery at Ars-lantepe (Malatya, Turkey) ...................................................................................... 753

L. P. Petit, Late Iron Age levels at Tell Damieh: New excavations results from the JordanValley..................................................................................................................... 777

L. Peyronel, Making images of humans and animals. The clay figurines from the RoyalPalace G at Tell Mardikh-Ebla, Syria (EB IVA, c. 2400-2300 BC) ................. 787

P. Piccione, Walking in the Malatya Plain (Turkey): The first Half of the III millenniumBC (EBA I and II). Some preliminary remarks on the results of the 2003-2005Archaeological Survey Project.................................................................................. 807

VOL. III

F. Pinnock, Artistic genres in Early Syrian Syria. Image and ideology of power in agreat pre-classical urban civilisation in its formative phases...................................... 17

A. Polcaro, EB I settlements and environment in the Wadi az-zarqa Dolmens and ideo-logy of death........................................................................................................... 31

M. Pucci, The Neoassyrian residences of Tell Shekh Hamad, Syria............................ 49P. Puppo, La Tabula «Chigi»: un riflesso delle conquiste romane in Oriente ................ 65S. Riehl, Agricultural decision-making in the Bronze Age Near East: The development of

archaeobotanical crop plant assemblages in relation to climate change ....................... 71A. Rochman-Halperin, Technical aspects of carving Iron Age decorative cosme-

tic palettes in the Southern Levant .......................................................................... 93M. Rossi, Tell Deinit-Syria MEDA Project n. 15 (2002-2004). Restoration training

programs ................................................................................................................. 103M. Sala, Khirbet Kerak Ware from Tell es-Sultan/ancient Jericho: A reassessment in

the light of the finds of the Italian-Palestinian Expedition (1997-2000) ............... 111S. G. Schmid, A. Amour, A. Barmasse, S. Duchesne, C. Huguenot, L. Wadeson,

New insights into Nabataean funerary practices ...................................................... 135S. Silvonen, P. Kouki, M. Lavento, A. Mukkala, H. Ynnilä, Distribution of

Nabataean-Roman sites around Jabal Harûn: Analysis of factors causing sitepatterning ............................................................................................................... 161

G. Spreafico, The Southern Temple of Tell el-Husn/Beth-Shean: The sacred ar-chitecture of Iron Age Palestine reconsidered ........................................................... 181

M. T. Starzmann, Use of space in Shuruppak: Households on dispaly ....................... 203T. Steimer-Herbet, H. Criaud, Funerary monuments of agro-pastoral populations

on the Leja (Southern Syria) ................................................................................... 221G. Stiehler-Alegría, Kassitische Siegel aus stratifizierten Grabungen........................... 235I. M. Swinnen, The Early Bronze I pottery from al-Lahun in Central Jordan: Seal

impressions and potter’s marks ................................................................................ 245H. Tekin, The Late Neolithic pottery tradition of Southeastern Anatolia and its vicinity ....... 257H. Tekin, Hakemi Use: A newly established site dating to the Hassuna / Samarra pe-

riod in Southeastern Anatolia................................................................................. 271


D. Thomas, The ebb and flow of empires – Afghanistan and neighbouring lands in thetwelfth-thirteenth centuries ....................................................................................... 285

Y. Tonoike, Beyond style: Petrographic analysis of Dalma ceramics in two regionsof Iran ................................................................................................................... 301

B. Uysal, The technical features of the Ninevite 5 Ware in Southeastern Anatolia ...... 313C. Valdés Pererio, Qara Qûzâq and Tell Hamîs (Syrian Euphrates valley): Up-

dating and comparing Bronze Age ceramic and archaeological data ......................... 323S. Valentini, Ritual activities in the «rural shirines» at Tell Barri, in the Khabur

region, during the Ninevite 5 period ........................................................................ 345K. Vansteenhuyse, M. al-Maqdissi, P. Degryse, K. Van Lerberghe, Late Helladic

ceramics at Tell Tweini and in the kingdom of Ugarit ............................................ 359F. Venturi, The Sea People in the Levant: A North Syrian perspective ........................ 365V. Verardi, The different stages of the Acropolis from the Amorite period at Tell

Mohammed Diyab .................................................................................................. 383V. Vezzoli, Islamic Period settlement in Tell Leilan Region (Northern Jaz&ra): The

material evidence from the 1995 Survey .................................................................. 393O. Vicente i Campos, La aplicación de las nuevas tecnologías de la información y la

comunicación en el yacimiento arqueológico de Tell Halula ....................................... 405N. Vismara, Lo sviluppo delle metodologie della scienza numismatica e la scoperta di

una nuova area di produzione monetale: il caso dell’identificazione della emissioni dellaLycia in epoca arcaica ............................................................................................. 417

T. Watkins, Natural environment versus cultural environment: The implications of creatinga built environment ................................................................................................. 427

N. Yalman, An alternative interpretation on the relationship between the settlementlayout and social organization in Çatalhöyük Neolithic site: A ethnological researchin Central Anatolia................................................................................................ 439

E. Yanai, Ein Assawir, Tel Magal and the peripheral settlement in the Northern Sharonfrom the Neolithic period until the end of the Early Bronze Age III ...................... 449

E. Yanai, Cemetery of the Intermediate Bronze Age at Bet Dagan .............................. 459E. Yanai, The trade with Cypriot Grey Lustrous Wheel Made Ware between Cyprus,

North Syrian Lebanese coast and Israel.................................................................. 483

Workshops - Talleres de debate

Workshop I

Houses for the Living and a Place for the Dead

N. Balkan, M. Molist and D. Stordeur (eds.)

Introduction: House for the living and place for the dead. In memory of JacquesCauvin ................................................................................................................... 505

P. C. Edwards, The symbolic dimensions of material culture at Wadi Hammeh 27.......... 507

Index - Índice 15

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Natural environment versus cultural environment:The implications of creating a built environment

Trevor Watkins, Edinburgh

Abstract

There is a widespread tendency to ascribe a causal role to environmental change in theexplanation of the major processes in human prehistory, but no modern historians explainmajor events in recent history in terms of global or regional climatic change. Our expe-rience is that we operate almost entirely within the constraints and facilities of a culturallyformed environment. If our earliest hominid ancestors were constrained within their phys-ical and biological environments, we need to define the point within human history whensymbolic cultural environments emerged. Drawing on the work of cognitive anddevelopmental psychologists, I make the case that the earliest Neolithic in southwest Asiawas the first time in human history that the cultural environment was more important thanthe natural environment in human affairs.

Keywords: environment, culture, theory.

IntroductionI want to make a case for the cultural environment, which I believe has been

more significant throughout the Holocene than changes in the natural environ-ment in helping us to understand the processes at work in human prehistory andhistory. By implication, I question the validity of those prehistoric and protohis-toric, pseudo-evolutionary narratives that purport to explain dramatic changes inthe course of human affairs as consequences of or responses to inevitable envi-ronmental pressures. Of course there was a time when early humans or hominidswere little different from other animal species, subject to all kinds of environmen-tal pressures, but that is not now the case in our experience, at least in such a sim-plistic form. I shall argue that the critical moment, the time when our culturalrather than the natural environment became the dominant force, was at the end ofthe Palaeolithic and the beginning of the Neolithic period, when communities insouthwest Asia began to use architecture and planning to create built environ-ments that embodied their ideas of themselves and their world, and that shapedtheir lives and their relations to one another.

There seems to be a disjunction in the way that we think. On the one hand,when we deal with our own everyday affairs, we live in houses with living-rooms,bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchens; we travel to our place of work, obeying manyrules and conventions, we know how to make our way around in the centre of thecity, how to buy things with pieces of plastic, and so on. In short, we live within aculturally constructed, culturally constrained environment. As far as concerns thedecisions that we make as individuals, or that governments make on our behalf, wedo not attribute a causal role to fluctuations in temperature and rainfall. Thechanges that see taking place in the cities, towns and countryside reflect changes

in architectural fashion, the availability of new building materials or technology,the introduction of new planning regulations or agricultural controls or subsidies.However, when we archaeologists turn to prehistoric times, we think of peopleas living in a natural environment constrained by climate and responding to envi-ronmental pressures. We do not think of them as living within a culturally con-structed, culturally constrained environment. In other words, we are assuming thatdifferent circumstances and different responses apply to prehistory than we expe-rience in our everyday lives.

From its origins in the early history of scientific geology in the nineteenthcentury, prehistoric archaeology has generally adopted from geology the princi-ple of uniformitarianism.1 By assuming that the processes that we can observetoday apply uniformly across time, prehistoric archaeologists have attempted touncover the processes that explain prehistory in terms of the processesinferred, perhaps, by anthropologists or historians, or indeed implicit from ourown experience. In order to explore this contradictory phenomenon, where theprehistoric past is assumed to be explicable in terms of causes that we do notbelieve applicable to our own world, I shall take the beginnings of farming asan example of what is commonly seen in evolutionary terms as a humanresponse to environmental pressure. Then I shall ask when things changed inhuman prehistory. Somewhere between the emergence of hominids and moderntimes, the social, economic, or cultural environment became more important inhuman affairs than climate and bio-environmental circumstances. In the con-cluding section I shall argue that, at least in southwest Asia, the tipping pointwas reached in the last millennia of the Pleistocene and the very beginning ofthe Holocene periods, that is around the end of the Epi-palaeolithic and thebeginning of the Neolithic periods.

Environmental causesWhen we look back to prehistoric archaeologists of the middle of the 20th

century, we find that distinguished figures have proposed environmental causes forprofound human consequences. Gordon Childe proposed that the adoption offarming – his Neolithic Revolution – was the human response to rising tempera-tures and decreasing rainfall at the end of the Pleistocene period.2 By the 1950s,when Robert Braidwood and his colleagues had begun to investigate the begin-


1 The priniciple of uniformitarianism derives from the work of James Hutton in late eighteenth cen-tury Edinburgh. Hutton argued that the Earth had a long history and that this history could be inter-preted in terms of processes currently observed. Hutton’s ideas were worked through and systematised inthe fundamentally important writings of Sir Charles Lyell in the early nineteenth century. And Lyell,together with several other geologists, was also interested in the Palaeolithic artefacts that were being foundtogether with the bones of extinct animal species in caves and the gravels of the Somme and the Seine,because of their implications for human prehistory and hominid evolution. There were close associationsbetween these early geologists and antiquarians such as Sir John Evans, who took a close interest in thedeveloping science of geology.

2 Childe 1936.

nings of farming through field studies.3 Braidwood concluded that there was noevidence for the climatic pressures supposed by Childe and his contemporaries. Healso cast doubt on the idea of climatic deterioration as a causal factor, pointing outthat similar climatic and environmental conditions would have occurred severaltimes during the fluctuations of the Pleistocene. If there had been a climatic andenvironmental pressure on people at the beginning of the Neolithic, why shouldthat particular recurrence have had such an impact, when earlier instances of thesame climatic phenomenon had no such effect?

In their analyses of the beginnings of farming, the next generation of scholars,the processualists of the 1960s and 70s, sought other causes. Lewis Binford, lead-ing spirit of the movement, and Kent Flannery, who had studied with Braidwood,turned to population pressure as the driver for the adoption of farming.4 Popula-tion pressure was a driver of a different kind from climatic change, but in fact itrepresents simply the other side of the equation in terms of the balance betweenresources (the availability of plant and animal food) and the number of mouths tobe fed. The early processualist hypothesis simply substituted growth in populationfor reduction in food availability as the source of the pressure towards cultivationor plants and herding of animals. Population growth produced population pres-sure, which was a component within an essentially ecological framework. With thediscovery of the Younger Dryas stadial and its impact in the Arctic, climaticchange and environmental pressures returned to the foreground.

At the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, the Younger Dryasreversal was shown to be a significant global climatic reversal in the last millenniumof the Pleistocene. It became an exciting topic among environmental scientists atthat time because of the detailed study of the evidence from Greenland ice coresand the radiocarbon dating evidence showed that its onset and its end were veryrapid.5 Gordon Hillman, who had spent many years working on the botanicalmaterial recovered in Andrew Moore’s excavations at Tell Abu Hureyra, was awarethat the site had gone out of occupation around the end of this dramatic climaticreversal.6 He searched for signs of the impact of the Younger Dryas generally insouthwest Asia. He pointed to the decline in tree pollen in the cores from LakeHuleh in northern Israel. The significance of the Mediterranean woodland zone isthat the Mediterranean woodland zone is also the habitat of grasses, cereals andlegumes. In a series of maps, Hillman modelled the situation at the end of the LastGlacial Maximum and the re-colonisation of areas by spreading woodland andassociated grasses, cereals and legumes that followed the climatic recovery. Then,he modelled the impact of the Younger Dryas based on the Huleh lake core and,most importantly, the archaeobotanical evidence from Tell Abu Hureyra, whichwas sited on the Euphrates in a marginal situation that would be severely affectedby any environmental deterioration. In his last map, he showed a quite remarkablyrapid recovery from the Younger Dryas.

Natural environment versus cultural environment... 429

3 Braidwood 1960.4 Binford 1968; Flannery 1969; Hole & Flannery 1967.5 Alley et al. 1993; Berger 1990; Dansgaard et al. 1989.6 Moore & Hillman 1992; Hillman 1996.

Abu Hureyra I is the earlier of two phases of occupation at the site, dating tothe end of the Epi-palaeolithic period, precisely the time of the Younger Dryasphase.7 It was a small settlement found in only one of the trenches, scatteredacross the extensive Neolithic site. Gordon Hillman interpreted the botanical evi-dence from Abu Hureyra I as the inhabitants’ response to the climatically inducedenvironmental deterioration. First, the inhabitants were pushed expand the spec-trum of plant-foods to include less nutritious food resources that were harder tocollect and involved more work in processing. Finally, Hillman concluded, the peo-ple of Abu Hureyra I began to cultivate rye. There are criticisms that can be madeof the Hillman scenario, but I wish to emphasise only that a dramatic climaticchange was supposed to have had a significant and critical impact on the vegeta-tion and to have provoked the response of cultivating the first cereal. Plenty ofothers (for example, Ofer Bar-Yosef and Anna Belfer-Cohen)8 were quick to seizeYounger Dryas reversal as the cause of changes in subsistence economy strategiesas well as social and cultural changes that begin to show themselves immediatelyafter, in the early Neolithic period.

Before moving on, I draw attention to the coincidence that the 1990s saw therise of widespread concern about global warming. Environmental scientists, point-ing to the rapidity of the onset of the Younger Dryas reversal as witnessed in theGreenland ice-cores, warned that the present phase of global warming couldequally become catastrophically rapid. Now, we are deluged with apocalyptic warningsin popular science books and throughout the mass media.9 Prehistoric archaeologistsand palaeoenvironmental scientists, it seems, have become caught up in a positivefeedback loop, mirroring current concerns about the impact of rapid global cli-matic change that now threaten us today by their over-dramatising of climaticchange in the Younger Dryas and over-interpreting the critical impact on peo-ple in southwest Asia. At the global scale, the Younger Dryas had differenteffects in different parts of the world (in New Zealand, for example, beingunrecognisable).10 At the regional scale, Hillman had difficulty in identifying thesignature of the Younger Dryas except as inferred from the carbonized plantremains of Abu Hureyra, and in the Lake Huleh cores. When the editors ofPaléorient in 1997 invited archaeologists and environmental scientists to discussthe impact of climate and environmental change since the Last Glacial Maximumon human prehistory, their views on the impact of the Younger Dryas wereambiguous. As already remarked, Hillman’s model of the environmental conse-quences of the climatic reversal is open to a number of criticisms, not to mentionthe simplistic inference that the domestication of rye was the direct consequence.There are criticisms from other directions, too; Natalie Munro,11 for example, has


7 Moore, Hillman & Legge 2000.8 Bar-Yosef & Belfer-Cohen 2002.9 In the issue of the New York Review of Books that I was reading as I wrote this passage, I found a

review article that considered no fewer than three new books on the subject, plus a major cinema docu-mentary.

10 Singer et al. 1998.11 Munro 2003; Munro 2004.

examined the evidence from changes in the exploitation of animals for meat andin settlement strategies for the same period further south in the Levant, and sheconcludes that there is no evidence for the kind of changes of subsistence strate-gy that Hillman infers, but rather there was a shift back towards seasonal mobilityin order to maximise the productivity of hunting.

If we look to another climatic fluctuation in more recent historical times,the Little Ice Age, we see the record of seriously reduced temperatures, and wecan readily appreciate the impact of the colder temperatures as reflected in art, forexample in the winter paintings of Brueghel, or in pictures of ice fairs on the RiverThames in the centre of London. The reduced temperatures of the Little Ice Ageobviously had a significant impact on societies which had established themselves inmarginal environments during the preceding Medieval optimum. The population ofIceland was halved, and the pioneer Viking colonies in Greenland died out or wereabandoned. Yet we do not find historians calling upon the Little Ice Age to accountfor the Industrial Revolution in the way that archaeologists and palaeo-environmen-talists link the Younger Dryas reversal and the agricultural revolution. For some rea-son, except in extreme conditions, climatic change and human adaptive response arenot causal factors in modern history, as they are assumed to be in prehistory.

Identifying the tipping pointSo, we should ask, when was the tipping point? At the beginning of human

evolution, hominids were populations among other animal species interactingwithin an ecological web. As primates, hominids were social animals, like other pri-mates, but otherwise their environment was made up of physical and biologicalcomponents. Growth in the size of the hominid brain is explained in evolutionaryterms, for example, as an adaptive response to environmental pressures, albeitthose pressures arose from the trajectory of hominid and primate evolution thatinvolved living in relatively complex social groups.12 Modern humans also live insocial environments, but very different ones. Most of what we encounter, what wethink about, most of what we deal with, consists of social, economic and espe-cially cultural webs. As is generally the case with evolutionary processes, newthings are not invented, but existing features are modified step by step, or are re-combined in new ways. We shall not find the answer as the sudden appearance ofa factor that had been absent until then. Rather, we need to identify the criticalpoint on an evolutionary gradient.

We tend to take for granted, or seriously under-estimate, what our mindsachieve in their everyday management of our affairs. It may therefore be helpfulto introduce three thinkers from different disciplines who each talk about the com-plexity of human cognitive and cultural skills in different ways. Two of them areconcerned with the present human condition and the complex symbolic social andcultural webs that we construct for ourselves; the third takes an evolutionaryperspective on these matters, and helps us to comprehend the route by which ourmodern minds and cultures have come to be as they are.


12 Aiello & Dunbar 1993; Aiello & Wheeler 1995; Dunbar 1992.

John Searle13 is noted for his writing on the philosophy of language, mind andconsciousness. His book on the construction of social reality sets out to illustratehow most of those things that are fundamental to life today are abstract constructs.He shows how many of the familiar elements of our everyday lives - he takesmoney and marriage and monarchy as examples - are only facts because we agreethat they are facts. They exist only because we believe them to exist, he says. WhatJohn Searle discusses applies to our world today, whether we are looking at west-ern society or any other contemporary society, but by common consent it does notapply to our earliest hominid ancestors.

Anthony Cohen14 is a social anthropologist. His little book, The SymbolicConstruction of Community, emphasizes that the construction and maintenance ofcommunity as he has studied it among small-scale contemporary societiesrequire complex symbolic actions – again, not what we expect of our earliestancestors. The purpose of the book is to convince us that any social groupdepends upon the ability of its members to engage with each other through cul-tural means, that the notion of community is symbolically constructed amongthem, and that the relations within the community need continual attention. Hewrites, ‘The consciousness of community has to be kept alive through manipu-lation of its symbols’.15 The fact that we do not learn these skills at school, butabsorb them without teaching or examinations throughout our infancy, child-hood and adolescence should not lead us to think of them as simple. Nor shouldthe fact that we often articulate our construct of community in terms of mate-rial symbols obscure the fact that, in cognitive terms, the skills that we use in theconstruction and maintenance of communities are extraordinarily complex andinvolve the management of complex webs of symbolic representation. Whileother species of animal may be said to live social lives, no other species, and noearlier species in the genus Homo, shows such a capacity for the symbolic construc-tion of community.

Merlin Donald is a theoretical psychologist who has set out to unravel theevolution of those faculties that mark out the progress of hominid evolutiontowards the emergence of our modern human minds and symbolic culture.16 Forour purposes, he defines the cognitive and cultural facility of operating at a fullysymbolic level as the most recent stage in the emergence of the human mind. Incommon with a number of thinkers, Donald believes that we need to makematerial forms in order to share these most advanced concepts. For him, themost significant material form of what he calls «external symbolic storage sys-tem» is alphabetic writing, but in common with several other archaeologists Iargue that there are other and earlier, non-linguistic systems of external sym-bolic storage.17


13 Searle 1995.14 Cohen 1985.15 Cohen 1985: 15.16 Donald 1991. Donald 1993 for a précis of the book.17 At a conference where a number of archaeologists met with Merlin Donald and discussed the appli-

cation of his ideas on external symbolic storage, following Donald’s introduction of his ideas (Donald

Language is a system of symbolic representation, and the importance of thefull modern language faculty that we enjoy and its evolutionary emergence hasbeen the subject of much attention. The unique feature of a system of symbolicrepresentation is that, while each arbitrary sign (signifier) refers to whatever it sig-nifies, the signs become symbols by virtue of their relationships to one anotherwithin a complex system. For language, this means that a sentence means muchmore than the sum of its individual, dictionary-defined words. The emergence ofa full modern language faculty is dated by linguists between 50,000 and 100,000years ago, which corresponds with the emergence among early Homo sapiens of theuse of materials (ochre, sea-shells perforated for suspension) to embody somekind of value (status, prestige, regret at loss, grief), and ritualised burial of thedead. Merlin Donald refers to the emergence of full modern language as Mythicculture. Pasting together scraps of Donald’s own words, we can say that languageallowed the sharing of narrative tradition. It introduced a much more powerfulmeans of explicit recall from memory. The power of language is that it allows usto address and organize knowledge, and make it accessible to further reflection.

Donald calls the fourth stage in his scheme Theoretic culture, a mode that issupported by systems of external symbolic storage. In Donald’s view, the emer-gence of theoretic culture began in the Upper Palaeolithic (and earlier, taking intoaccount the evidence for the use of ochre, sea-shells and ritualised burial in Africaand southwest Asia back to 100,000 years ago), and it was completed with theadoption of alphabetic writing systems. It is useful here to recapitulate some ofMerlin Donald’s views on the power of external symbolic storage, describingfacilities of mind and culture that we take for granted: he believes that externalmemory involves completely new memory media, because external symbolic tech-nologies enable us humans to create qualitatively new types of representations.Indeed, external symbolic storage systems allow us to generate states in the indi-vidual mind that cannot otherwise be attained. If we move forward to Donald’smore recent work (Donald 2001), and the work of other cognitive scientists,developmental psychologists and philosophers of mind, we learn to appreciate animportant component of this unique capacity of our modern minds. Our mindsnot only engage with external memory systems and with each other, but they areformed within and by that environment. For example, Andy Clark uses the term‘scaffolding’ to characterize the way that the cultural context provides the humaninfant with the necessary guidance for learning their way into what we consider tobe normal social and cultural life18 Tomasello has written eloquently about the cul-tural embeddedness of human cognition.19 Clark and Chalmers have written about«the extended mind», an «active externalism, based on the active role of the envi-ronment in driving cognitive processes».20


1998a), Colin Renfrew criticized his emphasis on writing and specifically alphabetic writing (Renfrew1998).At the end of the conference, Donald responded to the archaeologists, somewhat adjusting his stance(Donald 1998b).

18 Clark 1997.19 Tomasello 1999.20 Clark & Chalmers 1998.

Donald labels the complex process whereby the human infant’s rapidly grow-ing brain learns what it needs «deep enculturation».21 His detailed discussion of theprocesses makes clear that the self-consciousness that we hold so precious isentirely founded in a richly symbolic cultural environment, which is only in partdependent on language, still less on written language. Deep enculturation is notsimply a socializing process, but a much deeper shaping of the cognitive modesthat the growing child will need. All aspects of the child’s environment contributeto the cultural learning environment, and not just what humans say to the child.Donald emphasises that biological evolution may not have affected the form ofour brains in the last few millennia, but our capacity to link to an accumulatingexternal memory store affords us cognitive powers that would not have been possi-ble in isolation. The emergence of external symbolic storage systems is a culturaland not a biological phenomenon, but it changes the cognitive working of thehuman mind. The co-evolution of a cognitive facility for manipulating systems ofsymbolic representation and fully symbolic culture that incorporate external sym-bolic storage systems is the key to the generation of what we consider to be modernminds, our ideas about ourselves, and our consciousness. The emergence of thesecognitive and cultural characteristics marks the moment when societies first beganto create symbolic cultural environments that enriched their cultural lives and«scaffolded» their children’s cognitive development.

The built environment as external symbolic storage networkWe need to think of ourselves and our consciousness as having developed

from infancy through our deep enculturation, our embeddedness, within a richsymbolic cultural environment. It is much more than learning language, and havingparents to tell us about things, going to school, learning to read and write, andlearning from books. We tend to be give text automatic authority, and to under-rate the importance of the rest of the cultural information resources that we havelearned to use intuitively.

I have argued that the relationship between human groups and their physicalenvironment was changed in the Epi-palaeolithic period,22 and I have proposedthat architecture is a specially powerful mode of external symbolic storage, andthat this mode of symbolic representation in architectural form was first realisedat the end of the Epi-palaeolithic and the beginning of the Neolithic in southwestAsia.23 In that regard, I have argued that Donald’s final stage of Theoretical cul-ture, facilitated by systems of external symbolic storage, was coming into a real andmeaningful existence by the end of the Epi-palaeolithic and the beginning of theNeolithic periods. The tipping point was reached, therefore, at that time. From thattime, that is, at least from the beginning of the Holocene period, people lived inwhat architects and planners today call «the built environment¼. From that time,communities have lived in an effective environment that is artificial. We create and


21 Donald 2001.22 Watkins 1997.23 Watkins 2004a; Watkins 2004b; Watkins 2005; Watkins 2006.

modify our effective environments, and ‘read’ them all day and every day. Archi-tecture and the built environment constitute arenas that we furnish with furthersymbolic material, and within which we conduct our elaborate cultural rituals. Thatcommunities of the Neolithic and all subsequent periods in southwest Asia havelived similarly within effective environments of their own cultural creation is evi-denced by the extraordinary and richly symbolic sites such as Qermez Dere, Nem-rik, Hallan Çemi, Neval! Çori, Çayönü Tepes!, Göbekli Tepe, Jerf el Ahmar, K’farHaHoresh, ‘Ain Ghazal, Basta, Baja . . .

From the beginning of the Epi-palaeolithic period, there were groups in partsof southwest Asia who harvested and stored nutritious hard seeds – grasses, cereals,and pulses. Epi-palaeolithic groups began to live in larger groups and the trendtowards sedentism and village life in larger communities was under way. By the endof the Epi-palaeolithic period, we can speak of villages with architecture. In theearliest Neolithic, communities were cultivating plants in order to concentrate theyields.24 The effective environment for members of these communities was cul-tural, artificial, and symbolic; the kin-group, the household, the community, thefields that framed their lives were all human artefacts and cultural constructs.

Of course, the natural environment remained – and remains– important, espe-cially in critical and marginal situations. But the effective environment withinwhich people lived their everyday lives, at least since final Epi-palaeolithic timesand the beginning of the Neolithic period, has been culturally, symbolically con-structed. Just as the behaviour of contemporary western societies cannot beexplained as direct responses to economic pressures, despite the simplistic beliefsof an influential school of economists and politicians, so the behaviour of ancientsocieties since the beginning of the Holocene period cannot be explained as sim-ple, direct responses to environmental pressures.

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