rank, status and agency in chalcolithic southern levant

Proceedingsof the 6th International Congress

on the Archaeologyof the Ancient Near East

May, 5th-10th 2008, “Sapienza” - Università di Roma

Volume 1 Near Eastern Archaeology in the Past,

Present and Future. Heritage and Identity

Ethnoarchaeological and Interdisciplinary Approach, Results and Perspectives

Visual Expression and Craft Production in the Defi nition of Social Relations and Status

Edited byPaolo Matthiae, Frances Pinnock, Lorenzo Nigro

and Nicolò Marchettiwith the collaboration of Licia Romano

2010Harrassowitz Verlag · Wiesbaden

ABSTRACT

SUSANNE KERNER

RANK, STATUS AND AGENCY IN CHALCOLITHIC SOUTHERN LEVANT

The existence of a ranked society has often been claimed for the Chalcolithic Southern Levant. But although the material evidence points towards such an assumption, there are few systematic studies of the ways craft production or visual expression might support this notion. Objects with cultic or social meaning (such as the basalt stands from the Golan or the ivory objects from the Negev) and their regionally determined distribution patterns might have played a role in the negotiation of social identity and prestige. The pattern of production and consumption in craft production of pottery as well as metal forms the economic background for a discussion of these quetions. Both materials clearly indicate the existence of craft specialisation and in the case of metal also of controlled production – another indication for a ranked society. The different categories of metal fi nds could possibly be interpreted as standing for different levels of prestige (or authority?).

INTRODUCTION

A brief perusal of the literature about the Late Chalcolithic in the Southern Levant creates the impression that the social and political organisation of this period seems to be clear: there are chiefdoms. But the fact remains that such a catchword does not really express any historical or pre-historical reality and that it actually says very little about the precise circumstances and conditions.

POLITICAL ORGANISATION

Without wanting to repeat here a discussion of a considerable length, chiefdoms or preferably complex societies have been defi ned and described in detail, for which several different typologies have been used.1 Most of these typologies and defi nitions have evolved through notions of evolutionary development and an analysis of them shows, why chiefdoms are called “middle level” societies. It is because they are set in the middle between the “simple” societies of the Neolithic and the complex societies of the Urban or State societies, and they are normally defi ned in exactly such relative

1 Service 1972; Renfrew 1974; Earle 1978.

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terms such as “more complex than tribal organisations”, or “less structured than states”. In Near Eastern archaeology chiefdoms have been discussed rather less then in the archaeology of other parts of the world (particularly the Americas), partly because of a continuing lack of a theoretical discussions of political organisation; and even more so because the more obvious, tremendous changes, which happened fi rst in the Neolithic period and then again in the Early Bronze Age with its urbanisation, a political form so much closer to our own experience in life, have caught most available attention.

The question of defi ning a chiefdom has been discussed elsewhere2 and will thus not be repeated here in detail, but while reciprocity, warfare and the existence of generous (altruistic) chiefs were the characteristics of most of the earlier attempts defi ning such societies,3 it has become clear in current research that none of these three phenomena are necessarily characteristic in the ancient Near East in general and certainly not in the Southern Levant, where particularly the archaeological equivalents for warfare are conspicuously absent.4 There are three different models trying to describe the characteristics of complex societies,5 which will only be described here with those details, which will play a role in the later discussion:

Group-oriented Individual-oriented chiefdomsSimple Complex chiefdomsStaple fi nance Prestige-wealth chiefdoms

The following discussion is by necessity short and will concentrate on the most decisive characteristics of these different forms of chiefdoms. The given stages (e.g. simple versus complex) just state the end points on a movable scale, so actual real societies can be at any point between the simple and complex stages at the end.

Group-oriented chiefdoms are characterised by the lack of individual wealth on one side and the existence of large and visible signs of group activities (such as large temple terraces in Mesopotamia in the Ubaid-period) on the other. Individual-oriented chiefdoms show larger differences in the distribution of wealth and prestige, and the rituals carried out in these societies are prone to legitimate the power and not so much the feeling of togetherness of the whole society.

The division between simple and complex chiefdoms is mainly based on the distance between the ruled and the rulers, as looser the kinship between the ruling group and the population is, the more complex is the chiefdom. It is obvious that this is a relative and discrete criterion, because the distance can only be measured in comparison to other societies. A more complex chiefdom will also have more centralised governing

2 Kerner 2001.3 Service 1972; Carneiro 1981.4 This has already been noticed by Stein for Mesopotamia (Stein 1994: 39), and holds true for the

Southern Levant, even though there are certain signs of violence (Dawson et al. 2003), but no evidence for larger scale inter-site or inter-tribal confl icts.

5 For another discussion of these models see Kerner, n.d., the models are based on Renfrew 1974; D’Altroy, Earle 1985; Earle 1991; Steponaitis 1991.

Rank, Status and Agency in Chalcolithic Southern Levant 795

mechanisms. The archaeological equivalents would show a strong centralisation and a noticeable difference between the chiefs and the commoners. Simple chiefdoms might also show stronger regional characteristics, while a complex system will try to even those out.

The third possibility to describe chiefdoms is based on the main fi nancial base of a society. It can be based on staple goods, which are collected from all members of the group and then administered, which only works in relatively small areas, or it can be based on prestige-wealth items, which are either produced by attached specialists or imported through exchange with elites outside the indigenous group. While staple fi nanced chiefdoms should show defi nite signs for communal storage for the staple, prestige-wealth based chiefdoms should clearly show prestigious items mostly imported from outside the direct region.

All three models deal also with the existence of ranked positions and specialisation, it needs to be suffi cient at this moment to state that individual-oriented, complex or prestige-wealth based chiefdoms would tend to have clearer ranked positions than group-oriented, simple or staple-fi nanced chiefdoms. The latter would also have a stronger tendency for independent and possibly part-time specialists, while the former would have the need and the ability to fi nance attached specialists.6 The questions discussed in this paper will thus turn to the question how rank, status and prestige might have been expressed in the Late Chalcolithic Southern Levant, how they have been used to negotiate (changing?) identities and power-relations as well as how specialised craftsmanship was used in this process.

RANK AND PRESTIGE

Differences in status and ranked positions are expressed in numerous ways, several of which are diffi cult to prove archaeologically such as beautifying somebody/something with fl owers, body tattoos or differences in food portions.7 Other ways to express status differences and ranked positions can be archaeologically determined and one of the most obvious ones are prestige items, which are usually taken to be expressions of rank and status. Several items in the material repertoire of the Southern Levant have been claimed as prestige items, where such a defi nition does not necessarily seem to be justifi ed. A typical example is the basalt bowls, which appear in small numbers compared to pottery bowls. These bowls do, however, appear in a regular distribution pattern which makes it diffi cult to defi ne them as prestige items.8 If every household even in small sites like Grar (in the Negev)9 or Abu Snesleh (close to Amman) has at least one of these items, such a distribution pattern excludes an interpretation as

6 Costin 1991; Kerner 2001: 170ff.7 The latter could possibly be proven by skeleton analysis, but the information available from this fi eld

is still too limited.8 Kerner 2001: 153ff.9 Gilead 1995.

Susanne Kerner796

prestige items.Prestige items should be made from rare or materially or culturally diffi cult to

obtain material, made in a diffi cult and/or elaborate technique, require a high amount of labour for the production, and are often elaborately decorated. These preconditions are fulfi lled by e.g. many of the metal objects found in the Southern Levant, such as the gold-rings from Nahal Qanah10 and the cylinders and standards from Nahal Mishmar.11

It is, nevertheless, very diffi cult to differentiate between ritual and prestige objects, objects like the northern basalt-idols12 and the anthropomorphic or zoomorphic-shaped clay-animals13 as well as the ivory-items from Nahal Mishmar14 and the Negev15 seem to fall more under the ritual or cultic category, although it is questionable if not both functions can be fulfi lled with one object. Ordinary objects can turn into ritual objects under certain circumstances and prestige items can gain their prestige partly by being used in ritual circumstances. These possible ritual items seem to have a regional distribution: the basalt idols are clearly a northern phenomenon (Golan and northern Jordan), the pottery vessels in zoomorphic or anthropomorphic shape appear mostly in the Jordan valley, the northern Negev and at the coast, and the ivory objects stem only from the Negev and mountainous areas slightly further north (Fig. 1). The function of all these objects, although generally ritual, is not clear in specifi c terms, but the regional distribution might allow the interpretation that these objects fulfi lled similar or at least compatible roles in the different geographical areas. They must have been part of the symbolic exchange of information and also of negotiating identity; one needs to consider here the strong regional aspect of Late Chalcolithic material culture. It would be a promising topic for further research to study if the different items (and materials) used for these symbolic representations allow a reconstruction of regionally different forms of ritual life.

RANK AND SPECIALISATION

A society’s social and political organisation is closely related to the existence of specialised production, and the role this production played will allow us to form hypotheses about the existence of rank and status. Several authors have claimed the existence of specialised production in the Late Chalcolithic for a number of different commodities, often with arguments of a rather descriptive nature. As there is a whole range of detailed archaeological and ethnoarchaeological research into specialisation from other parts of the world available,16 a defi nition of specialised production in

10 Gopher, Tsuk 1996.11 Bar-Adon 1980.12 Epstein 1978.13 Garfi nkel 1998.14 Bar-Adon 1980.15 Perrot 1957.16 Arnold 1987; Clark, Parry 1990; Costin 1991; Clark 1994.


the Southern Levant could be as follows: Specialisation is viewed as a regularised, permanent, and perhaps institutionalised production system in which producers depend on extra-household exchange relationships at least in part for their livelihood, and consumers depend on them for acquisition of goods they do not produce themselves.

For a study of the relationship between specialisation and social organisation the degree of specialisation is also of importance, which can be measured relatively and is best defi ned by comparisons between different units or of the same units through different time periods.

The possible measurements are:the relation of producers to consumers for a certain product (1) e.g. how many people produced baskets and how many used them);The relation of time spent for specialised production in comparison to the 2) time spent for general production (that is rather diffi cult to measure and often only possible in historic societies with written records);The amount of subsistence in a society, which is produced by specialised 3) production or by general production;The degree of control of techniques and raw material can also say 4) something about the degree of specialisation.

A historic and even more so a prehistoric society does not produce its craft in a specialised mode or not, parts of its production will have been done in a specialised mode but parts will remain to be produced in a general mode of production (e.g. certain pottery shapes or food). It is important to analyse the degree of specialisation, because the existence of full-time specialists requires a different set of conditions than part-time specialists. Sub-systems of the whole production might well have been organised very differently from the general picture.

The evidence for specialisation can be provided by two possible sources of information: direct evidence in the shape of fi ring installations, raw material, special tools or stores with fi nished products. Indirect evidence can be found in the effi ciency of production and standardisation of the product. This is expressed in standardised shapes, standardised surface treatment, standardised decoration and better quality of the product.

The meaningfulness of the direct evidence is still rather limited, because little information about the context and precise location of tools, raw materials etc. is available from several of the older excavations. But the fast growing number and the increasing precision of chemical analysis of metal as well as ceramic samples have introduced new possibilities for an interpretation based more on indirect evidence.

SPECIALISATION IN THE LATE CHALCOLITHIC

There are two materials which show signs of specialised production in the Late Chalcolithic of the Southern Levant: some pottery shapes and most of the metal production.

Susanne Kerner798

Pottery

Most pottery, particularly the hole-mouth-jars (used often for cooking), storage jars etc. show little or no signs of standardisation of any kind, effi cient production or any other mark of specialist production. One particular shape however, the V-shaped bowl, appears to be an exception to that rule. The bowls in all sites are made from one of the fi ner wares (depending on the fabric repertoire at each site, Fig. 2), they seem to come in two to three size groups17 and most interestingly, they are the only ceramic vessels, which show any sign of a fi nishing process involving some kind of tournette. The relationship between shape and fabric of a vessel The V-shaped bowls are also often the most common individual form in any given site, and form thus a mass product. Added to these production characteristics, which can be found in most sites, is the fact that in at least one case the bowls have been exported, from the sites at Beersheba to Abu Hamid as the studies by the French archaeologists in Hamid have shown.18

There are other pottery items, which show conspicuous characteristics setting them apart form regular household produced pottery, but they are much less numerous: the so-called torpedo-jars, which appear only in Gilat, but have been made from clay from very different regions.19 Such a mode of production requires potters, who knew the particular shape that was requested for the particular circumstances at Gilat, even though they were situated in other regions of the Southern Levant. And another vessel shape of seemingly large importance outside the purely domestic sphere is the so-called churn, which exists again in 3 different size groups: These size groups might indicate a functional difference, with the functions in question being very different indeed and some of those certainly outside the normal domestic usage of vessels. The churns occur in a miniature size, normal size and very large, and it is the very large variety, which might be of importance for the questions here. The very large churns show a high correlation between fabric and form,20 and most of the examples found do not have a domestic purpose (while the “normal” sized churns might well have had domestic purpose). The form of a churn is also used in anthropomorphic and zoomorphic vessel forms; the only other vessels used in a similar vain is the cornets and there to a much smaller extend. It is thus rather clear that churns, at least some of them, are also special (ritual) vessels, which were most likely used in circumstances related to food processing or food providing rituals (like the famous Gilat lady might illustrate).

While the fi rst example, the V-shaped bowl, has the characteristics of an independent specialisation with its mass production, the standardised size groups and the standardised fabric, point the two other examples into a slightly different direction. The torpedo jars with the required knowledge of a specifi c form (over distances) and the large churns with their specifi c fabric (in each site) and their most

17 Kerner 2001.18 Roux, Courty 1998.19 Commenge-Pellerine 2006; Goren 2006.20 Commenge-Pellerine 1987; 1990.


likely ritual function indicate production characteristics, which might point towards attached specialists or independent specialists producing these vessels under certain circumstances and conditions. It is in the moment impossible to form a clear picture about the control under which these productions would have happened.

Metal

The second material for which a study of the production pattern has proven informative is metal. The limited space allows only a limited overview of the characteristics of this production. The copper material from the Late Chalcolithic Southern Levant shows three highly signifi cant dichotomies:

The fi nds consist of ca. 82% of mace heads, standards, cylinders or baskets 1) (the so-called prestige objects)21 and of ca. 18% of adzes, awls (the so-called tools) wires and production remains;22

The majority of so-called prestige items are made from imported copper 2) ore, which is a natural alloy of copper with arsenic, antimony and sometimes nickel23. The alloy also has a different colour, it is more silvery black than the typical copper red, which might have been an added quality. The so-called tools are on the other hand nearly completely made from local copper-ore (from Wadi Feinan). Both groups of artefacts are not only made from different raw material, they are also produced by different methods. While the so-called tools are made in open moulds, the prestige objects are cast in the lost-wax-method.24 Both techniques, but particularly the latter one, require a certain level of technological knowledge;Nearly all production remains stem from local ore, while there are very 3) few production remains from imported ore.

This situation obviously leads to several questions, which cannot be answered at the moment, such as why has the local, easier available copper not been used more intensively for the production? Why has it been used for tools, which would have profi ted more from the imported alloy, which allows the manufacture of much harder items? How did the imported ore come into the country and where did the production of this material happen? How did the technological knowledge develop?

Some characteristics of the metal production however allow us to form a hypothesis about the underlying pattern. The production was carried out far from the local ore deposits, only in villages in the Negev. In the villages such as Abu Matar and Shiqmim production remains of pure (local) copper and small amounts of alloy have been

21 The use of standards and cylinders is here preferred to the original use of sceptres and crowns, as the latter terms show very clearly the medieval European notion behind the terminology.

22 Another overwhelmingly diffi cult problem in the interpretation of the Late Chalcolithic metal production is the fact that ca. 85% of all fi nds come from one site: Nahal Mishmar.

23 There are important exceptions to these generalisations from Safadi, which have been interpreted as having a chronological relevance (ICAANE Madrid, Shugar, Gohm).

24 Tadmor et al. 1995.

Susanne Kerner800

excavated, but the percentages of impurities, when existent, are relatively low, which could point to the use of scrap alloy together with the local material in a mix. There is so far no sign for the production involving mostly the imported material. The majority of copper items are thus manufactured without any archaeological evidence of the procedure being found so far. Such a situation seem to point to a divided production: A controlled production, where the prestige objects from imported (alloyed) material have been manufactured in the lost-wax method and a less controlled production, where local (pure) copper ore was cast into tool-like looking items. A division of the two production modes in such a way would explain the archaeological pattern found so far, but could only be proven, when at least one production site using primarily imported ore would be found.25 The just described production pattern clearly leads to the assumption that attached specialists must have been involved, at least as far as the imported ore production was concerned. All characteristics of prestige items being produced by attached specialists are present: the importing of valuable raw material from a considerable distance,26 a diffi cult production method, which requires specialised knowledge, a controlled production (isolated from the normal dwellings) and a limited area of production (Negev).

CONCLUSION

The archaeological evidence from the pottery and copper production indicates the existence of independent and attached specialists, which points to a rather complex society during the Late Chalcolithic period in the Southern Levant (Fig. 3). It seems however doubtful that the social stratifi cation was based primarily on an economic control over resources (as must have clearly existed for the metal ore) for the entire extent of the Southern Levant. But it might have been true for the Negev, where the production centres for metal (and some pottery) were and where with the end of the Chalcolithic period there seems to have been an abrupt halt to a speedy social development. It has sometimes been assumed that the loss of control over the metal sources might have helped along the end of the Chalcolithic period. Other areas, less integrated in the system, seem to have suffered less and developed into the following Early Bronze Age.

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25 At the ICAANE in Madrid Yuval Goren, who believes that it was more ritual reasons which kept the production separate, suggested Ein Gedi as a possible candidate for such a production.

26 The natural copper alloy would most likely come from the Caucasus or Trans-Caucasus.


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Costin, C.1991 Craft Specialization: Issues in Defi ning, Documenting, and Explaining the

Organization of Production: in Archaeological Method and Theory 3, pp. 1-56.

D’Altroy, T.N., Earle, T.K.1985 Staple Finance, Wealth Finance, and Storage in the Inka Political Economy:

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Archaeology in the Levant (K. Kenyon), Warminster, pp. 22-35.Fried, M.H.1967 The Evolution of Political Society: an Essay in Political Economy, New

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Composition, and Provenance: in Atiqot 27, pp. 95-148.


Fig. 1: Distribution of ritual objects of differing materials and shape

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Susanne Kerner806

Fig. 3: Metal and pottery modes of production.

rank, status and agency in chalcolithic southern levant

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