were nomadic amorites on the move?

Offprint from

Proceedingsof the 4th International Congress

of the Archaeologyof the Ancient Near East

29 March – 3 April 2004, Freie Universität Berlin

Volume 2:Social and Cultural Transformation:

The Archaeology of Transitional Periods and Dark AgesExcavation Reports

Edited byHartmut Kühne, Rainer M. Czichon,

and Florian Janoscha Kreppner

2008

Harrassowitz Verlag · Wiesbaden

ISBN 978-3-447-05757-8

Kühne ICANE 2.indd Abs13Kühne ICANE 2.indd Abs13 16.06.2008 16:01:4316.06.2008 16:01:43

WERE NOMADIC AMORITES ON THE MOVE?MIGRATION, INVASION AND GRADUAL INFILTRATION

AS MECHANISMS FOR CULTURAL TRANSITIONSMINNA A. LÖNNQVIST

THE IDENTITIES OF THE AMORITES

The identity and origins of the Amorites, a Bronze Age group of people, have remained as subjects for continuing debates. Earlier the origins and spread of the Amorites from the deserts and steppes of Syria seemed to explain their role as the nomadic carriers of the fi rst Dark Age into the Near East at the end of the Early Bronze Age. The emergence of a Dark Age is often associated with nomads or migrations in history. In the Near Eastern archaeo-logy the migration and invasion theories, however, went out of vogue in the 1980s. The en-vironmental causal theories became the chief archaeological explanators for cultural transi-tions, sometimes without any particular role of human interventions.

Contextual Archaeology1 that emerged in the 1980s has provided methodological means to open a fresh dialogue between cuneiform texts and archaeological remains. Approaches to study nomads archaeologically have also considerably developed in the 1990s.2 In addition, during the past decades our knowledge of the Amorites has been constantly increasing espe-cially through the cuneiform texts discovered from Ebla and Mari in Syria. We are in a new situation to archaeologically re-evaluate the interpretations and the explanations concerning the transitions taking place at the end the Early and the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age in the Near East. People bearing Amorite names did not come ex nihilo to power in the set-tled and urban sites of Syria and Mesopotamia. The available archaeological and epigraphic data from these settled sites, especially in Syria, offer possibilities to scrutinize the mecha-nisms and establishment of the Amorite occupations.

As the new methodological approaches became available I decided to go through the archaeological contexts provided by the cuneiform texts, the Biblical accounts, the Egyptian Execration texts and archaeological contexts pertaining to such an entity as the “Amorites”.3 In tracing Amorites archaeologically one is especially faced with the questions of different forms and levels of social group identities extending from nomadism to tribalism and to an ethnic group or even a state. The questions, how to identify a socio-political unit, either tribal or ethnic, and how it is supposed to be refl ected in material remains pose constant controversies. It is clear that like linguistic entities, social groupings or subsistence groups

1 See, e.g., Ian Hodder, Reading the Past, Current Approaches to Interpretations in Archaeology. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)

2 See, e.g., Øystein Sakala La Bianca, Hesban 1. Sedentarization and Nomadization: Food System Cycles at Hesban and Vicinity in Transjordan (Berrie Springs, MI: Andrews University Press, 1990); Roger Cribb, Nomads in Archaeology (New Studies in Archaeology; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); O. Bar-Yosef and A. Khazanov, ed., Pastoralism in the Levant, Archaeological Materials in Anthropological Perspectives (Monographs in World Archaeology No. 10; Madison, Wisconsin: Prehistory Press, 1992); J. Zarins, “ Archaeological and Chronological Problems within the Great Southwest Asian Arid Zone, 8500-1850 B.C., ” in Chronologies in Old World Archaeology, Third Edition (2 vols; ed. Robert W. Ehrich, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992) and Israel Finkelstein, Living on the Fringe, The Archaeology and History of the Negev, Sinai and Neighbouring Regions in the Bronze and Iron Ages” (Monographs in Mediterranean Archaeology 6; Midsomer Norton, Somerset: The Sheffi eld Academic Press, 1995)

3 Minna Angelina Lönnqvist Between Nomadism and Sedentism, Amorites from the Perspective of Contextual Archaeology (Ph.D. diss., University of Helsinki, 2000).

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do not exactly have to overlap with archaeological entities refl ecting cultural patternings in material remains. Favourable fi elds for inquiries of social groupings can, however, be found in anthropologically and ethnographically orientated archaeology.

The Amorite language preserved to us consists only of elements of onomastica: personal names, names of deities and toponyms.4 Spatially the provenances of the epigraphic fi nds pertain-ing to the Amorite names stretch from the Persian Gulf (BIN IX, 405)5 through Mesopotamia6 to Byblos7 and Ugarit8 on the Mediterranean coast of Ancient Syria (including modern Lebanon) as far as to Kültepe-Kanesh9 in Anatolia, and through Palestine10 to the Hyksos ancestry and pres-ence in the Nile Delta in Egypt11. Chronologically the texts mentioning Amorites by individual names or as tribal groups chronologically vary from Sumerian and Eblaite texts to Biblical ac-counts. In the Sumerian language the Amorites were called MAR.TU and in the Akkadian Amurru which simply meant the West and the people living to the West from Mesopotamia. In the Ebla tablets dating to the 24th century B.C. MAR-TU/MAR-DU also appears as a geographic name of a region bearing a ki-determinative and also as the name of the people living in the respective area.12 The earliest known evidence of the designation MAR.TU relates to a person bearing a Sumerian name (VAT 127 29) found in a tablet from Tell Farah (Shuruppak) and dated to ca. 2550 B.C.13

The idea of the nomadism as peculiar type of subsistence economy among the Amorites in the third millennium B.C. is not solely based on the mythical fi gure of god MAR.TU (CBS 14061), often identifi ed as the personifi cation of the nomadic Amorite tribes, described in the Sumerian sources. The identifi cation of the Amorites as nomads or rural people of Syria appears in the third millennium sources of Ebla,14 Sumer15 and Akkad (e.g., RIME 2 S. 183) as well as in later sources pertaining to the nomadic “tent dwelling” ancestry of the settled and royal Amorites16. The Amorites are described as providing goats, leather for containers 4 See Ignace J. Gelb, Computer-aided Analysis of Amorite (The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago;

Assyriological Studies 2; Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980) and see also Michael P. Streck, Das amurritische Onomasticon der altbabylonischen Zeit, Band 1, Die Amurriter, Die onomastische Forschung, Orthographie und Phonologie, Nominalmorphologie (Alter Orient und Altes Testament, Herausgeber; Diet-rich, Manfried und Lorentz, Oswald, Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2000).

5 See also Ignace J. Gelb, Computer-aided Analysis of Amorite (The Oriental Institute of the University of Chi-cago; Assyriological Studies No. 2; Chicago: the University of Chicago Press, 1980) 2.

6 See, e.g., J.J. Finkelstein, “The Genealogy of the Hammurabi Dynasty,” JCS 20 (1966) 95-118. 7 See, e.g., Kenneth Kitchen, “Byblos, Egypt, and Mari in the Early Second Millennium, ” Orientalia 36 (1967)

39-54. 8 See, e.g., Kenneth Kitchen, “The King List of Ugarit” UF 9 (1977) 131-142. 9 See, e.g., Julius Lewy, Amurritica HUCA 32 (1961) 31-74.10 See, e.g., Wayne Horowitz and Aaron Shaffer, “An Administrative Tablet from Hazor: A Preliminary Edition,”

IEJ 42 (1992) 44-54.11 See, e.g., Manfred Bietak, “The Center of Hyksos Rule: Avaris (Tell el-Dab´a),” in The Hyksos: New His-

torical and Archaeological Perspectives, (ed. Eliezer D. Oren, University Museum Monograph 96, University Museum Symposium Series 8, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1997) 113.

12 See Alfonso Archi, “Mardu in the Ebla Texts,” Orientalia 54 N.S. (1985) 8.13 Anton Deimel, Die Inschriften von Fara III, Wirtschaftstexten aus Fara (WvDOG 45; Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1924)

No. 48, Rev. line 10.14 See, e.g., Alfonso Archi, “Mardu in the Ebla Texts”, in Orientalia 54 N.S. (1985) 7-13.15 See, e.g., Giorgio Buccellati The Amorites of the Ur III Period (Pubblicazioni del seminario di semistica a cura

di Giovanni Garbini, Richerche I, Naples: Istituto Orientale di Napoli, 1966).16 See F.R. Kraus, Könige, die in Zelten wohnten, Betrachtungen über den Kern der assyrischen Königsliste,

(Mededelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afd. Letterkunde, Nieuwe Reeks, Deel 28, No 2; Amsterdam, 1965); A. Poebel “The Assyrian King List from Khorsabad,” JNEAS 1(1942) 247-306 and J.J. Finkelstein, “The Genealogy of the Hammurabi Dynasty,” JCS 20 (1966) 95-118.

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and other pastoral products to the Eblaites and Sumerians. In addition, in the third millen-nium texts they are associated with specifi c steppic and mountainous regions of Syria, where pastoral nomadism has been recognized as the main livelihood.

Already in the Eblaite, Sumerian and Akkadian sources Amorites with their god Martu, Amurru, are described by the outsiders. Later on Hammurabi identifi ed himself as the king of the Amorites, and he is presented kneeling to god Amurru (the statue composition at the Louvre: AO 15704-15705). The First Dynasty of Babylon was espcially identifi ed as pale Amurri (BM 80328). This two-directional “them and us” -identifi cation that fi nds evidence from the second millennium B.C. is seen as the major criterion for ethnic groups by Fredrik Barth17 and generally followed in ethnographic studies.

FROM MIGRATION AND INVASION TO GRADUAL INFILTRATION

It is important to shortly scrutinize how the theoretical framework concerning the end of the Early Bronze Age powers in the Near East developed from the traditional migrationist and in-vasionist views to gradual infi ltrations and fi nally to enclosed relationships with the nomads. There are two kinds of migrations defi ned by Irving Rouse18: namely a local migration and an interareal migration. An invasion theory is technically a sub-class of migrationist theories. Compared to migrations, as generally peaceful mechanisms, the result of migrations with invasions are destructive. Simplistically an abrupt cultural change or discontinuity in stratig-raphy was early in the 20th century generally interpreted to mark an invasion and evidence of the arrival of a new people. Invasion theories were seen as effi cient models for explaining cultural change. There have been discussions what was the actual impact of the Biblical tradi-tions on invasions, the World Wars with battles and colonialist attitudes behind the preferred migrationist approaches and invasionist explanations for cultural transitions.19

In the traditional migrationist wave theories exemplifi ed in Hugo Winckler´s model the Amorites belonged to the second nomadic wave of the Semites out of the desert and steppes taking place ca. 2500/2000 B.C.20 These kinds of theories - that since the 1980s have no longer been generally acknowledged in the scholarly literature – earlier held that the nomadic Amorites spread en masse destroying several city-states and bringing chaos and disorder as they pro-ceeded around the Near East. In Sumer in order to keep the Tidnum (Tidnum was associated with an ancestral tribe of the Amorites or a geographical district bearing the name) away the wall of MAR.TU21 was erected. In Egypt “the wall of the Prince”22 was quite contempora-neously built to keep the infi ltrating nomads at bay. The invasionist “Amorite hypothesis”

17 Fredrik Barth, ed, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organisation of Culture Difference (Oslo: Ber-gen Universitetsforlaget, 1969)

18 Irving Rouse, Migrations in Prehistory, Inferring Population Movement from Cultural Remains (New Haven: Yale Univesity Press,1986) 9.

19 See, e.g., W.Y. Adams, D.P. Van Gerven and R.S. Levy, “ The Retreat from Migartionism” ARA 7 (1978) 483, 484, 488 and Heinrich Härke, “Archaeologists and Migrations” in CA 39 (1998) 19-45.

20 Hugo Winckler, “Völker Vorderasiens,“ Der alte Orient 1 (1899) 4-15.21 See Claus Wilcke, “Zur Geschichte der Amurriter in der Ur III Zeit,“ WO 5 (1969/1970) 9-12.22 See Maurice Dunand “Byblos et ses temples après la pénétration amorite,“ in Mesopotamien und seine Nach-

barn (RAI 25, Berlin 3. bis 7. Juli 1978, Berliner Beiträge zum Vorderen Orient, Band I, Berlin, 1982) 196.

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promulgated by Kathleen Kenyon,23 held accordingly that Syria was the original homeland of the Amorites whence the people invaded Palestine and further proceeded into Egypt bringing the First Dark Age or the First Intermediate Period to the region from the 23rd century B.C.

In the studies of the Amorites alternative explanations to the migrationist wave and invasion-ist theories started emerging already in the 1950s. In contrast to the theories of massive nomadic waves Jean-Robert Kupper24 presented the river-type infi ltration theory, a moderate and more peaceful migrationist view, describing the spread of the Amorites like a river from steppes and deserts of Syria. In the archaeology of Palestine a comparable gradual infi ltration theory was exemplifi ed in Kay Prag´s studies25 which gradually replaced the invasionist Amorite hypothesis in the 1970s. After the new surveys and careful analyses of the old data in Jordan and Israel it be-came clear that only the minority of the sites with stratigraphical breaks refl ecting discontinuity in Palestine had actually been destroyed by an invasion in the end of the Early Bronze Age. The ma-jority of the sites were just abandoned. Instead of the earlier overwhelming view of nomadism the new evidence of small rural villages added some sedentary elements to this transitional period.

Since the 1960s Michael B. Rowton26 has presented the idea of the dimorphic state and the enclosed nomadism as socio-political models especially describing the relations between the state of Mari and the surrounding nomads in Syria during the Middle Bronze Age. Vic-tor Matthews27 also applied the type of village pastoralism to the Amorite tribes in the Mari archives. Finally in the 1990s Giorgio Buccellati, who earlier did not doubt the nomadism of the Amorites,28 expressed a new peaceful theory on the origins and nature of the Amorites as nomadized peasants basing his view also on the evidence from the Mari archives.29 The di-morphic state and the enclosed nomadism have offered the most preferred models to explain the Amorite nomadism among the assyriologists30 in recent decades. Modern ethnographi-

23 See, e.g., Kathleen M. Kenyon, Digging up Jericho (London: Ernest Benn, 1957) and Kahtleen M. Kenyon, Amorites and Canaanites (The Schweich Lectures of the British Academy 1963; London: Oxford University Press, 1966).

24 Jean-Robert Kupper, Les nomads en Mésopotamie au temps des rois de Mari, (Bibliothéque de la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres de lÚniversité de Liège, Fascicule CXLII, Paris: Société d´Éditions “Les Belles Let-tres”, 1957).

25 Kay Prag, “The Intermediate Early Bronze – Middle Bronze Age: An Interpretation of the Evidence from Transjordan, Syria and Lebanon“, Levant 6 (1974) 69-116.

26 Michael B. Rowton, “ The Physical Environment and the Problem of the Nomads” in La civilisation de Mari (RAI 15, organisée par le Groupe François Thureau-Dangin, Liège, 4-8 juillet 1966, ed. J.-R. Kupper, Bibliothéque de la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres de lÚniversité de Liège, Fasc. CLXXXII, Paris: Société d´Édition “Les Belles Lettres”, 1957) 109-121.

27 Victor Harold Matthews, Pastoral Nomadism in the Mari Kingdom (ca. 1830-1760 B.C.), (American Schools of Oriental Research Dissertation Series 3; Cambridge Mass., 1978)

28 Giorgio Buccellati, The Amorites of the Ur III Period. (Pubblicazioni del seminario di semistica a cura di Giovanni Garbini, Richerche I; Naples: Istituto Orientale di Napoli, 1966) 329.

29 Giorgio Buccellati, “River Bank“, “High Country”, and “Pasture Land”: the Growth of Nomadism on the Mid-dle Euphrates and the Khabur,” in Tall al-Hamadiya 2, Symposion, Recent Excavations in the Upper Khabur Region 1986, (ed. Seyyare Eichler, Marcus Wäfl er and David Warburton, Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis, Se-ries Archeologica 6, Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1990) 87-117; Giorgio Buccellati, “Ebla and the Amorites” in Eblaitica: Essays on the Ebla Archives and the Eblaite Language (vol. 3, ed. Cyrus H. Gordon and Gary A. Rendsburg, Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1992) 83-104. Giorgio Buccellati, “Gli Amorrei e ´láddomesticamento´ della steppa, “ in L´Éufrate e il tempo, Le civiltá del medio Eufrate e della Gezira siriana (ed. Olivier Rouault and Maria Grazia Masetti-Rouault, Milano: Electa, 1993) 67-69.

30 See, e.g., Michael P. Streck, “Zwischen Weide, Dorf und Stadt: Sozio-ökonomische Strukturen des amurri-tischen Nomadismus am Mittleren Euphrat,“ Baghdader Mitteilungen 3 (2002) 155-209.

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cal evidence of transhumance in the Middle Euphrates region in Syria is used to support the models. Consequently dimorphism and enclosed nomadism have also been applied to general archaeological theories concerning the Bronze Age pastoralism in Syria31 and Palestine32.

THE SWITCH OF THE FOCUS TO ENVIRONMENTALISM

The New Archaeology school that emerged in the 1960s decreased the dialogue between archaeology and texts switching the focus from people to more on environmental prob-lems. Historical questions, such as the identifi cation of ethnic groups and their power rela-tions, were not relevant in these archaeological studies while environmentalist research problems and statistical analyses were executed. In the 1970s Barbara Bell´s33 studies of the Egyptian evidence offered the fi rst environmental explanations in the Near Eastern ar-chaeology. The Nile fl ood records indicated that there had been drought and consequently famine in Egypt that caused the First Dark Age, i.e., the First Intermediate Period. The study also awoke questions of the actual trajectory role of nomads in the prolonged hard-ships of Egypt. In the archaeology of Mesopotamia the salination theory34 equally offered an environmental explanation for the fi nal fate of the Sumerian civilization along the loss of the arable land, whereas the invasions of the Amorites or fi nally the invasions of the Elamites were seen as secondary.

The natural catastrophe theory is akin to explanations which evoke resource depletion as a causal factor through climatic and environmental changes or depletion due to human mismanagement.35 When the environmental explanations took the lead, no actual human in-terventions in the form of immigrations or invasions were needed in the causal approaches for the emergence of a “Dark Age” in the Near East. Cultural transitions were seen more as inherent developments stimulated by environmental conditions and social dynamics. Envi-ronmental or inherent social causes were used for explaining the rurality of the Intermediate E.B.-M.B. Period (i.e. EBIV/MBI or the Intermediate Bronze Age) in Palestine as well. In the course of the infl uences of the New Archaeology the un-urban interlude in Palestine has no longer been associated with the arrival or even existence of the Amorites. Clearly it has been important to restrict the explanations stressing migrations and invasions to appropriate fi elds of inquiries. However, in the same time the total abandonment of the migrationist or

31 I thank Dr. Diederik J.W. Meijer for providing me with his manuscript on the subject: “Nomadism, Pastoral-ism and Town and Country: about the roaming elements in the Syrian Middle Bronze Age” presented in the 3rd ICAANE.

32 Israel Finkelstein, Living on the Fringe, The Archaeology and History of the Negev, Sinai and Neighbouring Regions in the Bronze and Iron Ages (Monographs in Mediterranean Archaeology 6; Midsomer Norton, So-merset: The Sheffi eld Academic Press, 1995) 88.

33 See Barbara Bell “The Dark Ages in Ancient History,” AJA 75 (1971) 1-26 and Barbara Bell “Climate and the History of Egypt, The Middle Kingdom,” AJA 79 (1975) 223-269.

34 See Robert McC. Adams, “Historic Patterns of Mesopotamian Irrigation Agriculture,” in Irrigation´s Impact on Society (ed. Theodore E. Downing and McGuire Gibson; Anthropological Papers of the University of Ari-zona 25, Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona Press, 1974) 1-6 and McGuire Gibson, “Violation of Fallow and Engineered Disaster in Mesopotamian Civilization,” in Irrigation´s Impact on Society (ed. Theodore E. Downing and McGuire Gibson; Anthropological Papers of the University of Arizona, No. 25, Tucson, Ari-zona: University of Arizona Press, 1974) 7-19.

35 Joseph Tainter, The Collapse of Complex Societies (New Studies in Archaeology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) 44.



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invasionist hypotheses and models does not conform with the archaeological evidence of stratigraphic discontinuities in every instance. “The retreat from migrationism” has taken some archaeologists too far beyond the data itself.36 The epigraphic sources originating from archaeological contexts cannot simply be ignored as they form an integrated part of the evi-dence from the past.

A migration is seen as the movement of an organism to a new habitat to improve its en-vironmental conditions.37 A seasonal movement is local migration and typical of nomadism and transhumance. Transhumance is vertical movement from an environmental zone to an-other, originally defi ned as village-pastoralism between high- and lowlands.38 Total popula-tion movements which cause peopling of larger areas are rare in history, but they take place. Migrations have caused human and cultural diversity. Current examples in the application of the migration models concern peopling the continents or colonisations such as used in explaining the spread of agriculture from the Near East to Europe. Recently J. Fort, T. Pujol and L. Cavalli-Sforza have, for example, mathematically calculated the rate of the waves of advance in migrations taking into account the delays caused by a mean generation time.39 A. Trilsbach40 has differentiated two kinds of factors in migrations: 1) an environmental “push” factor leading to a short-distance migration and 2) an economical “pull” factor leading to a long-distance migration.

The mobility factor in nomadism and in the case of the Amorites should be taken into account in any re-evaluations of the migration and invasion theories. Mobility is an inherent mode of life in both hunter-gatherer and nomadic societies. In those societies economy large-ly dictates the need for mobility, and the economy in turn is connected with the environment. Nomadism denotes the amount of mobility in the landscape, expressed in different degrees from nomadism to semi-nomadism and semi-sedentary nomadism. Sedentarism on the other hand is opposite to mobility, also expressed in different degrees such as semi-sedentarism.41 Both nomadism and sedentism are open to reverse directions.42

36 See John Chapman and Helena Hamerow, ed. Migrations and Invasions in Archaeological Explanation (BAR International Series 664; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) and Minna Angelina Lönnqvist Between Nomadism and Sedentism, Amorites from the Perspective of Contextual Archaeology (Ph.D. diss., University of Helsinki, 2000) 112-113.

37 See, e.g., Alan G. Fix, Migration and Evolution in Human Microevolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) 9, 49, 169, 203.

38 Cf. Douglas L. Johnson, The Nature of Nomadism, A Comparative Study of Pastoral Migrations in South-western Asia and Northern Africa (Research Paper No. 118; University of Chicago, Department of Geography, 1969) 18-19 and Anatoly M. Khazanov Nomads and the Outside World (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994) 23.

39 Joaquim Fort, Toni Pujol and Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, “Palaeolithic Populations and Waves of Advance,” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 14 (2004) 53-61.

40 Anthony Trilsbach, “ Environmental Changes and Village Societies West of the White Nile: Central Sudan,” in The Middle Eastern Village, Changing Economic and Social Relations (ed. Richard Lawless; London: Croom Helm, 1987) 37-39.

41 Susan Kent “Cross-cultural perceptions of farmers as hunters and the value of meat,” in Farmers as hunters, The implications of sedentism, (ed. Susan Kent, New Directions in Archaeology, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press, 1989) 2.

42 See, e.g., Kay Prag, “Ancient and Modern Pastoral Migration in the Levant,” Levant 17 (1985) 81-88 and Israel Finkelstein, Living on the Fringe, The Archaeology and History of the Negev, Sinai and Neighbouring Regions in the Bronze and Iron Ages (Monographs in Mediterranean Archaeology 6, Midsomer Norton, So-merset: The Sheffi eld Academic Press, 1995) 42-46.

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JEBEL BISHRI – AN OUTPOST OF THE NOMADIC HABITAT?

Fresh archaeological approaches and methods have provided means for identifying nomadic sites earlier generally thought to have been unrecognizable in the archaeological record. New results from Jebel Bishri, earlier practically archaeologically unexplored43 mountainous region between Palmyra and the Euphrates river, have contributed to some of our written knowledge of the early nomadism connected with the region. From the year 2000 a Finn-ish archaeological survey and mapping project SYGIS44 led by the present author has been working on the mountain and its piedmont areas tracing ancient remains and types of human activities on the mountain.

The area of Jebel Bishri is desert-steppe and has largely been such through the Holocene. The region belongs to the Greater Southwestern Asian arid zone under the isohyet marking the 250 mm yearly precipitation,45 usually falling between 150 mm and 100 mm. The moun-tain with its piedmonts covers ca. one million hectares the highest point being 867 m.

In the ancient cuneiform texts Jebel Bishri is identifi ed with the Mountain of the Amor-ites46 and appears as the fi rst point of contact between the sedentary Sumerians and Akkadi-ans with the nomadic Amorites. The Gudea Statue A indirectly refers that the area was source of marble/alabaster, and indeed beside limestone and sandstone Jebel Bishri offers plenty of marble. (The Finnish project SYGIS has identifi ed ancient quarries on the Euphratine side of the mountain convinient for transporting blocks along the river.) In their recent publications Michael Astour,47 Dominique Charpin and Nele Ziegler48 as well as Michael P. Streck49 all include Jebel Bishri with its neigbourhoods to the central habitat of the Amorites in the third millennium B.C. Charpin and Ziegler defi ne Amurru, the country of the Amorites, falling in between Jebel Ansariyeh and Jebel Bishri. Michael Astour even assumes that it is pos-sible to locate Mar-du.ki the kingdom of the Amorites mentioned in the Ebla archives to the neighbourhood of Jebel Bishri. The kingdom had elders and a lu-gal. However, he states

43 A short archaeological visit to the area was earlier paid by Giorgio Buccellati and Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati in the 1960s. See Giorgio Buccellati and Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati, “Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America, Archaeological Survey of the Palmyrene and the Jebel Bishri, “ Archaeology 20 (1967) 305-306.

44 See the homepage of the project: www.helsinki.fi /hum/arla/sygis and introduction to the project in Minna Lönnqvist and Markus Törmä, “SYGIS – The Finnish Archaeological Project in Syria,” in New Perspectives to Save Cultural Heritage, Proceedings of the XIXth International Symposium CIPA 2003 (The ICOMOS & ISPRS Committee for Documentation of Cultural Heritage) Antalya, Turkey (ed. M. Orhan Altan, The ISPRS International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Vol. XX-XIV-5/C15, Istanbul, 2003) 609-614.

45 See Juris Zarins, “Archaeological and Chronological Problems within the Great Southwest Asian Arid Zone, 8500-1850 B.C”, in Chronologies in Old World Archaeology (vol. 1, ed. Robert Ehrich, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992) 42-62.

46 F. Thureau-Dangin, Les Cylindres de Goudéa, Découverts par Ernest de Sarzec à Tello, Texte copié par F. Thureau-Dangin (Paris: Musée du Louvre – Département des antiquités orientales, 1925), col. VI.

47 Michael C. Astour, “An Outline of the History of Ebla (Part 1),” in Eblaitica: Essays on the Ebla Archives and Eblai-te Language, (vol. 3, ed. Cyrus H. Gordon and Gary A. Rendsburg; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1992) 3-82.

Michael C. Astour, “A Reconstruction of the History of Ebla”, in Eblaitica: Essays on the Ebla Archives and Eblaite Language (vol. 4, ed. Cyrus H. Gordon and Gary A. Rendsburg, Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2002) 57-195.

48 Dominique Charpin and Nele Ziegler, Mari et le Proche-Orient à l´epoque amorrite, Essai d´histoire politique (Mémoirs de N.A.B.U. 6, Florilegium marianum V; Paris: SEPOA, 2003).

49 Michael P. Streck Das amurritische Onomasticon der altbabylonischen Zeit, Band 1, Die Amurriter, Die ono-mastische Forschung, Orthographie und Phonologie, Nominalmorphologie, Alter Orient und Altes Testament, Herausgeber Dietrich, Manfried und Loretz, Oswald (Münster: Ugarit-Verlag 2000) 31-33.



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- like Giovanni Pettinato - that Mar-du.ki might have been more or less sedentary centre.50 It is evident that Astour and Pettinato base their assumptions on the view that kingdoms can-not be nomadic although there exists evidence to the contrary from the past. In the vicinity of Jebel Bishri the sites such as Emar and Tuttul appear as central sedentary centers in the early contacts with the Amorites in the Ebla archives. The excavations at Emar as well as the cuneiform correspondence from Mari with Emar clearly indicate to the early Amorite presence at the site, but unfortunately the third and the second millennium layers have appar-ently submerged in the channel change of the Euphrates.51 Tuttul/Tal Biá instead offers clear cuneiform evidence of the Amorite population found in situ. The tribes of the area belonged to the Yaminites,52 a tribal group among the Amorites.

For millennia Jebel Bishri has been the habitat of mobile people, such as hunter-gath-erer and nomadic groups, which is refl ected in the majority of the ancient remains mapped in the region so far.53 It is currently thought that originally nomadism emerged during the PPNB Period of the Neolithic. The concomitant relationship of agricultural villages, hunting and gathering with nomadism is well attested in the piedmont areas of Jebel Bishri.54 The archae-ological remains connected with nomadism on the mountain consist of stone enclosures (i.e. corrals identifi ed with animal pens) and cairns/tumuli which are characteristic archaeological features of the region. Some of them form intersected chain-like complexes and megalithic type of structures. Some seasonal villages have been identifi ed on the banks of the wadis. Beside fl ints the sites offer Chalcolithic, Early Bronze Age and Roman-Byzantine pottery. Most of the circular enclosures seem to date to the Chalcolithic – Early Bronze Age accord-ing to the associated fi nds, structures and their locations as well as the comparable sites from Jordan, the Negev and Sinai.55 Sedentary remains in connection to Jebel Bishri are generally restricted to the Euphratine side and the western piedmont areas.

50 Michael Astour, An Outline of the History of Ebla (Part 1), Eblaitica: Essays on the Ebla Archives and Eblaite Language (vol. 3, ed. Cyrus H. Gordon and Gary A. Rendsburg, Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1992) 54-55.

51 See Jean-Marie Durand ” La cité-état dÌmâr à L´époque de rois de Mari,” MARI 6 (1990) 39-92 and B. Geyer „Une ville aujourd´hui engloutie: Emar, contribution géomorphologique à la localisation de la cité,“ MARI 6 (1990) 107-119.

52 See, e.g., Manfred Krebernik, Tall Biá/Tuttul II (Saarbrücken: Saabrücker Druckerei und Verlag, 2001) 13.53 The detailed lists of the sites with the UTM coordinate information are provided in the unpublished preliminary

reports of the surveys on Jebel Bishri (Minna Lönnqvist 2000, Minna Lönnqvist et al. 2004) and preserved at the General Directory of Antiquities and Museums in Damascus, Syria.

54 Juris Zarins, “Archaeological and Chronological Problems within the Great Southwest Asian Arid Zone, 8500-1850 B.C,” in Chronologies in Old World Archaeology, (vols 2, ed. Robert W. Ehrich , Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992) 42-62 and Juris Zarins “Jebel Bishri and the Amorite Homeland: the PPNB Phase”, in To the Euphrates and Beyond, Archaeological Studies in Honour of Maurits N. Van Loon. (ed. O.M. Chaex et al., Rotterdam: Balkema, 1989) 29-52.

55 Minna Lönnqvist, Margot Stout Whiting and Kirsi Lorentz “A View over an Ancient Silicon Valley, Circular Enclosures at the Edge of Jebel Bishri in Syria”, in The 5th Millennium in the Ancient Near East, forthcoming in the proceedings of the congress held in Liverpool in 2001; Minna Lönnqvist and Markus Törmä, “SYGIS – The Finnish Archaeological Project in Syria” in New Perspectives to Save Cultural Heritage, Proceedings of the XIXth International Symposium CIPA 2003 (The ICOMOS & ISPRS Committee for Documentation of Cultural Heritage), Antalya, Turkey ed. M. Orhan Altan, (The ISPRS International Archives of the Photo-grammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences Vol. XXXIV-5/C15; Istanbul, 2003) 609-614. Minna Lönnqvist and Markus Törmä, “Different Implications of a Spatial Boundary, Jebel Bishri between the Desert and the Sown in Syria,” in ISPRS XXth Congress Proceedings (ed. M. Orhan Altan, The ISPRS In-ternational Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Vol. XXXV, Part B; Istanbul, 2004) 897-902.

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The Bedouins of the Fedaán and Sbaá tribes originating from Iraq56 currently have their territories on and around Jebel Bishri. The Agedat tribe traverses along the Euphrates in the foot of Jebel Bishri, and its movement is more horizontal than those of the Fedaán and Sbaá tribes.57 The tribes are originally camel nomads but have largely changed to small fl ock rearing pastoralists and transhumants on Jebel Bishri. The vicinity of the Euphrates and the wadis on the piedmonts have offered opportunities for irrigated and seasonal agriculture for the transhumants. It is also evident that Jebel Bishri was an outpost of the nomadic Amorites communicating with the sedentary elements in the Early Bronze Age. Judging from the avail-able evidence the Amorites were probably more nomadic and rural in the third millennium of the Early Bronze Age than in the second millennium of the Middle Bronze Age. It seems that the scanty written evidence of the Amorite language is due to their nomadism and rural-ity in the Early Bronze Age

In my view the Mari archives and textual evidence from the second millennium B.C. in general are too heavily colouring the whole picture of the past nomadism of the region. Jebel Bishri with its new archaeological results shows that nomadism and its development in the region are cyclic and manifold phenomena. Hunting and gathering have served as subsidiary livelihoods for nomads in the area for thousands of years. The enclosed nomad-ism and unilinear nomadisation of peasants could refl ect only periodic situations, such as the Neolithic, and restricted to certain areas of the Mari nomadism. However, there does not exist evidence available that village pastoralism or enclosed nomadism exclusively were the types of nomadism among the Amorites during the third millennium B.C. Even in the Mari documents there also exist indications that the tribes of the Suteans or their confederation, which was associated with Jebel Bishri, was apparently more nomadic than, for instance, the Simalites on the left bank of the Euphrates. The tribes of the Yaminites offering sedentary el-ements are especially identifi ed with the right bank of the Euphrates, and they also appeared in the Jebel Bishri region.58 In the case of the Amorites the distinction of the Early Bronze Age nomadism from the Middle Bronze Age situation is important, especially as we shall shortly reconsider the question of the large-scale sedentarization process.

MECHANISMS IN THE PROCESS OF SEDENTARIZATION

The results of my archaeological studies concerning the migrations and the large-scale sed-entarization process of the Amorites are basically in accordance with the recent theories of some epigraphists. For example, Dominique Charpin and Nele Ziegler59 hold that Amorites had a tribal organisation, took part in large migrations in the 21st century B.C. and conse-quently sedentarized widely. Charpin and Ziegler use the linguistic concept “Toponyms in mirror” , the repeated spread of the same Amorite toponyms to refl ect the sedentarization process of the Amorites in the late third millennium B.C. onwards. In their view the reasons

56 See, e.g., Jibrail Jabbur The Bedouins and the Desert, Aspects of Nomadic Life in the Arab East, (SUNY Series in Near Eastern Studies, New York: State University of New York Press, 1995) 273, 615.

57 See, e.g., Eugen Wirth, Syrien, Eine Geographische Landeskunde (Wissenschafl iche Länderkunden, Band 4/5, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1971) Karte 11.

58 See passim Moshé Anbar, Les tribus amurrites de Mari (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 108; Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Göttingen: Universitätsverlag Freiburg 1991).

59 Dominique Charpin and Nele Ziegler, Mari et le Proche-Orient à lépoque amorrite, Essai d´histoire poli-tique, (Mémoirs de N.A.B.U. 6, Florilegium marianum V; Paris: SEPOA, 2003) 29.



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for the large-scale migrations and sedentarization of the Amorites were probably climatic. The environmental studies demonstrated in the 4th ICAANE also found reinstating evidence that in the end of the Early Bronze Age aridization was in progress in the Near East. It seems that the environmental change is one factor in creating the “Dark Age”.

Migrations and cultural patternings are often discussed but usually found problematic to explicate in terms of archaeological inquiries. The nomadic background denotes mobility in the fi rst place, and nomads are more fl exible in searching new habitats depending on different kinds of stimuli or forces behind. They also take into part in trading and military activities - as did the Amorites. In the archaeological data it is often diffi cult to defi ne the impact of the earlier occupations to the material culture of the newcomers. If an alien type of material assemblages or a cluster of material remains appear into the local archaeological record there exists a pos-sibility that an intrusion or an immigration has taken place. If this is immediately preceded by a destruction level we may deduce that an invasion has taken place. Provided that we have textual evidence available of the new occupiers we may identify them from their own archives.

In 1993 Kenneth Højlund suggested that the appearance of the new glyptic style in the Dilmun culture (identifi ed with Bahrain, Failaka and the Arabian littoral in the Persian Gulf) ca. 2000 B.C. would be due to the infl uence of the Amorite immigration to the island of Bahrain.60 The validity of this hypothesis can be partly evaluated in the light of the fact that Amorites took part into the Dilmun trade and belonged to the merchants of Ur according to the cuneiform texts from Ur.61 In addition, a Danish expedition has found tablets bearing Amorite names in situ on Bahrain.62 Therefore we have outer and inner textual evidence of the Amorite impact on the island. Whether the seal style is to be associated with the Amorites needs closer comparisons with the specifi c styles connected upon the establishment of the Amorite rule at several sites in Syria. But the seal style is only one indication, and the impact of an immigration should be further inquired and traced in the variety of material.63

Susan Kent64 has soundly pointed out that sedentarization may cause confl icts with ear-lier occupiers as it means intensifi cation of the land-use making the population increase more possible. There are usually different stress factors acting in sedentarization. There also ex-ist prerequisites in population sizes and degrees of artefact development before permanent sedentism takes place.65 Palynological studies of ancient sediments in northwestern Syria in-dicate that widespread sedentarization and large-scale deforestation are indeed recognizable features in the Middle Bronze Age land-use. Over-stocking was detectable.66

The fi rst site which appears to have been occupied by the rulers bearing Amorite names is Byblos on the Mediterranean coast, probably already in the end of the third millennium

60 Kenneth Højlund, “The Ethnic Composition of the Population of Dilmun,” Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 23 (1993).

61 A.L. Oppenheim, “The Seafaring Merchants of Ur,“ JAOS 74 (1954) 6-17.62 Ignace Gelb, Computer-aided Analysis of Amorite (The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago; Assyri-

ological Studies 2, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980) 2.63 Cf. the defi ned features in the material remains in Minna Angelina Lönnqvist, Between Nomadism and Sedent-

ism, Amorites from the Perspective of Contextual Archaeology (Ph.D. diss., University of Helsinki, 2000)64 Susan Kent, “Cross-cultural perceptions of farmers as hunters and the value of meat,” in Farmers as hunters,

The implications of sedentism, (ed. Susan Kent, New Directions in Archaeology, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press, 1989) 2.

65 See Roland Fletcher, The Limits of Settlement Growth, A theoretical outline (New Studies in Archaeology; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1995) 165-187.

66 See Robert Miller, “Elephants, Ivory and Charcoal: an Ecological Perspective,” BASOR 264 (1986) 35-37.

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B.C.67 The occupation is proceeding destruction layers as is also the case concerning the evidence in the west in general: at Ugarit68and at Ebla69. Alalakh offers a destruction by fi re in Level VIII preceding the evidence of the Amorite hegemony in Level VII.70 Hama offers destruction layers before the Phase J as well as Phase H.71 The textual reference of the Amor-ite occupation in Hama comes later on describing confl icts between the Amorites; an enemy attack by the Amorites took place against this site governed by sheikhs of the Hanean tribe of the Amorites (ANET, 556-557). (The mechanism in the establishment of the Amorite occu-pation in Qatna will be hopefully elucidated in the current Syro-Italo-German excavations.) The stratigraphical evidence concerning the kingdom of Aleppo i.e. Yamkhad (despite the studies of the Temple of the Weather God in Aleppo) is still generally limited to the smaller satellite sites such as Ansari72 with its destruction layer.

Contextual archaeology with its emphasis on the archaeological fi nd contexts in stratig-raphy and spatial dimensions of these associations over larger geographical areas has offered means to trace and defi ne certain recurring entities in the material remains.73 The sites such as Byblos, Ugarit, Ebla and Alalakh as well as Hama H are exemplifi ed with the clear ap-pearance of comparable and new types and styles in material remains connected with the Amorites. The sites offer a distinct material culture refl ecting the background in the nomadic and rural world. The remains, however, clearly show elements of contacts with the previous occupants and neighbouring sedentary areas. So, certain features of the culture do not partic-ularly have to exclusively refl ect original and independent inventions. In Ebla, for example, the Amorites seemed to belong to the neighbours and subject rurals of the kingdom in the third millennium B.C. Apart from the nomadic background of the Southwest Asian arid zone their material culture may also refl ect some contacts with Trans-Caucasian nomadic groups.

The mechanisms taking place at the establishment of the Amorite occupation in Mari and Terqa southeast from Jebel Bishri along the Euphrates are stratigraphically obscure in the published reports of the Middle Bronze layers. However, after the establishment of the Amorite Lim-dynasty several destruction layers in Mari testify enemy attacks and battles be-67 See Maurice Dunand, Fouilles de Byblos (vol. II: 2, Études et documents dárchéologie, BAH XXIV; Paris,

1958) 895-900; The Amorite ruler Ib-dadi has been dated to the Ur III Period. See, e.g., Kenneth Kitchen, “Byblos, Egypt, and Mari in the Early Second Millennium,” Orientalia 36 (1967) 39-54.

68 Claude Schaeffer, Stratigraphie comparée et chronologie de lÁsie Occidentale (IIIe et IIe millenaire) (Ox-ford: Oxford University Press, 1948) 29-37; Claude F.A. Schaeffer Ugaritica IV, Découvertes des XVIIIe et XIXe campagnes, 1954-1955, fondements préhistoriques dÚgarit et nouveaux sondages, etudes anthro-pologiques, poteries grecques et monnaies islamiques de Ras Shamra et environs, Mission de Ras Shamra, Dirigée par Schaeffer, Claude F.A. (BAH LXXIV, Paris, 1962), xxvii-xxx and Kenneth Kitchen, “The King List of Ugarit” UF 9 (1977) 131-142.

69 Paolo Matthiae, “Mission Archeologique de LÚniversie de Rome à Tell Mardikh, Rapport sommaire sur la quatrième et la ciquième campagnes 1967 et 1968,” AAAS 20 (1970) 68, Paolo Matthiae, Ebla in the Period of Amorite Dynasties and the Dynasty of Akkad, MANE 1/6 (1979) 11, 14 and Paolo Matthiae Ebla, An Empire Rediscovered (London: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd., 1980) 111-113 .

70 Leonard Woolley, Alalakh, An Account on the Excavations at Tell Atchana in the Hatay 1937-1949 (Oxford: Oxord University Press, 1955)

71 See Harald Ingholt, Rapport préliminaire sur sept campagnes de fouilles à Hama en Syrie (1932-1938), Det Kgl. Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, Archaeologisk-kunsthistoriske Meddelelser III, 1. Kobenhavn, 1940; 26, 49-50.

72 Antoine Suleiman and Anna Gritsenko, “Landmarks of the Ancient City of Ansari (Yamhad),” Syria 64 (1987) 231-243.

73 The over all features of the material remains are scrutinized and defi ned according to sites and epigraphic sources in Minna Angelina Lönnqvist, Between Nomadism and Sedentism, Amorites from the Perspective of Contextual Archaeology (Ph.D. diss., University of Helsinki, 2000).



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tween rival Amorite dynasties, such as between the Lim-dynasty and the dynasties of Sham-shi-Adad as well as Hammurabi – the latter Amorite rulers already possessing large territo-ries in Mesopotamia. The sedentarization process is clearly refl ected in several city-states in Syria and even empires extending from Mesopotamia ruled by the Amorites in the second millennium B.C. As mentioned previously cuneiform texts bearing Amorite names and dat-ing to the Middle Bronze Age have been discovered, e.g., from Hazor in Palestine. Hazor in Northern Palestine may have been part of Amurru according to the Mari texts (A. 2760), and the site shares several archaeological features of the common material culture.74

The nomadism and the sedentarization process in the Jezira refl ect another kind of situ-ation compared to the west. On the Jezira the mechanism upon the beginning of the Amorite occupations seems rather to be exemplifi ed by acculturation and gradual infi ltration com-pared to the situation in the west where the cultural transition was more based on invasions and enemy attacks. In the Habur region, like generally in the Jezira, there is no evidence of invasions but rather natural catastrophes and abandons at such sites as Tell Chagar Bazar75 and Tell Leilan76 which are followed by the Amorite presence in the occupations. The mecha-nism of abandonment and reoccupation without any particular signs of human intervention or natural catastrophes, also are represented in the stratigraphy of the sites such as Tell al-Rimah.77 Tell Taya further east offers ambiguous evidence of either destruction or desertifi -cation ca. 2100-2000 B.C. preceding the Amorite occupation.78 It is likely that Amorites were neighbours and even belonged to the rural populations of these cities learning certain features from their more sedentary cultures. The situation of the sedentarization in the Jezira can be elucidated through the modern ethnographic evidence from Jebel Bishri.

ETHNOGRAPHIC AND ETHNOARCHAEOLOGICAL ANALOGIES

In the SYGIS- Jebel Bishri project, besides German cartographers combating against deser-tifi cation, we have made satellite image analyses of the increasing desertifi cation between 1970-1990 in the area. The explosive distribution of sand cover constantly deteriorates the grazing grounds and the equilibrium of the steppe.79 We have carried out ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological studies among the pastoral nomads in the neigbourhood of Jebel Bishri. In the year 2000 we studied a seasonally abandoned village of Shanhas next to Qasr al-Heir

74 See Minna Angelina Lönnqvist, Between Nomadism and Sedentism, Amorites from the Perspective of Contex-tual Archaeology (Ph.D. diss., University of Helsinki, 2000).

75 Passim Max Mallowan, “The Excavations at Tall Chagar Bazar and an Archaeological Survey of the Habur Region, 1934-35,” Iraq 3 (1936) 1-86 and “The Excavations at Tall Chagar Bazar and an Archaeological Sur-vey of the Habur Region, Second Campaign, 1936,” Iraq 4 (1937) 91-177.

76 See Harvey Weiss et al. “The Genesis and Collapse of Third Millennium North Mesopotamian Civilisation,” Science 261(1993) 997-998.

77 See David Oates, “The Excavations at Tell al Rimah, 1964,” Iraq 27 (1965) 68-75 and David Oates, “The Excavations at Tell al Rimah, 1965, ” Iraq 28 (1966) 122-133.

78 See J.E. Reade, “Tell Taya (1967) Surmmary Report,” Iraq 30, (1968) 234-264; “Tell Taya (1968-1969) Surm-mary Report,” Iraq 32 (1970) 87-100 and “Tell Taya (1972-1973) Surmmary Report,” Iraq 36 (1973), 155-187.

79 See Minna Lönnqvist and Markus Törmä, “Different Implications of a Spatial Boundary, Jebel Bishri between the Desert and the Sown in Syria”, in ISPRS XXth Congress Proceedings (ed. by M. Orhan Altan, The ISPRS International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Vol. XXXV, Part B; Istanbul, 2004) 897-902.

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ash-Sharqi on the western piedmont.80 Inhabitants of the village partly belonged to the tribe of Sbaá. The Sbaá were politically drawn to sedentarism and agriculture through the state pol-icy in the 1960s. Beside pastoral nomadism they are engaged with seasonal agriculture in the wadi beds and hunting small game as well as gathering truffl es. Donkeys and dogs are used in rearing fl ocks of sheep like in the ancient description of the pastoralists in the Mari archives.

The plan of the village still corresponds to a nomadic camp, the houses are not yet ag-glutinated. The houses are rectangular in layouts and provide tent-like interiors. Open court-yards have household facilities with pens, kitchens and silos. However, tents are still used on the courtyards as additional spaces of living and cooking. In diffi cult dry periods the Sbaá who have their summer pastures on the Jezira, may not even return to their village for the winter season but continue moving on and living in their tents on the Jezira. Therefore grad-ual infi ltration from Jebel Bishri region to the Jezira is today likely in diffi cult periods and increases the nomadic presence and territorial pressure on the Jezira causing abandonments in other areas, like at Jebel Bishri. The ethnographic evidence also indicates that this kind of short-distance movement is based on a seasonal migration and information on the territories. This complements to our knowledge of possible nomadic behaviour in the region and migra-tions from Jebel Bishri to the Jezira depending on climatic conditions.

There also exist travellers´ accounts by Alois Musil81 describing how the fl uctations in weather conditions caused hardships for the Bedouin tribes of the Bishri region in the year 1912: “After a while we were overtaken by two Fed´ân from a camp near Ab-al-Zir, who gave us a good description of the road we had to follow. Likewise our gendarme, a native of Dejr az-Zor, knew al-Bisri fairly well. Rotting sheep were seen everywhere. We were told that in the fi rst days of January snow fell all the way from al-Bisri to ar-Resafa and remained on the ground forty-fi ve days. The half-fellâhin and swâja (breeders of goats and sheep) who did not take their fl ocks to the Euphrates on time lost all their property, it was said. The ani-mals died in cold and hunger…” The Syrian documents on Bedouins in the Royal Egyptian Archives also refl ect the situations of the nomads during economic hardships in the 19th cen-tury. The Bedouins crossed the boundaries of their nomadic and tribal territories threatening and even blockading the areas of Aleppo and Damascus.82

This gives a picture of the possible ways to spread and act violently towards sedentary centers in the case of dry periods.

CONCLUSIONS

There apparently existed different degrees of nomadism among the Amorites in different tribal entities and through different periods, and therefore I would not label the nomadic Amorites en-tirely under a certain specifi c type or degree of nomadism. The situation of the Early Bronze Age nomadism appears to differ from the Middle Bronze Age nomadism, which had already

80 See www.helsinki.fi /hum/arla/sygis. The French have earlier made a comparable study at the village of Qdeir among the sedentarized nomads in the piedmont area of Jebel Bishri. See Roland Jarno, ”Tente et maison: Le jeu annuel de la sédentarisation à Qdeir (Syrie)”, in Nomades et sédentaires, Perspectives ethnoarchéologiques (ed. dÒlivier Aurenche, “mémoir” no 40; Paris: Éditions Recherche sur les Civilisations, 1984) 191- 229.

81 Alois Musil, Palmyrena, A Topographical Itinerary (ed. J.K Wright, Oriental Explorations and Studies 4, New York: American Geographical Society, 1928) 175-176.

82 See Jibrail Jabbur The Bedouins and the Desert, Aspects of Nomadic Life in the Arab East (SUNY Series in Near Eastern Studies; New York: State University of New York Press, 1995) Appendix II.



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been affected by the large-scale sedentarization proccess taking place from the end of the third millennium B.C. In my view Rowton´s and Buccellati´s models of nomadism are ap-plicable to the situations existing in the Middle Bronze Age in the Euphrates valley when the Amorites had already faced a large-scale sedentarization process, but the explanations and models are not necessarily applicable to all the groups, earlier eras and different ecozones. Jebel Bishri offers an experimental ground to study nomadism, mobility and sedentarization process. The ancient sites mapped on Jebel Bishri so far chiefl y belong to the hunter-gatherer and nomadic groups or sometimes agropastoralist village type of small-scale societies using the possibilities of the wadi-beds. Sedentarization is attested in the villages of the Euphrates valley and the oases as well as wadis of the western piedmont area. Ethnoarchaeological and ethnographic analogies refl ect that the sedentarization process of these pastoral nomads have been affected by environmental, economical and socio-political situations.

It is evident that the environmental situations acted as the initial stimuli in the searching for new economical choices to improve the conditions through migrations in the end of the Early Bronze Age. However, there is no evidence available whether there existed simulta-neous demographic pressure inside the nomadic groups. But the weakening central powers opened ways to occupy several kingdoms in Syria and Mesopotamia. It is archaeologically and epigraphically possible to attest that the Amorites were on the move. The archaeological and epigraphic evidence refers to two major types of mechanisms taking place in the seden-tarization process in the end of the Early Bronze Age. Both of these mechanisms were based on migrations, either long-distance or short-distance migrations: 1) invasions towards the west and the valley of Mesopotamia and 2) gradual infi ltrations towards the Jezira and the north.

Theoretically, the environmental “push” factor may have affected on short-distance migrations and infi ltrations in Syria, but the economic “pull” factor caused interregional migrations from the arid fringes of Syria to the west and the alluvial zone of Mesopotamia. From the archaeological remains it can be deduced that the populations on the desert fringes stretching from Jebel Bishri in Syria to Eastern Jordan, the Negev and Sinai belonged to the common nomadic and migratory culture traversing back and forth in the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age. In this habitat Jebel Bishri appears only as an outpost which existed next to the riverine and sedentary area of Mesopotamia while the larger Syrian Desert was hard to cross before the camels. It is evident that the nomadic and migratory infl uences from the arid zone were from time to time felt also in Palestine and Egypt. The mechanism of migrations, invasions and gradual infi ltrations as well as abandonments are clearly refl ecting the opposite ways of lives: the nomadic and rural, in contrast to the sedentary and urban.

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were nomadic amorites on the move?

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